Calling all Warrior Chiefs,
Wow. Thanks so much showing up yesterday. What an encouragement. It's awesome how we all get to meet and cast the vision together, especially on the land which we can use for Warrior Camp. Whether our next Warrior Camp is in Lynchburg or abroad, the land we saw is a really good model for the kind of land that will work best, i.e. land that includes flat grass fields, forest, hills, picnic shelters, and water. This results in being able to put on a wide variety of games.
I've included the contact info for all of us at the bottom of the email. Here's a couple other things I thought would help direct our energy and focus even more:
1. We want our game programming to be something that even a hardcore atheist student would look at and say, "Wow! I really want to go to Warrior Camp!" Creative, top-notch, high-energy, memorable, and excellent games are inseparable from Warrior Camp. Let's look at conceiving and actualizing great game experiences as an art form, and an expression of worship. Whatever we do is all for the glory of God, so let's Go Big or Go Home and blow the warriors away with the best games they've ever played.
2. As a team, let's explore creative ways to infuse the Rallies (i.e. youth talks) throughout the day and think outside the box of the traditional camp service. What if we could use short, hard-hitting parables (like Jesus did) and which are directly tied to the game the warriors are playing? We could call a time-out right in the middle of Capture the flag and share a testimony or brief and powerful youth talk. I think this spiritual approach connects to the fun/life side in a way that avoids some of the weaknesses of the separate time block method, which (methodologically) begins to compartmentalize God to an isolated and detached block of time, and by relation could influence teens to relate with God in the same way. How do we do this? Examples might include a rally hike where we adapt the book "Pilgrim's Progress" into a hike through the woods with all the signature good and signature bad elements of John Bunyan's book. The warrior has to make choices just like Pilgrim did, and these choices will take him down specific paths through the forest to very different destinations (i.e. Bunyan's celestial city, or heaven). Creative adaptation of Pilgrim's Progress will be fun, effective and impacting.
3. Because we're all either college students or young professionals, money is tight. So lets look at what we do have, and play to those strengths with excellence. What do we have? Well, we've got sweat, which means we can work our tails off to make it happen. We've got energy, drive, and a resolved will to do something impacting about the need for boys to embrace their masculinity as a gift from God. We've got each other, and it's amazing what a united team can do. We've got creativity, and even though we don't have a fat budget or traditional camp stuff yet, we can conceive and implement creative games and rallies (i.e. youth talks) that are impacting on youth. We have mobility, which means a wide ministry radius. We can operate without a bunch of red-tape. We can think and implement on a dime without a lot of time or committee meetings. We can shape Warrior Camp into what it should be because the same team (i.e. us) are both the doers and the planners. Most of all though, we have the great commission to make disciples. We have the Holy Spirit sent by Christ. We know Warrior Camp is set up to meet a need that is usually overlooked. We know Warrior Camp should be and can be. We have God's favor because His way to live as a man of God is our way, our desire.
4. We're in the early phase right now, and it's not going to be easy. But that's when God wants to see our faithfulness to Him emerge as well as the vision He has birthed in our hearts. We don't want to fail or falter in this early phase just because we don't have big facilities or a fat budget. Let's be faithful and excited now, eagerly embracing the growing pains, knowing that we honor God with what He has given us, and He calls us to be dilligent with it. We set the spiritual tone of Warrior Camp by how it's launched, more than how it's run after success comes. We're not going to be able to have a strong faith at a more advanced phase that we don't first start with at the early, tough phase. I know all of us would rather be able to say we started by trusting God and continue to trust God in the midst of success, rather than to say we started weak and full of doubt, and only began to trust God when things got easier and more affordable. Forget that! God is far more deserving. So when it's tough, let's get on our knees, encourage each other, and dig deep into our faith. That's where God wants us.
5. A friend showed me a verse today and said it would be cool for Warrior Camp. Check it out: "Rejoice, young man, during your childhood, and let your heart be pleasant during the days of young manhood. And follow the impulses of your heart and the desires of your eyes Yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things." - Ecclesiastes 11:9
6. Praying for you all. Keep in touch. Stay True. Love God.
No comments:
Post a Comment