Faith Works 6-29-19

Faith Works 6-29-19

Jeff Gill

 

Faith out of doors

___

 

Last week I talked here about Sunday school, Vacation Bible School (or VBS), and Christian education in general; its history from England to America and its development from a substitute for what we now call public education to a faith formation adjunct to church life.

 

When in the early 1900s Ohio and most other states made education legally required for all youth up to age 18, the original intent behind Sunday school and VBS had to change. The growth of formal public education also started to change expectations parents had around the school experience, both secular and religious.

 

Churches built special rooms or wings or buildings for education, and these were generally well filled through the Baby Boom era. What hit many churches like a one-two punch was a decline in overall numbers just demographically, in the "baby bust" that followed the spike of births in the "baby boom" post-war; then the culture shifts around Sunday closing laws ending and entertainment and activity options for youth increasing dramatically.

 

One program that leapt into this gap was church camp. Youth conferences on college campuses or at camp locations began to be popular between the 1890s and 1920s; by World War II one of the most common requests for exemptions in wartime rationing of gasoline was for travel permits to go to church camps.

 

The building boom that echoed the Baby Boom after 1945 took place out in the countryside as well as for new church buildings. Camps added swimming pools, full service dining halls, and bathrooms to replace pit latrines.

 

And an observation got made all across the denominational spectrum: if you get a child to Sunday school every week, that's 52 hours of Christian education – if you get a child to camp at 3 pm on Sunday and pick them up at 10 am on Saturday, then end up with 70 or more hours of exposure to preaching, teaching, and religious oriented conversation and fellowship.

 

That was important, because as camps took off, Sunday school began to struggle. Older youth became less in evidence on Sunday mornings, and more travel plus changes resulting from the increase in divorce meant visitation schedules often complicated regular participation. Camp was an ideal supplement as the standard method of Christian formation grew weaker.

 

But as any of you reading this have already realized, summer time has gotten shorter, and the options are greater. I'll pull out the dreaded phrase "when I was young," but it was true that, as a kid, my parents had the choice of Scout camp, church camp, or "get out of the house, you're driving me crazy."

 

Today, many parents – and in two households – wrestle with concerns about "how are we to best allocate the precious resource of summer schedules for the kids' educational enhancement and athletic opportunities?" Training camps start with August 1, school leaks into the first week of June, and in between there are many and diverse enrichment programs, day camps and residential programs – in air conditioned dorms on quiet campuses empty during the summer – all competing to convince parents that their program will get the kids into a better college, or at least prepare them for success in higher education.

 

How, exactly, does church camp compete with that? We can say – and we do – that we aren't preparing kids for college, we're preparing them for life (and eternal life, at that), but it's a tough sell. It's a highly competitive marketplace, and many church camps have a hatful of deferred maintenance on top of their no-longer-as-appealing rustic atmosphere.

 

Which is why church camps are struggling, too. There are big events that attract Christian youth, music events with preaching in between the bands and camping nearby, or mission camps which involve more travel and much more hands-on application of faith to life. Many of these new options are excellent in their own right, and the parachurch organizations which often sponsor them can sidestep some of the denominational politics that plague other programs.

 

What's a parent to do then? Will you come back next week, and let me offer a few thoughts, if not for this summer, on summer experiences and education in faith in general? Thank you!

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's learned much at camp and not just about faith. Tell him what you've learned or taught at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.