What Bible Camp Is For
By Casey Schulman
I recently returned from Camp Grace in Wheatland, Wyoming. I was there on a Wednesday, right in the middle of junior camp. I couldn’t believe how much the campers had grown in two years, nor could I believe that they remembered my name.
Some kids will spend nine weeks at this camp over the course of nine years. Some of them will grow up at Camp Grace, and we will see 4thgraders become adults in fifty-four short days. What happens in those days matters a lot.
What happens in those days is also awesome. I do not think any one part of camp is the reason for it. Games can happen anywhere. Preaching can happen anywhere. Nature is visible everywhere. Camp has no claim on any one part of Christianity; what it does have is a mystical grasp of every part.
There is something amazing about a counselor who wants to read the Bible in the morning and win the game in the afternoon. There is something curious about the college student who is respectful in the service and loud on the hike. There is something special about the song that is funnier because it is clean, like a bush that burns without being consumed. Camp tells children that faith precedes fun, that faith creates fun, that the two are not at odds with one another. Here Christianity is normal; all the parts of it flow freely, and without objection.
Campers observe all these things in the counselors’ thinking. They learn how to read and pray, how to win and lose, how to be serious and altogether unserious, how to enjoy everything about God. This happens naturally, in fifty-four days. This is what happens at Bible camp.
There are many things in the program that teach these things, and I will only take a few instances. But first, I must clarify that Bible camp is not a war against phones and laptops, Nintendo and Nickelodeon. It is simply too preoccupied with beauty and truth to notice those things; in other words, it is distracted from the distractions. When I returned home from my camp experiences, my TV looked small and sad. I could find glimpses of that old adventure in my backyard and in my Bible, but everything else seemed pixelated. Bible camp exists, not so that we will throw our phones in bonfires; it exists so that we will sing around bonfires with our phones on silent.
Now let us consider the program. Camp Grace hides tokens around the campsite, offering prizes to those who find them. The reason for this is obvious: what is hidden somewhere is hidden everywhere. Placing ten silver squirrels around ten corners is equivalent to placing them around every corner. When children look at the land and know there is hidden treasure, they see fairyland. Every building, rock, and hill seems curiously planned, for a silver squirrel might be behind it. Everything looks arranged, and this happens to be the truth. Camp Grace hides treasure, that children will find what they hid—and find what God hid. And as the old story goes, when that man found treasure in the field, he bought the whole field.
And then there are the free-time games. Few things are more enjoyable for children than playing checkers with someone ten years their senior. And the beauty of these games is in this, that the children can win, and they often do. They are in this sense equal to the counselors, and so they learn the image of their maker. When God’s children are taught, they learn (a little at a time) that God teaches them. When they are loved, they learn (a little at a time) that God loves them. And when they are liked, they learn (a very little bit at a time), that God likes them. And when these children see God’s pleasure, his kindness, his great and unsearchable happiness, they will wish to add to it. They learn that God wants to spend time with them, and that is one of the many reasons he gives them free time.
I have not even discussed the preaching of the gospel. It is of course the most essential thing, and it happens every day there. It happens with real words spoken by real speakers who really believe it. The whole thing is a beautiful display of God’s grace in the cross and his defeat of the tomb. It is a call to follow and to die. But this gospel is not merely death to self; it is also abundant life. Again, these truths are not at odds, nor do they (God forbid) balance each other out.
I could go on. But I think I have said what Bible camp is for: it is for children who want to learn how to enjoy, how to thank, how to see, how to listen to God and live in his world. It is for children who want to grow in grace. People give their whole lives to these fifty-four days. And what happens in them matters a lot.
