Observations from the Front Porch

I sat on the front porch rail listening to Ken and Daniel strum their guitars. We waved periodically as people we knew walked past the cabin on their way back to their cabin or to the cafeteria. Occasionally someone would stop and talk for awhile, but often they just waved and went on their way.

Ken’s daughter Jennifer sat next to us weaving pine needles into a decorative garland that would have been at home on any Appalachian front porch.

Only…

We weren’t in the Appalachians. We were sitting on the front porch of the Nurse’s cabin at summer camp in Pine Summit Church Camp, Prescott, Arizona. Ken and Nancy, volunteers from our church, were the camp nurses. Daniel and his wife were also volunteers, leading praise music during sessions. And, the people walking by weren’t just our neighbors, they were the volunteers and youth at the church camp.

I had just spent a week in Durango, Colorado with a bunch of high school kids, living together in college dorms for the High School summer camp and now I was in Prescott with a hundred elementary and Junior High kids for their camps.

Spending a week with your fellow Christians at a church camp can be an amazing experience, not because of the highs of worship or excitement of rock walls and other adventure experiences, but because of the mundane things that we often miss in our frenzied life back home.

Traveling together, living in close quarters, and experiencing community on a small scale is powerful, in a way that you cannot understand until you have lived it.

There is something healthy about watching the senior pastor cross the hall with his towel and shower shoes, a days scruffy growth on his face and sleep in his eyes. It may not be pretty, but it makes him seem more human and definitely decreases the hero-worship factor that some try to cultivate.

Or, walking together down to the cafeteria to pray as a group and then going in to see what culinary surprises were in store today. Those short conversations on the road are the start of long friendships. At their camp, our high school group even visited the grocery store and then came back to their cabin to prepare a huge feast together where everyone did their part; there was more food than an army could eat. That shared meal together was a lifetime investment in just a few hours.

This sort of rubbing up against each other, living life in close proximity, is missing from our world and from our churches, especially in big cities. It is just this sort of shared life and transparency that leads to healthy relationships and personal growth. It’s harder to hide behind a mask when you sleep in the room next door to each other. It’s harder to pretend to be better than someone else when you just flushed the toilet two stalls down from them. Interpersonal skills, sharing, and forgiveness are all tested when you travel crammed together for days in a van. Mistakes are made, drama occurs, tears are shed, and yet, they are all dealt with and we grow…because, in close proximity, we have to. You don't get to run away and spread your drama on Facebook. You get to grow together here and now.

Shared jokes, small conversations, meals together, and late nights on the front porch together build strong communities. It’s just too bad that more people don’t experience this. Perhaps we need church camp for adults.

Camp Songs and Theodicy

Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so.

Little ones to Him belong, they are weak but He is strong.

The perennial church camp song, sung by kids for so many generations.

We sang this at Kids Camp this last week and it started me thinking.

In youth and childrens ministry, I have seen all kinds of horrible things that have been done to kids and heard even more second hand stories. Physical abuse, mental abuse, sexual abuse. Kids who have watched their parent’s marriage torn apart and are drawn into the fighting. Children of drug and alcohol abusers who had to learn all too young how to take care of themselves. Children who have to help their siblings hide from a stepfather’s unwanted attention. Children abandoned by parents. Children drugged into oblivion so they don’t act up.

I faced some of these very situations this last week.

My heart aches each time I look into the face of a sweet child and see adult-like pain.

If the line from the song, “Little ones to Him belong, they are weak but He is strong,” then how can He let this happen?

This is an old question that has long been batted around by believers and non-believers alike. In fact, there is even a term for it: Theodicy. But, the reality of holding a child in pain brings it home in a way that academic arguments never can.

God allows us to live in sin as part of our ability to choose Him. That makes sense. If He fully protected us against our own sin, then we can never fully choose Him in love. I get that. I understand the difference between a computer programmed to say, “Rodger is awesome” versus my daughter giving me a hug and saying, “Daddy, I love you.”

Recognizing that God allows us to suffer the consequences of our own sin doesn’t make it hurt any less to realize that He also allows us to suffer the consequences of other people’s sin.

And that brings us to the child in pain.

Jesus says, “It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.”

He also said, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”

Therein lays the answer. God’s solution to the problem of these children’s pain comes from us. For now, we are the ones to welcome them in His name. Facing this in ministry, my only comfort comes from the fact that there are loving Christians in the world who take Christ’s love for little children as a personal call. They are His hands as they put their arms around a weeping child. They are His hands as they call CPS to help break a child free from an abusive situation. They are His hands as they adopt a child or take them in foster care.

Jesus loves me, this I know. For loving Christians show me so.

Little ones to Him belong, they are weak but through Him his servants are strong.

The Greatest Battle Ever Fought

It’s summer camp. Junior High Summer Camp. If you’ve never been to one, those words may not conjure up the mess of feelings and ideas that it does for those who’ve been there. It’s kind of like the old guys who went to Vietnam said, “If you weren’t there, you wouldn’t understand.” I’m pretty sure that there are Green Berets that have seen the most hellish jungle warfare that would shy away from volunteering at Junior High summer camp.

If you’ve never been there, Junior High Summer Camp is a week of crazy fun, boredom, escape from the city, hormones, first loves, first heartbreaks, daredevil antics, water balloon fights, climbing rockwalls, marshmallow roasts, prison camp accommodations, burping contests, late night conversations, surplus cafeteria food dating back to the Korean war, bugs, and Bible studies.

To really get an idea, close your eyes and try to get the sound and smell of 150 pubescent teens packed into a small room with no air conditioning, dancing around to screaming loud praise music. The sound is enough to wake the dead. The humidity from sweat make the air fetid like a Louisiana bayou and the smell is something like a large goat farm. Body odor, sweat, and hormones mix with Axe body spray and 273 types of body lotion, hair products, and perfumes. (a side note here, when middle school boys see the Axe commercials where a guy sprays himself and then a dozen girls attack him, they assume that if they triple the amount, then even more girls will attack them. I’m pretty sure God has a special punishment in mind for the makers of Axe.)

Junior High Summer Camp. Ministry here is raw and cutting edge. You have to be able to face anything and everything from an invasion of millions of ants in the cabin to arguments over who gets to ask out the cute boy from the other church. There’s the kid who seems to disappear every time we are supposed to go into worship and the other one who seems to pick a fight with every kid who crosses his path. One girl slips off of the rocks she wasn’t supposed to be on hurting herself and another finds it funny to pull pranks on the youth minister. And then, one night around church group time, one kid shares how his parents fight all the time and are getting a divorce. Another has a father who pressures him constantly. Another lost her parent last year and still doesn’t know how to cope. Another has had sex with her boyfriend and wonders if Jesus could ever accept her after that.

It is easy to think that kid’s problems are silly and childish. It’s easy to laugh off the first heart break because, as an adult, you’ve been through dozens. “Wait till you grow up Kid, then you’ll know what real life problems are.” "It's too far from your heart to kill you."

The reality is that wherever we are in life, our problems are really intense. Whatever battle you are facing is terribly real to you. It doesn't matter if you are in Junior High or you barely remember Junior High because it was so long ago. As Pastor Chip so wisely says, “All life is Junior High.”

It’s always easy to solve someone else’s problems, especially since they aren't yours. Junior High Summer Camp taught me to listen as people of any age share their problems without belittling them, but offering them an understanding friend who can support them as they fight the greatest battle of their life.

Next time you hear someone tell you about the problem they are facing, take a moment and shut out that self-absorbed little voice inside you that says, “You think you got problems, you don’t understand what I am going through.” Don’t try to solve their problems for them or tell them how little they really are. Instead, put your arm around the other person and tell them that you know what it’s like to fight a great battle too. Then pray with them. Maybe then, they will do the same for you.

I pray that you have someone to fight at your side as you fight the greatest battle of your life.

Welcome to Junior High.