On June 4-9, 45 students attended camp at Jonathan Creek in Hardin, KY. They didn’t set up tents, forage for food, or start fires (at least I hope they weren’t starting fires). Camp serves as a unique opportunity for students to get away from all of the distractions of home and spend a week with hundreds of people their own age in a fun, high energy environment. However, the main focus of the camp is always Jesus. One of the common misconceptions about Youth Summer Camp is that the students go and mess around doing fun stuff all week and mix in a little Bible study or Worship as a side to the main dish of fun.  Each morning the students have a short morning Worship, followed by a large group Bible study and small group Bible study.  In the afternoon they spent an hour of time alone with God and discussion of that time with our church group.  In the evening they have an extended Worship time, probably close to 1:30-2 hours followed by a debrief time where the students can talk through what God it doing in their lives. 

One of the highlights of this year’s camp was seeing a young man with our group named Tyson request to be baptized while he was there.  It was at camp in 2016 that Tyson started his relationship with Jesus.  He doesn’t have a church home that he is able to regularly attend at home so he wanted to be baptized where it all started for him.  What a special opportunity to see a young man come to know Christ through camp ministry and then to come back the next year and have the opportunity to see him take that next step in obedience to our Lord by baptizing him.

The theme for this year was Outsiders: Citizens of Heaven. In between zip lining into the lake, tubing, and shooting each other with foam balls, students were challenged to determine which residence they were living for—their home on earth or their home in heaven. Students wrestled with what their lives reflected and how they could live out their life as a citizen of heaven and many students have clear applications for how their lives have changed because of how God worked through them during camp. The unfortunate side of camp is this…it ends. The moment the bus stops in the FBC Wentzville parking lot; real life comes flooding in. Students are hit with appointments, tournaments, conflicts, and influences, that want to send them crashing off course. Living for God seems to be a lot easier at camp. The same is true for all of us, while many of us do not attend church camp once a summer, we all go through seasons of life where we feel we are spiritually invincible. Our quiet times have gotten longer, our families are doing bible study together, we are attending Sunday School, and serving in multiple ways, but these seasons seem to end and everything rushes back, and we are tossed from one distraction to the next, one priority to the other, addressing all sorts of needs around us. I don’t want camp to be the best spiritual week of the year for our students, I want it to be the first of fifty-two. We can all relate to the distractions of life pulling us from where we want to be.  The reality is God doesn’t get any quieter outside of camp weeks or awesome seasons of life—we just become poor listeners. Our week at camp was great and for many students, life-changing. Pray for our group of students in these weeks following camp, that they can continue to grow and apply the truths learned at camp.

Together, let’s pray that distractions do not become derailing for our students, or for any of us.

“We love Solid Rock!” “I tell all of my friends about you.” “Your staff is amazing!” These are the comments I frequently hear from parents whose children attend Solid Rock. I have just closed the doors of the Solid Rock Preschool and Mother’s Day Out for the summer. It has been a whirlwind week! We graduated 76 pre-k students who will be going to Kindergarten in the fall, and I heard all of those wonderful comments from the parents yet again. I wish I had time to talk to each family individually because I would love for them to know a couple things about Solid Rock and my amazing team.

Solid Rock is not a preschool that happens to teach Jesus. Solid Rock is a place where Jesus is exemplified daily through the heart, hands and feet of the staff that also includes teaching the 123’s and abc’s. We have Chapel every day and teach these precious souls about God, Jesus, and the Bible. We want them to be ready for kindergarten, but more than that we want to introduce them to Jesus. That is an honor and privilege that we do not take lightly!

The Solid Rock staff is made up of Christian women who care about people, big and little. We minister to children daily, but we also minister to their families. This year we had a mom that we had barely met at Open House who had a horrific car accident in September. She was care-flighted to the hospital where the doctors were questioning if she would live and if she did live, if she would ever walk again. A woman was in crisis and our Solid Rock team jumped into action! We ministered to that family by buying gift cards to restaurants so that Dad and the children could have meals while on the way to and from the hospital. We prayed for healing and for the young children who missed their momma! And, I cannot even begin to describe the feeling of thankfulness to God the day in March when that mom we had been praying for walked through the doors of Solid Rock for the first time since September. As I talked with her at her daughter’s graduation, she was extremely thankful and grateful for the love, care, and financial support our team had shown.

Solid Rock is made up of a team of women who pray together daily. We start each and every day of school reading God’s word and then praying over the families, children, and staff. We know that without God in this ministry, we might as well lock the doors and go home. We recognize that all the accolades parents can heap on us is nothing if we do not offer up our service daily to God.

So, Solid Rock is not just a preschool that operates inside the walls of First Baptist Wentzville.  We are representatives of Jesus to our community. I have the privilege of leading this ministry and have godly women who have joined me in this endeavor, and I am so thankful for them. I hope that you will commit to praying for us—our safety, our ministry, our teachers, and our kiddos because we will start it all over again in August. We would be honored if you partnered with us by becoming prayer warriors.