Outdoor Ministry Research Project

Have you been to camp? Is it an important part of your faith story? How do outdoor ministries fit in with the ministries of your church? Millions of young people attend Christian summer camps every summer in the United States and tens of thousands of young adults serve on summer camp staffs. Some have amazing, “mountain-top experiences,” while others do not. Some camps are known for cranking out leaders for the church that become pastors, youth ministers, bishops, deacons, and devoted lay volunteers. Others are important sites for retreat ministries for adults, youth, and families. While some Christian leaders praise the benefits of camping ministry, others are skeptical of its role in faith formation and discipleship.

The truth is that Christian camping ministry is an incredibly understudied field. This is shocking when we consider that the 2003 National Study of Youth and Religion found that 39% of all American teenagers have attended a religious summer camp. When we look at the 5 denominations involved in the Confirmation Project, the number jumps to well over 50%. Christian summer camp is an important part of Christian education and faith formation for many young people, and the Confirmation Project is one of the first major studies to take this role seriously. The study promises to provide the most comprehensive picture to date of the nature and significance of Christian camping ministry to the work of the Church. This is one of the many innovative approaches and unique contributions the Confirmation Project is making to scholarship and the strengthening of discipleship in youth.

There are multiple questions directly addressing outdoor ministries on the nationwide confirmand and confirmation leader surveys. In addition to this, every camp and conference center affiliated with one of the five denominations is being surveyed. This camp survey went out via e-mail in coordination with the congregational surveys. It is designed to be filled out by a director-level staff person or camp manager. Pastors and youth ministers, contact your camp leadership personnel to make sure that they participate in this survey! Five camps (one per denomination) will also be visited in the summer of 2015 to examine their programs more closely. This means that camps will account for one in five of the total sites visited.

The study focuses on camp as a CEP (“Confirmation or Equivalent Practice”), but it is not limited to “confirmation camp” programs. The researchers recognize that camp may be directly involved in a congregation’s CEP programs and it may also serve in various support roles. All camps and conference centers in the five denominations should, therefore, participate in the survey. This study will answer: In what ways and to what extent does the Christian summer camp experience contribute to the faith formation and Christian education of adolescents in the Protestant tradition?

 The camp survey is being sent under the name “Outdoor Ministry Research Project” to distinguish it from the congregational survey. It is being sent to all camps affiliated with the outdoor ministry organizations of the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Your help is requested in contacting these camps! Make sure your camp is included. The African Methodist Episcopal Church does not have an organization of outdoor ministries, so we need your help in identifying camp programs in the AME tradition. Contact Jacob Sorenson for more details on the camp study and for access to the camp survey.

This project will help us get more young people to camp, improve the quality of our outdoor ministries, and strengthen the partnership between outdoor ministry sites and congregations. You are invited to join us in these efforts!

Camp's Diversity Problem

Christian camping ministry has a problematic history with race-relations and diversity. While many camps across the country have gone to great lengths to address the problem, it remains a serious concern for camps and camping ministry as a whole. The problem is rooted in a conflict between two of camping ministry’s most important aspects. On the one hand, camps are set-apart, sacred communities where young people can be fully immersed in the particularity of their faith traditions. On the other hand, camps are places of intense and intentional encounter with otherness. These two essential aspects of camping work hand-in-hand to create the crucible of transformation found in many of our Christian summer camps. The Other, with whom I would normally not choose to be around or would not even encounter in everyday life, suddenly becomes part of my set-apart, sacred community at camp. The Other might simply be someone from a different social circle, but that person might also be from a different socio-economic class, family background, sexual orientation, race, or denomination. In the context of intentional Christian community at camp, we encounter the Other face-to-face and are forced to make sense of this otherness in the context of togetherness - or “unity in difference,” as some feminist and womanist thinkers have put it. The transformative power of the camp experience is diminished when racial diversity is absent.

The lack of racial diversity can be traced to the origins of the camping movement. The first camps in America emerged in the 1880s in order to get white boys from wealthy families out of the squalor of urban living and teach them how to be real men through outdoor living and recreation. The camping movement quickly grew, especially through the spread of YMCA camps, to include middle class and even lower-class boys. The camping movement grew in the context of a Protestant work ethic and idealism that linked Christianity with manhood and good citizenship. The early 20th century saw the spread of camping to Jewish camps, Catholic camps, and girls camps, but they remained separate for much of camp’s early history. The emphasis was on camp’s role in socialization as special, set-apart communities. Upper-class boys went to camp together, and they learned how to be responsible upper-class boys. Jewish kids were socialized as Jews, something that continues to characterize Jewish camping (see Sales and Saxe, How Goodly Are Thy Tents). Early 20th century camps toyed with diversity more than they experienced it. Boys and girls at their single-gendered camps would commonly dress in drag to caricature the opposite sex. More problematic were the early camps’ use of stereotypes in their portrayal of Native Americans and black Americans. Campers wore feathered headdresses and enacted their versions of Native American rituals to emphasize connection with creation. While these camp rituals were often considered as showing respect to Native American customs, they also functioned to deepen stereotypes, lump Native Americans as a single entity, and bastardize tribal sacred traditions. Throughout the 1920s until well into the 1950s, one of the most common traditions for the last night of camp was a drama in blackface.

Many readers are now saying, “Yes, but we’ve come a long way in race relations since the 1920s!” This is certainly the case. However, camp’s problematic history of race relations has followed the movement to the present day. Camps across the country continue enacting stereotypes of Native Americans. Campers stay in teepees (because all Native Americans lived in teepees, right?) and adopt tribal names for the week. These programs at times attempt to show a deep respect for Native American traditions and, at their best, do a fair job teaching the history of certain tribes, along with a history of the exploitation of native peoples. However, camps need to think long and hard about how the inclusion of camp programs using Native American themes serve to perpetuate stereotypes, no matter how virtuous the intentions. Do we really think that kids running around with feathers on their heads is respectful or meaningful in any way? What about more subtle ways of perpetuating these stereotypes?

While I have no reason to believe that camps continue using blackface, camping ministry as a whole is far from integrated. It remains a largely white, middle-class phenomenon. There is very little research data on outdoor ministry, so it is difficult to assess how big the problem is. However, the 2003 National Study of Youth and Religion asked participants if they had been to a religious summer camp, so an analysis of that data yields some important information. The data reported in the original book (Smith and Denton, Soul Searching) gives a surface indication of the problem, showing that Mainline Protestant youth are twice as likely to attend camp as youth from Black Protestant traditions. The data set gives much clearer information than this, however.  According to the data, 3/4 of all religious camp attenders are white. White youth are 1.6 times more likely to attend camp than black youth, 2 times more likely than Asian youth, and an astonishing 2.6 times more likely than hispanic youth. The statistics are even more shocking when income is factored in. White youth from families making under $20k per year are less likely to attend camp than their middle-class counterparts but still more likely than middle-class youth from minority groups. 42% of white youth from families making under $20k per year attend camp, which presumably means that camps are effective in offering financial aid to white youth. However, minority groups do not receive the same benefits. When considering youth from families making under $20k per year, whites are 2.5 times more likely to attend camp than non-whites. African-American youth show the highest percentage (32%) of those attending camp after white youth (43%), indicating that, while still a problem, the gap is beginning to close. However, it should also be noted that almost 2/3 of these African-American youth are from “Black Protestant” religious traditions, indicating that many of them are attending camps that are predominantly African-American. Our camps are segregated. Those who have visited many camps do not need statistics to tell this story. They have seen that many camps are almost totally white or totally black, with a few diverse faces in the mix (these usually make the camp brochure or newsletter to show that the camp is “diverse”).

Camping ministry has a diversity problem. Certain camps are doing tremendous things to increase racial diversity, and they can serve as models for other camps to emulate. A large part of camp’s transformative power lies in its nature as a location of encounter. The nature of camp communities as set-apart and sacred should not include race. Camp racial segregation serves to socialize our young people into ways of being white Christians or black Christians. Since camps have such powerful socializing potential, these racially segregated ways of being Christian can stick long-term. In contrast, observe the exemplary camps that have racial diversity. They serve as places of encounter, and they can help young people envision a new way of being Christian in the world: united, even in our differences.

Right Now! Camp Romance, Eschatology, and Sucking the Marrow from Life

There is an immediacy to life at summer camp, a way in which it teaches you to "suck out all the marrow of life," as Thoreau put it. Those who have been there remember the feeling. The present moment is amplified in intensity and perceived importance. The past is up for reinterpretation, and the importance of the future is downplayed, leaving participants suspended in the moment. The immediacy of the camp experience is played out most noticeably in summer camp relationships, in which people go from perfect strangers to best friends in a matter of hours. I believe that this sense of immediacy is incredibly valuable for camp participants.

The most notorious example of the intensity and immediacy of the camp experience may be the summer camp romance, in which two people who have never met before begin an intensely emotional relationship with almost no possibility that it will continue after four or five days. They sneak glances at each other in the dining hall, spend free time together, sit on the same log during campfire, and occasionally sneak out at night for a midnight rendezvous. Pragmatically minded people shake their heads at the lunacy of this common scenario, rolling their eyes at the naïveté of youth and the false emotions elicited by the camp experience. I am less dismissive, wondering instead what this interesting aspect of camp might indicate (beyond the obvious conclusion that adolescents are full of raging hormones). The past is apparently irrelevant to them, as the two lovebirds have no foundation of trust on which to build a relationship. Likewise, the future is irrelevant, as they seem unaware that there is practically no chance of continuing the relationship after camp is over. Why, then, do they fall so deeply in love and sob so forcefully when the end of the week arrives? I believe it is because they are suspended in the present moment, focused so intently on immediacy that the past and future do not matter all that much. On the one hand, we could label this naïveté, since it certainly fits the definition. However, we can also identify something beautiful at work here, and we can learn a great deal from it.

The world is in need of some immediacy. Historic conflicts determine national rivalries, modern warfare, and social discord. Simply look to Gaza and Ferguson for evidence of this reality. Young people face the same challenges. They come to camp already labeled. In fact, young people come into this world already labeled, oftentimes with enemies already defined for them. They inherit ethnicity, family situation, culture, social class, and family systems baggage. Labels and social divisions are exhausting and often dehumanizing. They help shape who we are while at the same time preventing us from becoming who God created us to be. Young people are in the process of forming their identities, and this process is profoundly altered and shaped (perhaps twisted) by those who label them and put expectations on them. Erik Erikson argues that an important part of identity formation is what he calls a moratorium on these outside expectations and rules. In a moratorium environment, a person has the opportunity to discover what their identity looks like when the outside labels and fixed expectations are briefly suspended. They are set free from the burdens of the past in order to live in the moment of possibilities in which they can reimagine life and their own identity. Summer camp often serves as a moratorium environment that provides tremendous opportunity for identity formation and reinterpretation of past assumptions. The old labels are suspended in favor of the only label that truly matters: Beloved Child of God.

The world is in need of some immediacy because young people are consistently directed toward the future, being told that they need to plan strategically in order to achieve their desired goals. They have no idea what their future goals are, but they are pressured to set them and start moving toward them. I cringe when I hear parents obsessing over the futures of their young children. I remember the first time I heard a parent fretting over getting her child into a good preschool so that the child would not be behind in kindergarten. If the child got behind, the parent feared, there would be little chance of advanced elementary classes, which could mean no honors high school courses, and then getting into a good college was in question. Similar reasoning leads parents to enroll their children in second grade tackle football programs or competitive basketball camps (rather than church camps!) in order to get that college athletic scholarship. They think they have their children’s best interests in mind, though they are often pressuring their child and causing a great deal of anxiety about the future, at the expense of the moment. In their desire to prepare their child for the future, they may miss their child’s present needs, prioritizing a well-paying job that opens future opportunities but may cost essential family bonding time. We sometimes forget that there are reasons Jesus discouraged preoccupation with the future (Matthew 6:25-34, Luke 12:16-21).

Contrast this with camp, where there is no future. There is an intense focus on the present activity and the face of the other who is in front of you. The only thing that lies in the future is the last day of camp when everyone goes home, and that is too ghastly to contemplate. Next week does not matter. Only today matters, and there is a recognition that time is limited, so we have to make the most of it! Show the person in front of you that you care about them because you may not get the opportunity later! Even the many campers who are homesick exhibit a sense of immediacy. Have you ever tried to console someone who is homesick at camp? There is no reasoning with them. You cannot simply tell the sobbing camper that mom is coming in a few days because tomorrow might as well be a century from now and the end of the week will surely never come. The only thing that matters is right now.

Planning for the future is not a bad thing. Even camps have strategic plans. But the campers and summer staff members are not overly concerned with the strategic plan, and they shouldn’t be. Their concern is right in front of them, and we need more of this sort of concern in our world. There are people hurting right now, and while others are planning for the future (even commendable future goals with the needs of others in mind), we need more people that will reach out to the individual right in front of them. As far as the church goes, bringing the promise of heaven is important, but we also have a mandate to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, and clothe the naked (Matthew 25:34-40).

Don’t get me wrong. I am certainly not opposed to strategic plans or eschatological hope. But these must be grounded in the present moment, and camp has the effect of bringing us back to the reality that God has placed before us. This is a biblical perspective. The mystery of the gospel is the eternal breaking into the present moment (enfleshed in the God-man Jesus Christ). Jesus’ message is, “The Kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15). It is right in front of us, and this present inbreaking represents the fulfillment and redemption of the past, along with the force guiding us into the promised future. This is what it means to live in God’s time, for God is here among us, immanuel. In our fast-paced world where it seems impossible to escape the burdens of the past or the need to prepare for the future, many of us lose sight of what it looks like to live in God’s time. If you want a glimpse of what it looks like, stop by your local camp. You may learn something.

Camp Research: Introducing the Confirmation Project!

The tide is turning for scholarship in Christian camping ministry! The primary aim of my scholarly studies is to contribute to a fresh wave of scholarship in this field, and two upcoming studies promise to be game-changing. I hope they will set the stage for decades of study and attention on Christian camping, like those currently enjoyed in the field of youth ministry. One of these studies seeks to construct a grounded theory of camping ministry by focusing on a small number of Lutheran camps in Wisconsin. This important study, currently in the granting phase, will open new insights on the nature and significance of Christian camping ministry, and it is designed to be a watershed for future mixed-method studies aimed at isolating camping ministry’s best practices. The second study is much broader in scope and specific in focus. It focuses on confirmation ministry, and it is addressed more fully below.

A Dearth of Research

Christian camping ministry is an incredibly understudied field. This is particularly shocking considering recent developments in scholarship and American culture that I will briefly describe in three points. First, the past 50 years have witnessed a tremendous growth in the field of practical theology as an independent discipline. This growing field of scholarship places an emphasis on Christian practice and individual context contributing to theological development. As places that emphasize putting faith into action in all aspects of daily life, Christian camps serve as valuable modules of theological development that can inform the field of practical theology. Second, the past 30 years have witnessed significant changes in the field of youth ministry as a specialized form of ministry that receives increasing scholarly attention, professional respect, and tremendous resources. It is peculiar that this growing scholarly field neglects the study of camping ministry to such a great extent, since camp brings together children’s ministry, family ministry, adolescent ministry, emerging adult ministry, and many other specialized ministries that are direct offshoots of youth ministry. Third, there are broad cultural concerns related to care of the environment and the health of young people that provide opportunities for increased attention on camping ministry. Global climate change is a growing concern that can be directly addressed by increasing awareness of environmental stewardship and love of creation fostered by simple familiarity with the outdoors, both of which camping ministry provides. The active, highly relational environment of camp also can address physical health concerns relating to overly sedentary children and psychological health concerns about children who spend more time interacting with electronics than other people. Despite this highly favorable environment for scholarly study of Christian camping ministry, precious little has been done.

The American Camp Association (ACA) has worked hard over the past decade to fill the dearth of scholarship in youth camping, and their researchers have produced multiple studies of great significance, most notably the 2005 Directions study. ACA represents many types of camps across the country, less than a quarter of which are Christian organizations. While the research has tremendous value for Christian camping ministry, it does not address some core questions of concern for practical theologians and the Church (e.g. discipleship and Christian education).

The Confirmation Project

A major catalyst for camp’s inclusion in the confirmation study was a similar European study on confirmation ministry. The European study, headed by practical theologian Friedrich Schweitzer, includes data from seven countries. A significant finding of the study is that confirmation training conducted primarily in a camp form shows statistically higher gains in religiosity than other modes of instruction. The data is particularly striking in Sweden and Finland, where the majority of confirmation instruction takes place at camp. This revelatory study, along with powerful camp experiences that shaped the lives of members of the American research team, led to an understanding that camp deserves an important role in a study focused on confirmation ministry.

The study is known as the Confirmation Project, and according to the website it “seeks to learn the extent to which confirmation and equivalent practices in five Protestant denominations in North America are effective for strengthening discipleship in youth.” It is generously funded by Lily Endowment, Inc. and directed by widely-respected practical theologian Richard Osmer (Princeton Theological Seminary) and Katherine Douglass. The five participating denominations include the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church (USA), the Presbyterian Church (USA), the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The study features a nationwide two-phase quantitative survey that will reach thousands of youth, parents, and ministry professionals. In addition, the study boasts a rigorous qualitative portion that seeks in-depth portraits of specific congregations and camps. The exciting news for the field of Christian camping ministry is that camp is an important and integral part of this study, essentially making this the first major scholarly study to investigate camp’s role in Christian formation, taking into account a partnership with homes and congregations.

The camp-specific portion of this study begins this fall with a survey of camps in the five denominations. It is important that all camps (nearly 500) affiliated with these denominations participate in the survey (which can be filled out by a director-level staff member in 15 minutes). This survey will provide a census of camps in the five denominations, and it will offer important information about the common priorities, various theological convictions, and great diversity of programming among the many camps. Using this data, camps from each denomination will be purposefully selected (to get a variety of sizes, program types, and geographical locations) to be included in a qualitative study of confirmation camp programs in the summer of 2015. This camp study is embedded in the larger Confirmation Project, which will also survey confirmands in congregations. The surveys of confirmands and ministers in congregations will include multiple questions about camp. These data will give the most comprehensive picture to date of the nature and significance of Christian camping ministry to the work of the Church.

You can see that the stage is set to deepen and broaden the conversation about the significance of Christian camping ministry. Those of you in participating denominations can help ensure that your congregations and camps are included in this exciting research!

Christopraxis at Camp

Many Christians today, particularly in so-called “mainline denominations” (like Lutheran, Catholic, and Methodist), abdicate the work of pastoral care and pastoral theology to the ministry professionals. We attend church to be preached a sermon and to receive care, and we leave the theology to the professionals. The notion is that pastoral theology is safe when it is in the hands of professionals. Leaders can agree on doctrine, which can then be taught to the masses. This system is designed to guard against heresy and prevent abuses, and it assumes a hierarchical structure of authority. The irony is that this very system results in abuse, most clearly in the silencing of the powerless. Dissenting voices irrupt the Western, patriarchic claim to a universally applicable truth by attending to the voices of women, liberation theologians, Asian theologians, and others around the world who have suffered oppression in the name of protecting universal truth claims. This oppression makes clear that pastoral theology is far from safe in the hands of professionals and must include intentional dialogue with the diverse community of believers.

From a Western, hierarchical standpoint, Christian summer camp is a profoundly unsafe environment for pastoral theology because the professionals are not in control. Pastoral care is placed in the hands of young, unqualified people who are engaging in unchecked psuedo-theological reflection. In my years of serving at Christian camps across the country, I have repeatedly heard this concern from clergy members, who are afraid their young congregants will be exposed to heresy at camp and return theologically damaged. My response has changed over time as a result of new experiences and lived realities. Starting with my first camp experience in eighth grade and progressing through a career of Christian camping ministry, I have discovered camp to be a theological playground in which rigid doctrine becomes suddenly malleable. The untouchable truth claims that are safely protected behind the display case of the church building and curated by the professional minister are suddenly accessible to young people, who have little training in their care or proper use. In carefree, youthful exuberance, they smell them, shake them, rub their faces in them, and do all manner of unspeakable things to them. The professional ministers with the stomach to endure this defilement stoop to pick up the detritus only to realize that the truth claim has not been destroyed but rather made alive again. The truth of Jesus Christ does not need protection, and those who seek to guard it may inadvertently destroy it. Christ is alive and at work in the world in the lived experiences of Christian community.

Life at camp is normed in a way that takes seriously the ongoing work of Christ’s ministry, as camp guides (or “counselors”) and campers learn together to identify God’s action in the world through the mundane and the extraordinary. For young people accustomed to compartmentalizing their experience of God at church as separate from their everyday lives, the camp experience offers a radical re-centering of their lives as caught up in and dependent upon the activity of Christ. The Christian camping model assumes that Christ is active in the world and looks for where the Holy Spirit is moving in and among the community of practice. There is a sort of hyperawareness at camp as participants notice the inbreaking of God in concrete, unexpected ways and participate in God’s ongoing work in the world. In his book The Shape of Practical Theology, Ray Anderson describes this activity as “Christopraxis,” which he defines as “the continuing ministry of Christ through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit” (p. 29).

My first camp experience in eighth grade was irruptive in my life because I discovered that I was an active participant in God’s work in the world. There in a tent on a small island in the middle of the Mississippi River, I engaged in theological discussion with young people my own age and, for the first time in my life, dared to consider the question, “Do I really believe this stuff?” That discussion was precipitated by days of living in intentional Christian community when we participated in Christian practices in the midst of daily living. It is illustrative that I do not remember what specific theological ideas we came up with in the tent that evening. I am reasonably certain that any professional minister eavesdropping on our conversation would have cringed at what was probably our desecration of theological doctrine. We were engaged in a theological playground. We were assembling theological ideas, toying with them, and then knocking them down. Our counselor or a visiting pastor could have come barging into our tent and given us theologically sound doctrine, but I probably would not remember what he said any better than I remember the specifics of our actual conversation. However, I would have remembered that he corrected us, which would have reenforced my incoming assumption that I am a passive recipient of theology. Instead, I remember that I engaged in a theological discussion of my own volition with people my own age. I remember that they valued my thoughts as much as I valued theirs. The playing itself is what matters in communities of Christopraxis because Christ is an active, powerful presence, not a doctrine to be kept safe.

Ministry professionals and Christian educators tend to focus on right belief (orthodoxy) in a way that does not account for bodily wisdom (habitus). Their initial response in an environment like the Christian camp community is to correct problematic theology. As Anderson and other practical theologians note, theology is constructed through the presence of the Holy Spirit in lived, bodily reality. What matters is not that the nineteen year-old camp counselor misinterpreted the biblical passage but rather that the Bible is open and accessible for reflection on real life circumstances and the individual camper’s understanding of the biblical passage is valued. If my transformative camp experience is any indication, the misinterpretation will not stick as much as the bodily wisdom of participating in interpretation. When theological reflection, particularly in the trusted small group setting, is combined with action, the campers are engaging in practical theology through communities of Christopraxis. The conviction that Christ is active and up to something in the lives of these young people is itself right belief (orthodoxy).

For a new interpretation of Anderson's Christopraxis, see: Andrew Root's new book

My Camp Story

We rounded the first corner of the island and felt the wind buffet the side of the canoe. We had to concentrate on the paddling in order to keep from going off course. I chanced a look around and saw the disaster that was befalling our group. We were only a few hundred yards from the beach, but the dozen canoes were scattered in disarray. We were supposed to stay close together. That was the plan. Stay close together. Stay close to the shore. Paddle around the island. It will be fun, they assured us. Ben and I were determined to stay on course and complete the circuit. We were, after all, the most capable young canoeists in the group. That is why Steve chose to ride with us. He was the lifeguard, and he sat in the middle of our canoe with a rescue tube across his lap. He never said aloud that we were the best canoeists because he did not want the others to feel bad, but everyone knew that the lifeguard had to be in the fastest canoe.

“Hey, are they supposed to be going that way?” Ben asked.

I looked around and spotted the wayward canoe. It was drifting farther and farther away from shore. The two girls were fumbling awkwardly with their paddles, and they were laughing. Laughing! They evidently did not understand their peril. We were on the Mighty Mississippi River, and the current might draw them far downstream, capsize them, or deposit them in the mythical land known as Iowa.

“Let’s go get them,” Steve said.

Ben and I gave each other a meaningful look. It was up to us. This is where our forty-five minute canoe orientation would pay off. We pulled with all our might, straining our developing eighth-grade muscles to the max, and set an arrow straight course to the floundering vessel. We both saw the river buoy as we passed it, knowing that we had just crossed into the main channel of the Mississippi River. As we approached the other canoe, Steve calmly gave instructions to the girls. They tried to obey, and they managed to get their canoe turning in circles, laughing the whole time.

“Barge!” we heard someone yell from shore. “BARGE!”

I looked up and saw it rounding the nearest bend in the river, heading downstream straight towards us. Our camp counselors had warned us about river barges. They were enormous and churned up a huge wake that would capsize canoes and create a tremendous undertow. They could not stop or swerve to avoid you. If we encountered a barge while canoeing, we were to quickly get to shore. That is why we were supposed to stay close to shore in our trip around the island that morning.

Steve acted quickly. He reached out and pulled the girls’ canoe towards ours, clamping them together with his powerful hands. He looked at me with utmost confidence. “Okay, let’s get to shore.”

Upstream, into the wind, pulling two canoes with five people, with certain death churning inexorably nearer, Ben and I paddled for shore. We reached a rocky outcropping and disembarked into knee-deep water, exhausted but exhilarated.

“Good job, guys,” Steve said to us meaningfully, as the giant river barge slipped past at a safe distance.

The girls were no longer laughing. “You saved our lives,” they said in awe.

Ben and I looked at each other and nodded. We had just met three days ago and become fast friends. Now we were brothers. We waded through the water in dramatic slow motion. The rest of our beleaguered group came into view as we rounded a bend in the island, and a cheer broke out. We were heroes.

We never made it around the island that day. After the morning’s excitement, our counselors opted for a more relaxed day of games, Bible study, and conversation on the beach. Our evening campfire that night was emotional and powerful. Our four counselors led an interactive worship service that included a skit about Jesus’ teachings and some of our favorite songs from the week. During the prayers, one of the girls from the rescued canoe thanked God for keeping her safe that day by sending Ben and me to save her. I went to the tent that night wide awake with thoughts from the day’s events. It was our second and final night on the island. In the morning, we would pack up and canoe the short distance to the mainland before being driven back to camp. There, we would rejoin the rest of the camper groups for some unnamed large group activities.

Ben and I shared a tent with Jon, another eighth grade boy we had befriended that week. None of us were tired, so we talked. After our harrowing experience on the river, our conversation quickly turned to the topic of death and specifically what happens when you die. The next question came up naturally, as if it were a topic we discussed all the time. The truth is that in thirteen years of church and Sunday school, nobody had ever asked me that question. Ben asked it:

“Do you really believe in God?”

The funny thing is that I have almost no recollection of the conversation beyond that point. What I remember is that we talked about God, faith, and doubt into the wee hours of the morning. There in a small tent on an island in the middle of the Mississippi River, three cocky eighth grade boys shared their faith and fears with one another. For the first time in my life, I had an open and honest conversation about who I am in relation to God.

Steve was in the tent next to ours. It occurred to me years later that he must have been listening. He knew that we were awake past curfew. In fact, we were probably keeping other people awake. But he did not tell us to be quiet or speak up to correct our juvenile theology, which was probably well into the realm of heresy. He was our guide that week. He did not orchestrate the damsels in distress that day or call the barge to appear at the precise moment. He merely guided us along the way, giving us space to succeed or fail and helping us interpret our lives’ events with theological and biblical lenses.

Looking back twenty years later, I consider that night’s conversation to be a turning point in my life that directed me on a path of discipleship and professional ministry. It was in the middle of my first camp experience. That specific community in that specific context provided space for the Holy Spirit to move in a way that I was able to recognize and articulate. I am not sure how that evening’s conversation affected Jon or Ben, neither of whom I have seen since our camp experience ended two days later. I do not even know what Steve is up to or if he continued in ministry after his summer of working as a camp counselor. My story does not prove the power of the camp experience, but it changed my life. What’s your story?

Noah: Is Humanity Worth Saving?

The Noah movie came out this week after much controversy and publicity, most of the latter inadvertently provided by conservative Christians who judged the movie long before its actual release. As a Christian camp guy who happens to have a deep love for creation and the Bible, the idea of a new interpretation of the Noah story intrigued me, so I decided to see the movie for myself. I went in with pretty low expectations and was surprised at how much I actually liked the movie. I found it to be a creative and fairly faithful interpretation of the biblical text with some compelling points about human nature, humanity’s place in creation, and the tension between God’s justice and mercy.

Before we jump into some specifics, we need to get some things clear up front. First of all, it is true that the word “God” is not spoken a single time in this movie. Now that you’ve gasped, I’m going to encourage you to move past this detail by considering that the Bible has many names for God, and any specific names (Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Jesus, etc.) are not revealed to humanity until much later in the Bible. In the movie, the two names used for God are “Creator” and “Father,” both of which are biblical and highlight the relationship of God to the world. Secondly, I want to emphasize the importance of biblical interpretation, which is what this movie is. As Christians, we believe that the Bible is the “living and active” (Hebrews 4:12) word of God. The Holy Spirit has a way of speaking through scripture in new ways to different groups of people at different times. You know this because you have heard pastors preach sermons and because Bible passages have meant different things to you at different points in your life. “Love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:8) takes on a different meaning at a wedding versus near the death bed of a loved one.

All of the great biblical blockbusters take liberties with the biblical texts and add interpretation. Remember the overly dramatic love-affair between Moses and Pharaoh’s wife in The Ten Commandments? Remember the creepy female devil hanging out with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane in The Passion of the Christ (not to mention when Jesus invented the table)? This movie adds some things, as well. The Watchers are the most obvious inclusion. While not really depicted in the Bible (the mysterious Nephilim of Genesis 6:4 don’t quite qualify), the Watchers are part of the ancient Jewish tradition dating back at least to the book of 1 Enoch (while not biblical, 1 Enoch is mentioned in the biblical book of Jude). Honestly, I thought the inclusion of the Watchers was fairly bizarre in the movie, but I got over it because there were more important things to focus on. The one Watcher scene I thought was interesting (and a foreshadowing of things to come for humanity) was when the Creator forgave them and freed them from their earthly captivity. When considering these bizarre aspects of the movie, remember that it is trying to depict the world before the flood. This is before the creation was redone, so I am okay with things looking different in the pre-flood world. Were there glaring omissions? Yes, there were two that concerned me. First was the omission of the animal sacrifice at the end of the flood story (Genesis 8:20-22), which would have complexified the environmentalist perspective of the movie. Second was the omission of the cursing of Canaan, which has been a historically important motif in the enslavement of other people (Genesis 9:24-27). I understand why the movie wants to shy away from these very difficult topics to focus on other very difficult topics, but they are major omissions.

Like it or not, this is the biblical flood story (with some Hollywood flare). It has everything you want in a movie about Noah: grief over the wickedness of humankind, several epic shots straight out of my children’s picture Bible of the animals entering the ark, plenty of rain, a dove with an olive branch, and a spectacular closing shot of the rainbow. It also has a rather beautiful telling of the creation stories from Genesis 1 and 2. It depicts the fall of Genesis 3 and spends a good deal of time on the Cain and Able story of Genesis 4. In these regards, it is very faithful to the biblical story. Here is the thing: you know that the flood story ends with a rainbow. The thing about rainbows is that they are so pretty that we have a tendency to depict them in a very cutesy sort of way that may gloss over the real grit of the story. I think the flood story begs a question that becomes the central conundrum of the movie: “Is humanity actually worth saving?” In other words, would this world be better off if God had finished the job?

I love that the Creator does not speak with words in this movie. Too many people assume that God is not speaking in the world today because there is no booming voice from heaven. People of faith profess that God is active and constantly speaking in this world and to us as individuals. In the movie, the Creator reveals the plan to Noah through a couple of strange dreams that he struggles to interpret. He is not totally sure about what God is up to until God acts, and he sometimes misinterprets these signs, even when the meaning seems obvious to the viewer. I think this is remarkably true to real life. God is constantly at work, and yet we don’t always see it. Sometimes, we misinterpret what God is trying to tell us, and we need others to guide us.

The key theme in this movie is justice. Noah is a just man, and that is why God chooses him. Genesis 6:9 says that Noah is “righteous” but never that he is “good.” The pronouncement of “good” is attributed to all of creation in Genesis 1. Righteousness is different. It has to do with following commands and being just. The movie picks up on this very pointedly when Noah says that God didn’t choose him because he was good but rather because he would obey. He is constantly trying to do what is right, but he is often unclear about what that is. As a viewer, you want to use Noah as your moral compass, but you quickly discover that you simply can’t do it. You might even find yourself, like me, rooting for the bad guy to kill Noah since he is (at the time) the lesser of two evils. Many viewers have a problem with this because Noah is supposed to be the good guy. This is where the movie is pretty compelling. Noah isn’t the “good guy.” In fact, there is no such thing. Noah, like all of us, is human. As a righteous man, Noah understands that the only truly just thing to do is to wipe humanity out from the face of the earth. In that way, the world can finally be cleansed of injustice. If Christians truly believe that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), justice would mean condemnation and death. The entire Bible is testament to a just God who is gracious and merciful, and the movie highlights these themes in a pretty poignant way. After insisting on justice throughout the film, Noah ends by speaking of “mercy” and “love” as gifts from the Creator.

Sin in the movie is primarily depicted as destruction of creation. The landscape of the movie is almost entirely barren. There are almost no animals or plants because the humans (the decedents of Cain) have exploited the natural world. In the movie, this exploitation is most clearly identified through the killing of animals, though it also includes the killing of other human beings and violence against women. Noah sees the animals as innocent and the ones that must be saved in the ark. Tubal-Cain (see Genesis 4:22) is the arch nemesis of Noah in the movie and archetype of the wicked human. We often see him eating animals raw. He represents the view that humanity is created in the image of God in order to dominate and subdue creation. He seeks power over other people and especially the desire to exploit things for his own gain. In these ways, he is remarkably human. There is a moving scene in which Tubal-Cain cries out to the Creator for an answer. He recognizes that humanity is made in the image of the Creator, and he demands to know why the Creator is now absent from a needy world. Tubal-Cain ends up stowing away on the ark in order to give us some heightened drama and to show us symbolically what it means for humanity to survive. When the very conflicted Ham (second son of Noah) finally kills him, Tubal-Cain tells him that he is now truly a man. That line actually struck me pretty hard because it speaks the truth about the destructive nature of humankind.

The survival of humankind means that there will be violence and death in the world. Noah, the self-righteous vegetarian (who, by the way, has killed numerous people in his quest for justice), recognizes this dark truth and wants to put a stop to it by eradicating humanity. He thinks this is what God wants him to do. The ultimate survival of humanity means that violence will continue. It means that people will eat meat. In fact, this is part of the biblical narrative. It is only after the flood that God gives permission for humanity to eat meat (Genesis 9:3). 

In the movie, it is ultimately Noah who gets to decide whether or not humanity survives the flood. This idea of humanity being co-creators with God is a biblical theme. The movie is challenging us to see our integral role in the created order and make us take a long look at ourselves to determine whether or not we are worth saving. In the movie, Noah thinks it is God’s will that humanity end with the people on the ark, and this conviction is unexpectedly challenged when his barren daughter-in-law miraculously becomes pregnant (another biblical motif) with twin girls: potential wives for his other two sons. Noah is the only one who does not see these girls as precious gifts from the Creator, and he is ready to kill them in order to complete God’s just condemnation of humanity. This is a brilliant way to depict the drama of the flood story, which depicts a God who is in anguish over the wickedness of humankind, and yet he loves us. Ultimately, Noah’s mercy and love win out over justice. He cries out to the Creator in anguish that he is unable to complete his task. Justice turns to mercy. Wrath turns to love. And the storm clouds turn into a rainbow.

Before concluding, I want to give props to the movie for its portrayal of the women. In the Bible, the women are little more than props. The text might as well say that the ark contained Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth, and four baby machines. In the movie, the women are real characters that help answer the question of whether humanity is worth saving. In the climactic scene, we have Noah on the deck of the ark with the four women. The combined violence of Shem, Ham, and Tubal-Cain has not stopped his mindless wrath. There, on the deck of the ark, it is love that overcomes him. It is the love of his wife, his daughter-in-law, and his two granddaughters. As his wife points out, this love is a gift of the Creator.

Humans emerge from the ark as conflicted souls, at the same time sinners and saints. Though we are violent and wicked, our just God is gracious and merciful. The creature continues to rebel against the Creator and exploit the creation for personal gain. Are we able to see ourselves as integral parts of this creation, with an honored place as co-creators with God? Are we able to be reconciled to God? Is humanity even worth saving? I think the new Noah movie asks some of these questions in a very fresh and relevant way.