Camp; Day 2

Day 2 of the Pulaski Association Children's Camp.

Day 1 is in the books and seemed to go well. This is not as organized as the other larger camps that I have been to and they said that attendance is down quite a bit this year. There is no doubt of the genuine care and concern for the kids that are here; there just seems to be a lack of care and concern about the details and organization associated with running a children's camp.

I think in the long run, the love for the kids will win out and it will be a good camp. It is a young camp. By that, I mean that a lot of the workers are pretty young. That has both advantages and disadvantages. I know that having younger people helping with camp (teens) has a far greater influence over kids when it comes to serving Jesus than having a bunch of older people (parents, grandparents) working. If it is cool for teenagers to love Jesus, then it is okay for the kids to love Jesus. With us old people, it's just one more thing that we're telling them they have to do.
I always find that camps that have a good number of youth workers are generally successful camps.

On the other hand, the natural leadership and organizational skills can be lacking. If there isn't good guidance, it can be like having two camps at once -- one for the youth and one for the kids. The youth workers need to realize they are here as workers, not as campers. There is always plenty of work that needs to be done that they probably never thought about when they were here as campers.
So far, everything seems to be going well. We'll see how the kids are today, after having spent their first night at camp.

Tonight's message will deal with deception and how we often fool ourselves into thinking that we are doing okay on our own. I will use some optical illusions to show how easily we are deceived by our own eyes and brain. Then I will talk about how we also let our spiritual selves be deceived by looking at the world through human eyes rather than through the eyes of God.

It looks like it's going to be another beautiful day here on the Springfield Plateau.

John <><