English Camp Training Weekends

The average was 40. Forty students were coming to English camps who weren't involved in the Czech youth groups. Of those 40, maybe a few made their way to the youth group...on average. Mel (English Camp guru extrodinaire) asked all the youth groups gathered for the training weekend: why? The youth group I was sitting with (Pisek) wrestled through it. One girl said they weren't doing enough activities, and a boy said that their activities weren't interesting enough for unbelievers. The conversation started to take on this complain-y tone when one of the youth leaders gently said, "We can have all the program we want, but if we don't have a relationship with these kids they're not going to come." As the youth group kids thought about this, they realized the truth of it. They themselves had come to youth group because of relationships. We ended the time praying for their friends and classmates who they wanted to invite to camp this summer.

English camp season is coming soon! And we want to be ready...not just logistically (although that is for sure important) but we want our hearts to be ready. One of the things that Mel said at the traing weekends that struck me was this: Often, when we do some big evangelistic event, we seem to assume that someone else is talking to the non-Christians there; someone else is spending time with them and getting to know them. I've been to a lot of English camps, and faces and names tend to blur. I don't want to see camp students en masse.

Please pray for camps, that not only would the logistics fall into place, but also that our hearts--Czech and American--would be ready to love: individually, sacrificially, supernaturally.