The Quiet Force
Matt and the two Resurrection Life camp administrators, Trisha and Rachel I can’t tell you how many times over the past number of months leaders of guest retreats have stopped me to say how much they’ve appreciated working with Matt Hildebrand, one of our Michigan Overnight Hosts, and what a great job he’s done for them and their group.
If you’re not familiar with camping terminology, let me share with you what a camp and conference center Host does (and what Matt does so well).
A Host’s job, just as the name implies, is to take care of guests and groups assuring they achieve their goals for their time at camp. The host is the main point of contact before, during and after a group visits camp. They make sure every detail’s thought through and every department on camp is ready to provide their part of the experience. When the group arrives a host works with them right through the experience, providing for any needs that come up and making any mid-course adjustments so they have an outstanding experience.
For example, this past week Resurrection Life Churches had their annual youth camp with over 600 campers and leaders. When I bumped into Matt, he was on his way to meet with the Resurrection Life Camp administrators in the office space we provide them for the week. Matt’s immediate mission? He was bringing the two administrators card stock for their printers. A simple request, but a necessary one for this group, and one of 100’s like it Matt addressed for Resurrection Life while they were here.
To be a great host, like Matt, requires a desire to serve others and see them succeed, great attention to detail, superb planning and foresight, tremendous flexibility, great relationship skills (and maybe even the ability to walk on water).
So I’m thankful for Matt every time a leader stops me to say what a great experience they’ve had at SpringHill and how much they love Matt, reaffirming what we already know – Matt’s been the quiet force behind their success.
T-shirts and Stretch Goals
I love summer camp and always hate when it’s over. I especially miss watching God transform the lives of campers and staff. But I also miss watching our team perform during these crazy weeks. They’re committed and talented people who create incredible experiences.One of my favorite moments from this summer was watching our team go after the goal of having 25% of our campers pre-register for 2013 summer camp. You see in the past we’d only open up registration months after summer camp ended. A couple of years ago we decided to test whether parents would sign their kids up for next year’s camp at the end of their camp session. We tried some things and had some success, but nowhere close to what we desired.
So instead of giving up we set a stretch goal of 25% pre-registration without a clear plan on how we’d achieve it. What we had were some t-shirts to give away to campers who signed up for the next year. So our Indiana overnight team created a plan that would generate excitement on the closing day of camp with the goal of moving parents to sign up for next year. The plan included having all professional staff wear one of these t-shirts, promote pre-registration during the closing rally, and have highly visible tables at key locations so parents could easily pre-register and receive a t-shirt before leaving camp.
So what was the result of our Indiana team’s Week 1 efforts? We pre-registered more kids than the total number of 2011 Indiana pre-registrations.
Word quickly spread throughout SpringHill and over the next few weeks our other team’s implemented similar plans with similar results. Today, at our two overnight camps, we’ve pre-registered close to 35% of our campers, easily exceeding our stretch goal of 25%.
And that’s why it’s one of my favorite summer camp moments. Because I love when teams set stretch goals, create simple yet effective plans, work the plans and then share their successes so that others can succeed as well.
It’s also one of the reasons why I’m already looking forward to next year’s summer camp.
Creating a Little Heaven on Earth
I know I’ve written about this before, but every time I witness our philosophy of inclusive camping in action, I’m inspired and humbled beyond words. There’s nothing else I can think of that better defines us as an organization than this commitment to include campers with special needs in all our camps.Monday evening, as I walked home, I came upon one of our TST teams tackling our New Frontiers’ climbing wall. On the wall was one of our campers with special needs being “assisted” up by two of our special needs counselors as the entire TST team watched and cheered.
The scene beautifully shows why we believe so strongly in inclusion and why we insist on being a welcoming experience for all kinds of young people. We believe that every child’s created in the image of God so we work hard to assure all kids have equal access to the entire SpringHill Experience. In addition, we believe we’re to create a little “heaven on earth” because in heaven there will be all kinds of people, races and nations shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, together in the worship and service to God.
The scene also demonstrates a second reason our Special Needs program is an essential part of who we are. You see, one of the most impactful parts of this approach to camping is that it transforms all the campers, not just those who have special needs or come from different backgrounds. Why? Because it powerfully reminds every camper and staff member that, at some level, we all have “special needs” and require “assistance” in climbing the wall of life and, more importantly, being in a relationship with God.
So if you ever need to be inspired, come visit a SpringHill Experience, and no doubt you’ll witness a scene like the one above, and you too will never be the same.
It’s Much More than a Blob!
The lifeguard gathered the Copper Country (4th through 6th grade camp) kids around him after an hour of playing on the Gusher. If you don’t 
know, the Gusher is a high and long “slip and slide” that empties into one of our lakes. One of the things campers like to do is to try to spin (roll over multiple times) all the way down, seeing how many spins they can achieve before landing in the lake below.As the campers gathered, the lifeguard asked them a series of questions in what we call a “debrief.” The debrief is where we use the activity the campers just participated in as an object lesson to reinforce and bring to life the spiritual themes of the week. It’s for this reason that we debrief all
our activities from the zipline to paintball and even the Gusher, and why debriefs are such a critical part of the SpringHill Experience.You see our activities are tools for helping campers grasp and remember the spiritual truths we want them to take home with them. It’s one of the main ways we integrate faith and fun.
In the best debriefs, the activity staff asks a series of questions, leading the campers to discover the connection between the activity and the spiritual theme for themselves.
Questions like this lifeguard asked “could you spin a
thousand times on your own down the Gusher?” and of course the answer is “no way”. Then the lifeguard asked “can you get to heaven on your own?” and kids answered with “yes”, “no” and “maybe”. Which led lifeguard to explain that to have eternal life requires something outside of ourselves just like spinning a 1000 times down the Gusher would require something outside of our selves. And, of course the lifeguard explained, that something outside ourselves we need to “get to heaven” is Jesus Christ.It was a simple 5 minute debrief but it beautifully reinforced an important spiritual truth that these young boys will keep with them for a long time.
Can You Relate to this Camper’s Dilemma?
“When I came to camp I had a problem. My heart believed in God but my head didn’t believe in Him” explained one of our campers from Copper Country (4th thru 6th grade camp) at our week ending rally.He shared that he struggled with this nagging doubt (my words) during the first few days of camp. But it was at Wednesday evening’s campfire where the opportunity to work out this tension opened up for him.
You see, during the campfire time, this young camper’s Area Director clearly presented the Good News of Christ and asked campers who had questions or wanted to make a faith decision to stay back after the campfire. And of course this young man did.
And as he put it “I went straight up to my Area Director and said ‘I have a problem and I need your help in solving it.'” So the he and his Area Director sat down on a log where he proceeded to share how his heart had faith in God but his head didn’t.
After much discussion, prayer and through the wise leading of his Area Director, this young man was able to announce on Friday to the crowd of 2000 people “Thanks to my Area Director, I now believe in God, not just in my heart but also with my head.”
Then in a final question, when asked what this new faith will mean to his life when he goes home, he answered “I will read my Bible every day because I want to get to know this God I now fully believe in.”
Talking with someone whose walked before you and then reading God’s Word is the perfect combination of assistance one needs when navigating and overcoming nagging doubt as this young camper demonstrated.
Where Center Stage isn’t Central
As I’ve traveled around the SpringHill world this summer one of the things I’ve seen at every one of our locations is the high number of staff who are incredibly talented on stage. Whether it’s speaking, acting, singing, or performing musical instruments every one of our 14 summer camp teams have people who are funny, compelling and clear when they step on stage.
Now the ironic part of having this wealth of talented people doing great work is the fact that what happens on stage isn’t central to our programming, not by a long – shot. It’s the small group and the intimate communities we work so hard to create that is the center of the SpringHill Experience. In contrast the stage, and the talent that uses it, ultimately exists only for the purpose of setting up, reinforcing and making the small group and its leader successful.
In other words, at SpringHill, if Jesus is King, then the small, intimate community is queen, the counselor is the knighted ambassador serving both, and the stage talent becomes the trusted advisors to the ambassadors – our counselors.It can be deceptive if someone observes our programming in action and sees only the great stage productions, without seeing where the powerful ministry really happens – in the small community. Yet the truth is the small communities we’re able to form in a SpringHill Experience couldn’t happen as they do without the aid of the talented people who stand up on stage and do what they do so well. It’s when these talented people share their gift from stage knowing all along when center stage isn’t central their work becomes its most powerful and effective, opening the door for life-transformation.
A Camper Shares Her SpringHill Story
One of our campers, Anne, wrote out her SpringHill story and this is what she said –“I learned a lot at my first week of SpringHill. I learned how to zipeline, blob, twist on the water slide, but most importantly, I learned about God. Our theme this week was God has a plan for us! The Bible stories we read were about Moses from when he was born to when he saved the Israelites. I learned a lot from those stories. We learned about sin, God’s plan, forgiveness, and trusting in God. God is always with us, keeping us safe. I also took a lot from Moses’ story. Like how Moses killed an Egyptian, yet God still forgave him! I also learned about God’s love and forgiveness is always there, you just have to accept it. He is always there. In bad situations he is there crying with you. When we sin and then accept his forgiveness, he wraps you up and you start over and he fills you with his love.
I think all that I learned here at SpringHill will carry with me for the rest of my life. When I get home I think I will be more enthusiastic about God and praying and church. I think I have definitely had a positive change this week. All I can say is I can’t wait to come back next year.”
Now our prayer is that God will use Anne’s week at SpringHill as a foundational step in her becoming, every single day, more and more the person Christ created her to be so she can do all He created and planned for her to do now and throughout the rest of her life.
The Lesson in Eclipsing 19,000 Summer Campers
“By the summer of 2019, 19,000 kids will attend one of six summer camps.” It was 1997 and the SpringHill board and leadership had just updated and approved the ministry’s strategic plan using Jim Collins and Jerry Porras’ book Built to Last as a guide.
Collins and Porras’ research revealed that enduring organizations had a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” (BHAG). The “19 by 19” goal, as it was soon to be called, was SpringHill’s BHAGG (we added the first G – God – to our definition).
Now understand, in 1997 SpringHill’s board and leaders were people of talent and faith who wanted to do something significant for kids and Christ’s Kingdom. And the “19 by 19” goal reflected both this desire and the best information available to them at the time.
Yet today as I write, here in the summer of 2012, we just eclipsed this “19 by 19” goal. Please know I’m not sharing this with you so you can be impressed or congratulate us for handily beating our goal, but instead to demonstrate a point about goal setting that Collins and Porras doesn’t address.
In goal setting we tend to be overly optimistic about short-term goals and overly pessimistic about long-term goals. The main reason for this phenomenon is that we tend to think of the future only in the context of what we know in the present. For example, our staff and board knew and understood overnight camping but could not possibly have foreseen the dramatic demographic changes that would lead us to begin our Day Camp ministry nearly 10 years later (this ministry has played a significant role in our beating the 19 by 19 goal seven years early).
The lesson we learned, and then implemented in restating our BHAGG back in 2003 was that a visionary goal isn’t based on a “calculation”. It’s bigger than that, so big that we’d have no any idea how it would be achieved. The goal needed to be big enough “to leave room for God”, as one board member put it. Today our BHAGG is that, by 2025, we’ll have 260,000 people a year experience SpringHill.
Now, to be completely honest, only time will tell if we got this long-term goal setting thing right and whether the next generation of SpringHill leaders will judge us as fool hearted souls or Saturday morning sand baggers.
Jerry Sandusky and the Hard Reality about Child Abuse
With the report from Penn State’s internal investigation of the Sandusky affair released this week, we’re all reminded once again of children’s vulnerability to abuse. Yet, as important as the reporting about this horrific situation is, there are two facts that are continually reported that can cloud our vision about the nature of child abuse.
The first fact is that most of Sandusky’s victims were from broken homes, where no father was present, and the economic challenges were great. The second fact is that the abuse was the result of a known public figure swooping in and taking advantage of these children living in difficult situations.
Both of these facts are true, but this cannot lead us to believe that this is the most common scenario for child abuse. Because the reality is that abuse happens in every corner of our society including to those kids who come from families that look like, on the surface, that they have it all together. And secondly, the perpetrator, more often or not, is a family member or close friend, not a public figure.
We know this to be true at SpringHill because nearly every week during summer camp our staff discover campers who have been or are being physically, emotionally, and sexually abused by family members or close family friends. They’re from rich families and poor families, and families from the city and families from the suburbs. It happens within families who attend church faithfully and those who’ve never entered a church building in their lives. The harsh reality is – where there are children, abuse is always a possibility because kids, being who they are, are by nature vulnerable to predators.
Fortunately, because SpringHill is a safe place, kids feel the freedom to share with our staff their experiences, including many who’ve never shared their horrors with anyone before doing so at camp. This allows us to do what Penn State failed to do – first, report these situations to the appropriate authorities, and second to assure these young victims receive the support they need to move forward and ultimately be healed.
So let’s not be lulled into believing child abuse only happens in certain segments of our society. Instead let’s always diligently look for signs of abuse and then, when we see them, to have the courage to do what’s necessary to protect all our children from these horrific evils.
SpringHill Alumni Making A Difference
Last week, while at our Mack Avenue Community Church/Hope Community Church SpringHill Day camp, I ran into former summer staffers Kristen VanderPlas-Selle and Jessica Concannon. I’m always encouraged to hear what God’s doing in and through our SpringHill “alumni” and last week was no different. After graduating from college and finishing their summer careers at SpringHill these two women made decisions to continue to serve and minister to kids.
Kristen (summers 05-08) leads Mack Avenue’s after school literary program (click here to read about one of her students). She and her husband Scott (another SpringHill alum) live right in the heart of 48214 zip code – one of Detroit’s most economically devastated neighborhoods. Their willingness to become part of this community and to serve its residents is having a powerful and lasting impact on the lives of young people and their families.
Jessica (summers 05-10) has been a teacher for two years in a brand new Christian school, Tree of Life, which serves urban students from Kalamazoo, MI. Tree of Life’s mission is educate “all children regardless of their socio-economic situation. Tree of Life celebrates the diversity of the body of Christ and equips children to serve God, people, and creation to their fullest potential.” Jess has taught in a small, multiple grade class which has allowed her the opportunity to build strong relationships with her students and their families, opening the door for further ministry outside the class room.
Both Kristen and Jessica told me that their summers at SpringHill were influential in their decisions to work in these important communities and to serve these kids and their families. I’m thankful for Kristen (and Scott) and Jess for their commitment to bring Christ’s Kingdom to all people, and humbled by the small part SpringHill played in their decisions to do so.
