A Christian Camping Experience

We have as our purpose statement the phrase, “Providing a Christian camping experience for youth and adults through Christian education and fellowship in the surrounding beauty of God’s creation.”

When I have the chance to talk about Wi-Ne-Ma Christian Camp I like to unpack that phrase starting with what we mean by a Christian camping experience. When people use the terms “Christian” and “camping” they can mean a lot of different things by those words.

Here we use the word Christian to help describe the kind of camping we offer. We want the experience here to be modified and described as “Christian.” We want all the activities, experiences, and relationships to connect somehow with Jesus Christ reflecting His message and His purpose. At the heart of the camping experience needs to be a significant connection with the person and work of Jesus Christ as revealed in the Scriptures and reflected in His church. This sets Christian camps apart from other camping experiences. While we might include sports, outdoor activities, arts, or some other skilled activity in the camp program, learning about or experiencing those activities are not ends in themselves. They are useful and beneficial to us insofar as they help communicate the Gospel of Christ and create a setting in which people might come to know and confess Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

We can fill a lifetime with what it means to be “Christian,” but what do we mean by camping? For some, camping is what happens when you set out into a wilderness with a backpack carrying the essential stuff to meet your needs. The person gets to the spot by a secluded mountain lake, sets up the tent, builds a fire, and perhaps miles from the nearest road declares, “Now, I am camping.”

Another person rolls into a nicely manicured RV park, carefully levels her RV, connects water and electricity, rolls out the awning, positions the slide outs, and when she sets the satellite dish up to receive the signal, then she sits back and declares, “Now, I am camping.”

At Wi-Ne-Ma Christian Camp, the image of camping as setting up a tent or of really “roughing it” does not hold true. But, the other image of camping in a destination resort type setting is equally off the mark. Here, campers stay in barracks style housing. Ten to fourteen people in a room with bunk beds. All the rooms have bathrooms, some have showers in them as well. So, if it is not the lodging that makes it camping, what does?

Camping has been defined as living in a temporary community. Follow this link to the Christian Camp and Conference Association website to pursue this further. The Bible is filled with temporary communities. From Moses and the children of Israel in the wilderness (leading to the observation that Moses was the first and perhaps the greatest camp director), to David and his followers camping out to escape Saul, to the people of the Exile, to Jesus with his disciples, to the nature of the Church, we see that temporary communities are formed in which people build special relationships and find themselves open to learning new lessons.
In John 1:14 it says of Jesus, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” It is not much of a stretch to translate “made his dwelling” read “He came and camped for a while with us.”

Christian Camps, like Wi-Ne-Ma Christian Camp, can be place to experience living for a while with Jesus apart from the distractions, responsibilities, and blinders of everyday living. And, perhaps by experiencing Him, you may be able to follow Him more closely out there.