I Went to Camp

I just spent the last long weekend at church camp with my middle son and his best friend, who is my pastor’s son. I volunteered to do this months ago, because someone needed to go with them, my husband the camp enthusiast had to work, and my pastor offered to do anything for me as long as she didn’t have to go. So she kept my two youngest boys on the days my husband was working. I volunteered months ago, because someone needed to, and it sounded fun, and I like hanging out with our kids. Months ago I was deep in the middle of planning and creating the suitcase series. I had spent years trying to find a job that would put my Masters of Divinity Degree to use. I had looked and looked for the right place to exercise the calling I felt to study and teach the bible and build a community of spiritual formation. I kept programs going for groups where everyone one else had given up. I kept looking for meaning when I wanted to give up. I visited church after church that felt like an itchy wool dress, and I took months off of trying to find a church, and felt an empty ache of longing. I questioned whether or not I wanted to associate myself with an institution that has been and continues a source of pain for so many people.

A few years ago, I visited one last church on my list of places I was curious about, and heard a preacher who loved the bible in the same curious imaginative way that I did. I went back and found that their second pastor did too. I looked up the denominational values online and found that their origin was in pioneer families who wanted to worship with a community even if their beliefs were not always the same. Their symbol is the chalice, because the central belief is that God’s table is for everyone. We have the honor of sharing it, and absolutely no ownership over it. I felt safe and at home, and like Nadia Bolz-Webber says, I had found a church where all of the parts of me fit. For a long time my family were just participants. Our friendships with the other members grew, and we just came along for the ride. Eventually, I started teaching children’s Sunday school, because most of the children were mine, the rest were the pastor’s, and she had her hands full already. I found out that when I taught Sunday school because I felt like I had something to teach my kids and their friends, and not because I wasn’t allowed to preach (I am, and do sometimes), I didn’t hate it. I take all that I have learned in my years of studying education as a homeschooler, and all I have learned about what I love most about the bible and the fellowship of believers and I have played my way through lesson planning one season at a time.

I haven’t been looking for a paid ministry position for years. I had almost quit thinking of myself as someone who’s call was first and foremost to the community of the people of God and the stories they have told and continue to tell.

And then I went to camp. I went to camp where I didn’t know anyone. Our church registered as one church along with a larger group of other Disciples of Christ Churches who usually camp together somewhere else. I took two boys, who’s dorm I obviously did not bunk in, and I stayed in a cabin with 12 girls and 7 other women, none of whom I had met before. There were about 20 other churches there, many of whom are affiliated in some way with a denomination that has given me a lot of wounds.

And at this camp I met 12 adorable girls, and 9 sweet hilarious boys, and a few dozen adults who love so many things I love, and welcomed me so warmly and enthusiastically, and together during times when the kids were busy with camp staff we talked about how the kids inspire us, and how much we want to give them a world where when we say God is love, the next thing we say doesn’t contradict that. I saw kids come to a church camp and be so incredibly kind to one another, and talk about how following God means trusting that someone is their when things get hard, and they will get hard, and how living water means it won’t make you sick and it never runs out, and about all of the ways that they could serve the people around them with love when they got home. It was so healing to see children in a religious environment learning and sharing life giving things, and not hurtful messages it will take them years to unlearn. It was life giving and affirming for me to visit with other adults who share a calling that I had let go during a time of healing, but that is reawakening. A call to make sure that whoever I come in contact know that God means love, unqualified love and joy.