Last summer, I had the joy and privilege of being the chaplain at Glen Mohr camp for one week. My husband and two children were able to join me during that time.
My first confession about this experience is that I had never been to camp before.
My second confession is that my children, one of whom is a teenager and the other a pre-teen, also never went to camp before. Their choice, not ours.
My third confession, a result of my second, is that we had two slightly unwilling campers with us as we arrived that first day.
My advantage arising out of these confessions is that I had no pre-conceived ideas or expectations. I could experience and see the impact camp can have on young people from an unbiased perspective.
In my role as chaplain, I chose to integrate with the campers as much as possible. A benefit was being able to experience the wide range of activities that Glen Mohr has to offer, and let me tell you, they are fun! The greater benefit, however, came from getting to better know the campers themselves.
One of my more memorable moments arose in an impromptu manner. The campers were playing a game that required them to divide into groups that were situated in different locations, each with the aim of protecting themselves against being “invaded.” As this involved lots of running, I decided to sit it out. As the group of campers nearest to me kept watch, they started casually conversing with each other. They talked about all the fun things going on at school and with family. This transitioned into the less than pleasant experiences some of them had, with one camper expressing her grief over the recent loss of a relative. The other members of the group lovingly expressed their sympathies. Another turn in the conversation led them to discuss their struggles with reconciling death with what they believed Christianity said about it. They invited me to join them and, just like that, an in-depth discussion about faith began.
As we sat on the deck, under the sun, the campers soon forgot that they were in the middle of a game. They talked and they asked questions. They had a lot of questions. “How do I know for sure …?” “Do you really believe that …?” “I know someone who …” “I have a friend who … and does that make her bad?” Their eagerness to talk highlighted their need for the freedom to present their doubts and the need for a safe place to ask their questions. Underlying all the questions was the desire to know how to affirm their faith and how to respond to situations because of their faith. Not much different to what some adults are seeking. We talked until we could hear the sounds of laughter as another group approached us. It reminded them that they were in the middle of a game and were supposed to be protecting their area. The discussion ended. Certainly not all of their questions were answered. We barely scratched the surface, but they have a lifetime of experiences to go through before some of those questions may be fully resolved, if ever. But at least they have been given a starting point and hopefully one day they can fondly look back to their time on that deck along with many other times that may come.
I followed up with some of the campers in that group afterward and had many conversations with other campers as well during my week there. But that moment on the deck had the greatest effect on me. It made me acutely aware that faith is definitely of interest to our youth; or, more precisely they have a desire for it to be relevant to their lives. Our youth have a yearning to transition from merely knowing about the caricatures that we sometimes create out of the biblical stories towards enabling these stories to develop into examples and testimonies that point to how God works in their lives.
This is something that goes beyond choosing the correct curriculum or having the most dynamic youth group ever. Sometimes it requires them stepping out of the church basement and out of the building and into an environment where they know another safe faith community exists and is waiting for them. This is camp community. It is here that I witnessed youth being able to come together to develop important skills, scream as they went zip lining, grow in confidence, encourage each other, comfort each other in times of grief, play Twister with paint and question the faith teachings they currently see as imposed upon them so that one day they can eventually claim this faith as their own. What a truly glorious thing.
Oh, and on a personal parental level, I saw this in my own children. Both of them asked to return to camp next year even before we left that last day.
About Shalini Rajack-Sankarlal
Rev. Shalini Rajack-Sankarlal is minister at St. Andrew’s, Ajax, Ont.