Bible Camp: The Good, the Bad, the Beautiful

One of the highlights of my summer was the week we spent serving at Bible Camp. Our youngest daughter was a camper for the first time. Since she was nervous about a week away from home, we volunteered to serve at the camp for the week so that at least we’d be “on site” and have enough contact to help ease the home-sickness.

So my wife and I cleaned bathrooms, taught Bible lessons for 9-year-olds, and ran a tight ship in the dish-pit for a week. I don’t like to brag (until I know if it’ll still be standing by the end of the season) but there’s also a re-built flight of steps on Cabin 3 with my name on it.

Anyways, I love Bible Camp—it’s where I cut my teeth in ministry, long before God told me I was going to be a pastor—and to be honest, a week at Bible camp for me is as relaxing as any old cruise.

It was this year, anyways. But home now and reflecting, I’m looking over the whole Evangelical Bible Camp phenomenon with my theological glasses on, and here’s what I’m seeing.

The Good:

Service: Christian service is not optional for the life of a Christ follower and Bible Camp is the kind of place where every gift and talent has a place, from cooking to speaking, to building to playing.

Hard Work: Working hard alongside brothers and sisters in Christ for the sake of Jesus builds a kind of spiritual camaraderie that is deeply formative and irreplaceable.

The Outdoors: One day I’m going to write a theology of the outdoors; until then I’ll simply mention the radiance that people get when they are spending swaths of time outside and together.

Role-models: There is something profoundly moving seeing young men and women build into the lives of children by modelling Christian love and life for them over a week together.

Fun: I forget the theologian anymore, but I remember reading a book that developed a theology of “play” around the “cosmic reversal” themes in the gospel and the idea that humans discover their identity as made in the image of the creative God especially when they find the grace to be homo-ludens; “man at play.” I’ll have to dig that out again, but in the meantime I’ll just recall the joy of seeing kids playing in the presence of Jesus.

The Bad:

Gospel-Lite: By its nature, Bible Camp is not the place to develop an understanding of salvation that goes much further beyond an ask-Jesus-into-you-heart kind of proclamation, so this is maybe to be expected, but it still merits scrutiny. There’s just no permanent community that can consistently disciple these kids long term, and even the best efforts at follow-up are hit and miss.

Easy-Believe-ism: In the olden days (say 4th century and onward) if you wanted to become a Christian you underwent a 40-day Lenten Journey with daily catechism, fasting and exorcisms that culminated in a public baptism (and then there were follow-up classes, too). Of course, this was fraught with its own theological problems and open to its own spiritual abuses, but I mention it here only to point out the stark contrast between the historic Church’s “10-course meal” approach to discipleship, and Bible Camp’s “TV-dinner approach”—just pop them into the microwave oven of the sinner’s prayer and they pop out Christians.

Churchless Christianity: Ecclesiology is the fancy word we use to describe one’s “theology of the church.” In as much as it reflects the ethos of Evangelicalism at large, Bible Camp ministry has profoundly weak ecclesiology. The Church (holy, apostolic and universal), if it gets mentioned at all, is simply a means to an end: a place where individuals can follow Jesus on their own, together. Alan Hirsch once made the controversial claim that Ecclesiology follows Mission; at Bible Camp, I think, we see the sad corollary of this idea: mission that has eschewed ecclesiology altogether.

The Beautiful:

Seeing Jesus introduce himself to young people through the loving witness of his followers. Having given the theological fuddy-duddy above his time on the soap-box, I have to say that seeing Jesus work in kids lives the way he does at Bible Camp is beautiful and humbling. Kids who didn’t even know that God existed a week ago find out that not only does he exist, he actually loves them dearly. If it doesn’t move you to be part (even a small part) of this work, you may want to avail yourself of the advice posted at this link here.