I pray that you and all of God’s people will understand what is called wide or long or high or deep. I want you to know all about Christ’s love, although it is too wonderful to be measured. Then your lives will be filled with all that God is. —Ephesians 3:18-19
On Sunday, on our way home from a vacation week, we dropped Dante off at Mar-Lu-Ridge, the Lutheran camp of the Delaware-Maryland and Metro DC Synods. This will be his last summer as a camper. While it did not work for him to go every summer of his childhood, time away at camp has been one of the consistent features of his growing up, including time at both Mar-Lu-Ridge and at Crossroads, our Lutheran-Episcopal camp here in New Jersey.
I never went to a church camp as a child. If asked, I would have said that it sounded incredibly uncool to spend a week at a church thing. It’s really too bad nobody convinced me it was worth it to go. Had I gone, I have no doubt that I would have absolutely loved it and had a completely different understanding of what faith looked like and what the church could be. I was fortunate that I was able to spend much of my 20’s involved in outdoor ministries, having a second chance to have my life transformed by it. I was a camp counselor and also spent time in National Park ministry. Both really were such powerful experiences that I cannot imagine what my faith would be like without those experiences. My children didn’t have much choice but to be around camps when they were little, but truly after their first week of camp it was completely up to them, and they deeply cherished the experience.
Crossroads starts its program for this summer next week. Over the course of the summer they have programs for children of all ages as well as family camp. If you are still looking for something to do over the summer, take a look. This year the theme is “Boundless: God Beyond Measure,” Ephesians 3:18-19 is the theme bible passage.
St. Matthew has quite a few people who have connections to camping ministries, some decades ago and some currently. They can certainly chime in their testimony to the power of being at a camp like Crossroads. Camp is an incredible opportunity to encounter a deep sense of Christian community and to see God in new and powerful ways. Both Mar-Lu-Ridge and Crossroads were also quite successful last year in being safe in the midst of Covid, and will only have more experience with it now. If you have children in your life – whether your children, grandchildren, or others – and especially ones in elementary or middle school, please look at the Crossroads website and see if going this year or next year is at all possible. It may well be a life-transforming experience.