When I was a teenager, One Way Camp at Jumonville was the highlight of my summer. Those summer camps gave me the most vivid experiences of God in my entire life. I remember at the end of every camp we were treated to the message, “This is a mountaintop experience. When you get back to the ‘real’ world you need to stay strong in your faith because your church is not like summer camp.”
But why? Why wasn’t my church like summer camp?
What made Jumonville so special that it could not be experienced at home?
Why was summer camp a powerful encounters with God and why was church so dry?
The answer is simple… summer camp was community as God designed it to be.
After all these years, I have come to the conclusion that these so called, “Mountaintop” experiences should have been held out as my ideal for church. I should not have been told to go home and settle for the same dry and boring church community. Those Jumonville camps should have been held-out as my model for “real” world church… instead they were set-aside as fond memories of warm summer days.
Each summer on that mountaintop we ate together. We played together. We sang songs of worship together. We prayed and studied God’s word, together. We laughed and cried… together. Every day, we experienced God together!
The message at the end of summer camp should never be, “your experience here with God is only a mountaintop experience”.
The message should be, “this is the way God designed you to live out church.”
“You experienced God at camp because you experienced His community of Faith in action.”
“Don’t go home and settle for a Sunday morning faith.”
“Don’e go home and settle for the self-centered life that typifies the average Christian experience.”
“Go home with faith like a mustard-seed and move this mountaintop community into your church.”
My days at summer camp should not have been the exception to my Christian life, they should have been the model for how to live my Christian life.. with, in, and around the community of saints!
After too many decades of status quo church, I have come to believe that “Mountaintop Church” is what we need every day.
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Amen! Exactly!
While I agree and can say “ditto” to your comments, there is one other perspective I would like to share. God knows we are dust, and gave us 24 hours in the day, and special festivals of spiritual holy-days (holidays). The Jewish people had feasts that lasted a whole week- kind of like our weeks of camp – highlights of the year. There is a rhythm to life that allows you to go deeper at times and go back to your “normal routine” which is not necessarily bad, but that can numb us into apathy.
While there is always room for increasing our spiritual devotion in our churches, thank God for those mountaintop experiences that we can take back “home” and put into practice, and the partnership with churches who faithfully share the gospel on a weekly basis, and don’t get the credit when a youth comes back with grand stories to tell about their camping experience. We need both places to be passionate in worship, community, and discipleship for the Kingdom. Thank you for sharing!
I went to One Way as a teen as well! I too remember being told that “u can’t live your life on these mountain top experiences’……My youth pastor said u can’t base your faith and live the Christian life on those emotional highs all the time.
I so agree that we were the body to each other. My current pastor (not at a um church) says that we were not meant to do life alone! And for most of us those weeks were the first experiences we had ever had of incredible worship and getting into the Word and hearing from God! I came away from those weeks STARVING for the deeper things of the Lord and I was 17 and 18 years old! I didn’t get why the people in my church didn’t have the hunger and desire for God that I had! I graduated and went to Asbury College which has an incredible faith history and gave me a wonderful education and foundation……however I didn’t go to the college church in town……it was the UMC….it was too traditional…….i was longing for more. I ended up in an Assemblies of God church……..my friends at Asbury acted like I was a heathen for going to a charismatic church………but my heart was longing……..
I was thinking the other day about all of the kids who have gone to OWC thru out the years. Do they still have the fire that they had when they left the mountain? I was a committed Christian when I went, but God got ahold of me there and used those 2 weeks to shape me into the person that I am today! I luv to worship! I attend a Wesleyan Church…..I respect them as they have a traditional servce…….hymns…….but we have 2 contemporary services where the worship is so intense that the presence of God is so strong in there sometimes that I can hardly breathe………and I know that my desire and luv for worship came from my days up on the mountain! But more importantly just the desire for the deeper things of the Lord!
Hi Kayleen, maybe I am too old to have crossed paths with you, but I was at OWC every summer between 1983 through 1989. Did we ever cross paths?
PS
Thanks for your comment as well
J.R. – I was there as a camper in the summers of 1991 and 1992………and then as a counselor the summers of 1993 and 1994………sorry we didn’t ever cross paths! But yes we have experienced the same feelings and experiences about being “up on the mountain!” I enjoyed reading your comments and finding someone who could relate to what I always felt! Blessings!
just as I feared.. I am getting too old ;-(