Mary-Jane Konings reflects on the importance of follow up after the fireworks of Easter Camp are over.
Easter Camp? Magic! The kids have laughed, they’ve cried, they’ve given their life to Jesus – and then they go home.
Follow up is a critical concept and it is here that relationship based youth ministry starts to kick butt. Kids need to debrief their Easter Camp experiences in a safe place whether they were off the planet “wow” or yeah, whatever “blah”. Youth leaders can offer the gift of being a sounding board as young people kick around new ideas and new ways of being.
Providing a place for people to tell their stories of how they met God and what happened is important. That might be in church or a small group or chatting over a drink at your local fast food franchise. Remind each other of how awesome God is and validate the way He continues to meet with us, even in our day to day life.
Don’t forget to encourage people to pursue Christian disciplines – daily devotions, journaling, prayer, bible study, coming to a small group and/or church – it’s all good. It’s even better when you are not alone and there are others to share what you are discovering with.
If you can, book a space in your church service to rave about Easter Camp. There are a number of reasons – anything that raises the profile of youth ministry is a good thing and its good to remind people that you weren’t on holiday over Easter, you were doing youth ministry. If you’ve got kids who are excited, get them to share – your congregations will love them and better yet, will be reminded to keep on praying for them. Think of this as advance publicity for next year’s Easter Camp.
Finally, make the Easter Camp reunion a priority! Relive the excitement and the madness! Give your young people the opportunity to catch up with the new friends they discovered while you hang out with the awesome leadership team.
Howard Carter reflects on using Easter Camp to encourage young people ot share their gifts and grow in leadership
It’s going to be my twenty fourth year doing Easter camp. I lied about my age to go to my first one. I think I’ve done everything at Easter camp except be the cook. I’ve celebrated Easter in camps at Clarks beach, on Motatapu Island, at Hunua falls, Muriwai, Ohope beach (and marae) and for the last few years at Tirohanga on the Taieri plains. I believe in the importance of Easter camps for young people and the youth ministry of the Presbyterian Church. It’s great seeing young people network with other young people from other churches. Its wonderful seeing them make commitments to follow Jesus in response to the Easter message. It’s a real privilege to see them come back year after year and see how they’ve grown. It’s been great to see how young people take the worship and other ideas at camps back to their churches and inject some amazing life into their home parishes. This year I’m involved with e-star3 in Dunedin and to tell you the truth I’m excited.
When the organising group got together to put e-star3 together we each came with the same basic vision. We wanted to see an added dimension to Easter camp. We believe that Easter camp is about fellowship, evangelism (inviting young people to commit them selves to following Jesus in light of the Easter story and discipleship (helping people grow in their Christian faith). However this year we articulated a third goal for Easter Camp that is that we wanted young people to be encouraged, enabled and equipped for leadership in the church. It’s a old chestnut that the youth are the church of today but we wanted to ensure we put that into action at e-star3.
Well that may not be too new a concept. I mean I learned to lead a small group, organise large group activities plan and run a camp, lead worship with teenagers and heaps of other things through involvement in Easter camp. However this year we felt the spirit telling us to be more deliberate. So from the top down we want to encourage and enable and equip people to do ministry. In the evocative words of the red Hot Chilli Peppers to give it away give it away give it away now. No not Easter camp but ministry.
How is that working in practise? Well as the director I have two people who I mentoring for the position for next year. They each have young people to do the jobs with them and to do the jobs on the camp committee they usually do. Anna Watson is stepping up and taking a more up front role and two young Girls are doing her role as register and administrator. Rory Grant is getting some young people to help out with the advertising and registration packs. Richard Torr our worship leader is looking at having a band of young musicians who will benefit and grow from being at camp and some older muso’s who will be stepping up to lead worship. He wants to develop other young people to use their artistic gifts (drama dance art) in worship as well.
We don’t even have a camp speaker this year we have young people with varying degrees of gifts in speaking doing the sessions as a team with a mentor to tie it all together. Each of our study groups will have a experienced leader and a learning leader. WE will put time into doing leadership training before camp. the hope is that these people will go back to their churches willing and able to be of greater service and that we will multiply the leadership gifts amongst the young people in the Presbyterian church in Dunedin.
Radical? I don’t think so. In fact its just a fresh articulation and more deliberate enacting of what has been part of the Easter camp movement for decades. For me as a student for the ministry it’s a timely reminder of what God is calling the leadership of the church to do, enable and empower the people of God to be both the priesthood of all believers and the ministry of all believers.