“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
Jesus Christ, The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 7:24-27
Every great endeavor is built on something solid. In the case of Camps Kahdalea and Chosatonga, that solid foundation is built on our core values, our camp prayer, and our mission to accompany young hearts towards God through adventure, friendship, and fun. The means of communicating our mission vary, but what exactly we are hoping to communicate through everything we do is God’s goodness and love. While teaching excellent skills, while accompanying campers who struggle to learn, while mediating cabin conflict, while calling kids (and staff 🙂 out of their comfort zones, we hope to show others the love of God by treating them with fundamental respect and honoring their innate and infinite dignity. THIS is what we’re about. When campers look at us, it is our prayer that they see the love of Jesus.
“How?” You might ask. “Sounds like a tall order!”
Indeed it is a tall order! However, weak and broken though we are, it is none-the-less our aim and passion as a community to work patiently and persistently towards this goal. We do this in the following ways:
- Praying for our camp community, especially the campers and staff who will be coming, throughout the entire year
- Immersing our campers in a culture that celebrates beautiful things: the natural world, songs and poetry, virtue and care of neighbor, prayer, meditation, and the Word of God
- Repeating and teaching on our Core Values
- Praying our Camp Prayer together every day
- Pulling out the Gold in our campers
The collective influence of all of these things is POWERFUL. At camp, we celebrate good hard skills and cheer campers reaching for excellence of any sort, but the excellence we celebrate the most is a VIRTOUS CHARACTER.
Let’s look at this line from our camp prayer:
“Help me to stand for the hard right against the easy wrong”
The world will often punish you for standing up for the hard right. At camp, we pray for grace to do this every single day of our lives.
You see, choosing the hard right against the easy wrong shows you have a backbone, a spine, and that you are willing to suffer for the sake of the good. This shows that you’re the kind of person who can be honest even and especially when there are negative consequences associated with truth-telling. THAT’S the kind of behavior we celebrate around here.
In schools and sports and the culture-at-large, our children are often shown examples of others who are willing to succeed at the expense of their own integrity – they will do ANYTHING to get ahead, including lying and cheating. But what is God inviting us to? Not success in this world, but faithfulness to his Kingdom and fidelity to the Truth of call. This frees us from fear of failure in the world as it allows us to focus the eyes of our hearts on His call for our lives. This FREEDOM is so important!
Every single day our children are growing and, whether they know it or not, they are building something in their youth that they will stand on for the rest of their lives. Our camps want to teach the next generation how to choose the hard right against the easy wrong, and we teach them how to do this by building their lives upon rock, by seeking and growing in their personal faith and integrating their faith into the rest of their lives.
Here, for ease of reference, are all of our Core Values 🙂
- Welcome Adventure
- Have fun
- Have friends
- Love the wild
- Seek challenge, grow grit
- Be the one
- Be humble
- Take responsibility and follow through
- Be a leader in goodness
- Be kind and patient in serving others
- We are a family
- Love your neighbor
- Communicate and listen
- Practice forgiveness
- Help others at some cost to yourself
- Choose the hard right
- Be authentic
- Live as if all the world saw
- Be Courageous
- Speak Truth in love
- Encounter faith
- Cultivate wonder, grow gratitude
- Take the time to pray
- Listen and watch
- Grow more like Christ
God bless you!
