What I learned from Middle School Camp.

Middle School camp is always my favorite week of camp.  This year I had the opportunity to co-dean the week alongside Joel Dyer.  Joel did such a great job planning and I tried to do whatever he needed me to do to prepare for the week.  We had much of the same activities as the middle school camps have had in the past but we wanted to make some things different.  Two of the big things that we did differently was go to visit our mission for the summer personally and we had what we called ministry groups.  Normally our mission is something in a different country that is doing work for Jesus overseas somewhere, but this year our mission was Refuge Oklahoma City.  We took a group to downtown Oklahoma City to clean up a neighborhood.  We did mowing, weeding, edging, picking up trash, hauling trash and many other "odd jobs" while there.  It was 103* while these middle school students served Jesus outside, and the complaining was minimal.  I couldn't believe it.  By having the mission close to camp it allowed our students to take an active part in the ministry of the mission.  I've heard many students say that they want to bring their families to serve, or get friends together to go and help.  Awesome!

The ministry groups took the place of a youth minister or teacher teaching classes to the students everyday.  What our ministry groups were aimed for was giving the students an active part of serving in camp.  We had seven groups:

1.  Service group - cleaning camp, helping whomever needed to be helped, etc.....

2.  Encouragement group - making cards, bracelets, anything to encourage other campers and/or staff

3.  Tech Group - take pictures, make slideshows for worship, run easyworship for our singing time

4.  Drama group - write and perform a skit that would teach students some sort of moral or lesson 

5.  Prayer group - encourage students to pray and also engage the camp in new prayer opportunities

6.  Music group - allowed students to take part in leading worship at camp fire and sometimes opening our main worship session with songs led by this group

7.  Testimony and devotional group - Taught students about their testimony, encouraged them to write and share it, and students wrote devotionals and/or shared testimonies at the camp fire

These ministry groups turned out better than I could have thought.  Students served and were taught at the same time.  Our prayer now is that the students would take these skills and desires and get involved in their own ministries at home in church and youth group.  It could happen!

So that is leading up to the last night.  Our speaker Doug Bean spoke about breaking down walls that we've built that separate us from God.  These walls could be anything from fear to relationships to sin that we struggle with.  During our worship set, after Doug spoke, he gave the students an opportunity to go grab an adult to talk and pray with if they needed to do so.  Some students did, but others went and found other students to pray with.  The pain was evident and so students embraced one another.  Before long students were walking around the room looking for someone to apologize to or just share with or to encourage or hug someone.  Needless to say, walls started crumbling.  God is amazing!  I was amazed that students began to own the week so much that they became ministers to each other.  This is the way it should be, not just in youth ministry, but the whole church.  Why do we never embrace the hurting?  encourage the broken?  weep with the sad? rejoice when God moves in our friends lives?  This could happen in our churches and not just at middle school camp.

I think I was shown the meaning of a verse this week without without being told.  Matthew 18: 1-4 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"  He called a little child and had him stand among them.  And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.