Shortly after I (Dave) became pastor, one of our deacons (Bob Schmidt, who is now in heaven) stopped me one Sunday and started talking about how he was happy for camp and how excited everybody gets about it every year and all that, but he was concerned about how everybody seems to come back gung-ho for Jesus every year, yet a month later everything goes right back to how it was before camp; like it never happened and like the commitments made at camp were all either insincere or too shallow to stick. I think he had a valid point. Of course, it’s not just summer camp that suffers from this phenomenon. Revival meetings, big Sundays, new years resolutions, new programs, even weekly sermons often all affect similar responses: initial zeal and eventual apathy.
In my camping experience, camp weeks often ended with a campfire on Friday night. That setting ends up being a microcosm of the complaint that I mentioned earlier. At the campfire you have a group of kids that are exhausted from a week of strangeness, activities, lack of sleep, and usually too much heat. They are emotional for many reasons, one being that they are going home the next day. And, to top if off, you sing some of your best songs and preach a really strong message there at the campfire and then maybe take some testimonies. Next thing you know, everybody is crying and making great and solemn statements about how they are going to be different. Often there is some ritual that might include writing your sins on a 3x5 card and throwing it in the fire or nailing it to a cross or something like that. Or everybody gets a stick that they put in the fire to symbolize there commitment to Christ. It’s usually all very moving. But is it a moving of the Spirit?
Here is the ultimate question, does God work through these kind of emotional situations to affect lasting changes in the lives of His children? Of course we should be careful not to manipulate one another in situations like this, but is it ok to embrace (and even exploit in a way) the unique vulnerability of those moments?
Listen as David, Patrick, and Tonya explore this controversial topic.
