The Gospel made simple…
January 29th, 2006
I had a wonderful weekend here with some Jr. High students from my church and from another church. Young Life and its Woodleaf camp has to be the "Hilton of camps" when it comes to camping. One of my students walked into our cabin as we arrived at Woodleaf and said, "Wow, there’s heat and look the showers are in the same room." The meals were the best of the best when it comes to conference style camping, and the facilities were awesome everything from the rec hall to the sugar barrel snack bar. I especially enjoyed the "gold cup" open early for us old guys who needed a Mocha to pick us up before the day got going.
What I loved about Woodleaf and the folks who ran the weekend was that the gospel was communicated in a way that was made simple. It was brought down to the level of a Jr. High kid. The weekend was centered on a relational type of gospel where we leaders got to walk with the kids in the midst of their lives for 36 hours of wild fun. Every talk was prepared in a way that each student would hear why Jesus loved them and why Jesus desired to be in relationship with them. They were given the freedom to come as they were. Messy, broken, and in need of someone to help them clean the messy spew of life. I did however come away appreciating what it means to come down to the level of a kid when during one of the "messy" games I happened to get caught in the middle of some cross fire and was blessed with a large bucket of old milky leftover cereal from that mornings breakfast. It happened to be about 40 degrees during the game and when the feeling of warm goo was poured on my head, I almost spewed my left lung. I then was thankful that even in the midst of my spew that somehow Christ was present and Christ was with me and how blessed I was to know that I was giving back to a bunch of kids, what was given to me by a bunch of Jr. High leaders at a Jr. High winter camp several trillion years ago when I came to know Jesus as my Lord and savior.
January 30th, 2006 at 8:40 am
Young Life really does do camp the right way! We have gone to the Young Life camp up here in Oregon (http://sites.younglife.org/camps/Wildhorse/default.aspx) and it is indeed the best camp I have ever been to!
And what can I say about Forest Home? Love that place! I grew up going to camp there. I credit some of who I am to that place as well! We may have even been thre at the same time!
February 24th, 2006 at 6:54 am
I believe many adults need the simple gospel message too.
My guess is that most adults had teen trauma that never got resolved. I have the privilege of assisting our new youth minister. I am blessed by serving, my heart longs to build relationships with the youth, especially the girls, so they have someone to talk to in time of stress, but I am more blessed by the healing I have had by participating in the spiritual activities.