If You Could Only Do One Program in Youth Ministry, This Would Be It!

Camp is my favorite youth program throughout the entire ministry year bar none.  It is where I grew in my faith the most and had those really high mountain top faith experiences that helped me get through another school year.  Camp is one of the reasons I am in ministry today. Many other teens meet Jesus for the very first time at camp!  There are so many different ways to run a camp program.  Some churches go to a camp that is fully staffed.  Others run theirs entirely on their own.  And there are a plethora of other variations in between those two extremes.  An option that I experienced in my first ministry is during the summer the students would go to camp on their own throughout the summer, depending on their interests.  For example, some would go to a horsemanship camp, others would go to a sports camp.  Each took place during different weeks of the summer.  I'll talk about each style below.

The first type of camp is to go to a fully staffed camp.  This is nice as a youth pastor, because it leaves all the details of planning the camp in someone else's hands, including the liability.  All the youth pastor has to do is get his or her students there and be with them during the week.  The downside to this style of camp is it is way more expensive.  This is understandable because salaries need to be paid.

The second type of camp is one where the youth pastor and volunteer staff run the entire camp themselves.  They come up with the games, the food, the counselors, etc.  The nice thing about this type of camp is the youth ministry in charge has control over the content and can tailor it to their students' needs.  It can also be done on the cheap, especially if you have a kitchen crew that can handmake most of your food instead of buying everything premade.  Of course, the down side of this is it is a lot of work!  A lot of planning goes into this type of camp.  There is a bit of liability that comes along with running your own camp.  You shoulder the burden if anyone gets hurt or sick.

The third type of camp that I mentioned above is when the students and their families decide on their own what camp they will participate in during the summer.  This type of camp is not my favorite because the students don't grow together and their youth leaders don't get to participate in their spiritual growth either.  Follow up after camp is huge and if a youth leader isn't there to counsel and guide during camp they have a lot of catch up work to do after camp.

In my current ministry we are blessed to have a region of churches that run camp together.  Each youth pastor has strengths they bring to the table and we benefit from each other to run a great camp.  I have heard from some youth pastors in the town I live in that have pooled their resources to plan camp together.  What a great idea!  If you don't have a camp ministry currently up and running in your youth ministry I would highly encourage you to reach out to one or two or more other churches in your town or in your denomination to run a camp together.  How do you do camp?  I'd love to hear from you in the comments below!