Surprisingly, high school camp and little kid camp aren't all that different. The high school kids are better at taking showers all by themselves but both age groups have to be told they must take a shower. The older kids go to sleep way easier than the little kids; I think I got at least six and a half hours of sleep every single night. "Ok. Quiet time," actually works with high school kids. Amazing.
Crafts are just as beloved by the older kids. They, too, make messes when eating--more so than the little kids, actually. It's really nice to be able to let the kids who serve on the regional Youth Council be in charge of something for a while. No one asks for help getting dressed either. Well, if they do, they ask another camper instead of the counselor.
What was surprising to me was that the older kids cried more than the little kids usually do. The tears weren't about skinned knees or homesickness; these tears were about problems that were a lot harder to fix. Unlike the little kids, the high school kids hugged often and long. They gave side hugs and bear hugs and hugs from behind. They weren't ready to let go a lot of the time.
When the week was over, rather than tiredly trudging back to the cabins, the older kids lingered, tears in their eyes. No, not all of them did that, but a lot of them did. This week of camp was harder for me than any other week of camp I've done; well, at least it was hard in a different way. I've never thought quite so much about kids in the week following camp before. Usually, I just try to recover from my own post-camp stupor.
The last keynote of camp was a reminder of Jesus' words, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength,' and 'Love your neighbor as yourself;' for that is the law and the prophets." As I still pray for those kids from last week, still worry about them for all sorts of reasons, I keep coming back to those words of Jesus. (Jesus' words have a way of sneaking back up at inconvenient times, for better or worse.) We're not always good at loving our neighbors, especially our sometimes-prone-to-obnoxiousness teenage neighbors. We talk about wanting youth programs and youth energy, as long as the youth do mostly what we want.
I'm pretty sure we'd be better off if we didn't worry quite so much about youth group and instead worried about how to love our kids. And you know what, the ways we love our kids at camp aren't earth-shattering, hard to do things. They're things like:
- Kids get hugs when they need them (but they're never forced to hug).
- Kids are treated with respect, including being given responsibilities.
- Adults listen to kids.
- There's plenty of food.
- Kids are kept safe.
If Church did all those things well, we might be surprised at how fast God's reign takes over.
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