This update is from GCI district and church pastor Mike Rasmussen who also directs GCI’s Crosswalk Youth Camp, held twice each year near Oklahoma City.
Though a tornado in May significantly damaged the facility where we hold Crosswalk Youth Camp, leading to the cancellation of our May session, we were able to conduct our fall session in November. It was amazing! We were blessed with an awesome staff who worked diligently to create a life-changing experience for the young people God brought our way.
As the leadership team met to prepare for camp last January, we sought the Spirit’s lead concerning how the camp should be formatted this year. We reevaluated our focus and methods. Rather than a mission statement, we came up with a statement we call our Kardia (meaning “center of our being”): Experiencing life in God’s love. We want the campers and staff to have a deep experience of God’s love. We then use our Kardia to help us evaluate all aspects of camp.
At the January meeting we also selected a camp theme for 2013. We decided on “Walking Dead,” which taps into the current zombie apocalypse craze. While minimizing the zombie-side of the theme, our goal was to use it to grab attention and to convey the message of how life can seem drab, dull, grey and boring to the point of feeling like one of the “walking dead.” Even though alive and breathing, we can feel dead on the inside where life lacks flavor. This happens when we aren’t living in God’s love.
Using this theme, our goal was to create a contrast and a progression of how when we don’t understand/believe who we are in Christ, life can feel dead, but as we come to this understanding and believe in who Christ is and who we are in him, then life becomes alive and full of flavor.
In accordance with our new Kardia and fall camp theme, we made several changes in how we structure camp in order to help campers and staff more fully experience God’s love:
- As people arrived, an upbeat, positive team that we called our “ground crew” welcomed everyone. They led campers and staff to registration where they were welcomed by a theme-based registration area filled with colored streamers and balloons that created a party atmosphere.
- After the Friday night welcome, staff met to be briefed on the new camp Kardia and to experience a time of worship just for the staff.
- After researching the average age of our campers, we realized we had to rework some of our activities. We created opportunities for greater camper-staff interaction and friendly competition to connect campers and staff at an even deeper level.
There was a great response to this camp session. We have heard from several campers and staff that they are excited about the next camp and will be coming back with plans to bring someone with them. We were blessed with 20 new campers and 13 new staff this session. We are excited about what God is doing at Crosswalk and look forward to the future. The next session will be in May 2014, with the theme FaithFactor. It is sure to be full of energy—jam-packed with fun activities—enabling us to advance our camp Kardia of sharing God’s love.
