Camping–a Tool of the Shepherd
Lisa Anderson
Latin American Missionary
Mom, did you send my registration to Camp Pine yet? I just got an email from the camp reminding me to register. You know you can do it on-line now. May I attend the two-week session this summer? Corky, my counselor from last year, said it’ll be his last year. May I please attend the full two-week session, Mom?
This fictitious conversation may convey the general North American perspective towards camping. It usually involves sending one’s child to a well-established campsite run from one to two weeks long and may cost from $400 to $1000 dollars. The campsite is run by paid professionals and summer sessions are manned by college students serving campers all summer long. The staff has probably gone through an interview process, a background check, and prior training.
Compare the above to camping from the Latin American perspective:
Maria, have you been able to find a place to hold camp yet?”
No, José, not yet, I checked Camp Pino where we went last year and they’re already booked. Maybe we can borrow the Perez’ property along the beach and just pitch tents and use their summer house for the bathrooms.
Maria, that’s a great idea, now all we have to do is get the Pastor to let us miss church so we can leave on Friday and return on Sunday afternoon. Hey, I found last year’s schedule so we’ll just change the dates and use it again. Were you able to convince the Sunday School teachers to accompany us again this year?
Camps in Latin America usually take place on weekends, and Easter or Christmas vacations. Few campsites run their own program so the local church or para-church usually organizes everything. More and more camp properties are available in Latin America, but it is still common that a group will make do borrowing someone’s beach or forest property, or even a park. They usually cook their own meals and bring their own volunteers who may or may not have had any prior 
training. To keep it affordable, weekend prices range from $25-$50 per person.
All differences aside, there are elements of camping, evidenced around the world, that combine to make it one of the most consistently powerful means God uses to impact lives for His Kingdom purposes.
Bud Williams, a professor at Wheaton College, wrote an essay tracing the Biblical roots of camping starting in the Garden of Eden and beyond, showing how God uses the wilderness to shape and form people. Most historians however, identity camping as having started with the Industrial Era as a movement initiated by pastors, doctors and educators, many of whom were Christians, to counteract the corrupting influence of city life on young people. Others point to the famous tent meetings on the American and Canadian frontier during the 19th century as the beginnings of the camping movement.
Whatever the case, one of the fundamental elements of camping is its ability to draw one away from the routine of life into another realm. We call it a Christian “temporary community.” Imagine the impact when God makes His presence manifest in that setting as witnessed by how many have come to Christ during a camp or a retreat.
Sergio had to be begged to go on the retreat. Both he and his parents resisted, but when Sergio found out most of his friends would be going, he signed up. As he tossed his backpack on the seat, he plopped down with a scowl on his face, just daring someone to make him smile. As the bus 
drew away from the cement jungle he called home, he was so drawn into the natural scenery that he barely noticed Carlos sit down beside him. Before long they were chatting and not too long after that, Sergio was actually singing those silly camp songs. All this, before he even set foot on the camp grounds!
Sergio met the Lord that weekend. But what none of us knew was the timeliness of his conversion. Only a few weeks after that event he was struck by a bus and killed in front of the refugee center for the victims of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras, where he and his family were living.
Camp takes learning out of the classroom and places it squarely into the daily experiences of life. The pedagogical term is nonformal education. We are conditioned by years of formal schooling to validate what takes place within four walls as learning, and to be rather dismissive of the wealth of learning God’s world offers us outside the realm of formal education.
Formal education often operates from the paradigm of “store this away in your brain because you’re going to need it someday.” In contrast, camping operates from the paradigm of “let’s reflect on what you’re doing as you’re doing it in order to do it better now.”
What will keep my teenagers engaged at church as they leave elementary school and move into
High School? With whom can my teenagers build relationships whose values and morals are godly at an age when their strongest desire is to belong? What endeavor can my teenager undertake that would channel his energies and passion to something beyond himself?
“Annual church camps are what did it for me”, says Johann Melgar, member of the First Evangelical and Reformed Church of San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
It kept me in the corral, so to speak. First, I was impacted as a child at camp, then, while in Junior High, I wanted to be on a work crew. I was later a cabin counselor, and eventually, during my college years, served as a program director. That kept this little sheep from wandering off, smiled Johann. Camp was a place I could be creative and it strengthened my faith to know that I could be used to impact others like I had been impacted.
So, these are a few of the powerful elements camping offers:
• Being drawn away from the ordinary into a temporary Christian community;
• Fostering relevant learning that will last a lifetime;
• Offering leaders a tool to shepherd those “sheep” under their care.
Little wonder that camping fits well in God’s overall plan to bring people to Himself and grow them into His Son’s likeness.
LAM Missionary, Honduras
Interesting quote:
Camping… one of the most consistently powerful means God uses to impact lives for His Kingdom purposes.