General Principles

  1. Insist on the proper respect—don’t allow disrespect for the Word of God or prayer.
    1. Talking
    2. Posture
    3. Mental wandering
    4. Playing around
  2. Encourage group participation on occasion in reading, application, discussion, or prayer.
  3. Try to finish devotions just before lights out.
  4. Remember the following:
    1. Most campers, probably 90%, don’t have family devotions at home.
    2. All campers (people) have a basic evil nature.
    3. You are your campers’ example of what a Christian’s attitudes and actions should be during devotion time.
    4. Devotion time is not the evening’s second preaching service. Keep it short and to the point.
  5. Some counselors sow the seed, some water the seed, but it is God who gives the increase. Counselors give out the Word, and the Holy Spirit uses it to bring about the change that He desires in individual lives.

Three Worthy Topic Ideas

  1. Center the topic on a need you have noticed in your campers that day.
  2. Pick a topic or verse from the Bible that has the potential of being a life-changing topic.
  3. Pick a topic that parallels the evening message or the spiritual emphasis of camp that week.

Listed below are some important points which Marg Race, an Ironwood counselor from the summer of 1975, sent us.

  1. Throughout the day, I would ask the Lord to make me aware of their needs and problems to make the devotions helpful to them.
  2. I usually would have a study on the character of Christian girls and what God expects of us as girls. I would not begin this, however, until I knew that I had talked with each girl personally and made sure of her salvation.
  3. I would try to give the girls an opportunity to bring devotions. This depended on the spiritual maturity of the girls.
  4. I had a prayer list in the cabin, and we would include the prayer requests given at the service as well as personal ones of the girls and my own. I would give all of the girls an opportunity to pray, especially toward the end of the week.
  5. We would often close our devotions with a chorus, “I Surrender All,” “God Answers Prayer,” etc.
  6. For the most part, it just takes wisdom from the Lord to sense their needs and take the girls from where they are and lead them to where they should be. Each week was a little different because the girls were different and had different backgrounds.