Learn it! Speak it! Live it!
Bring Christmas to a child in need!
An 'urgency': Sensing threats to institutions of society, church leaders make declaration 
Click to Print
Include Comments
Church camps closing
A growing number of church camps are facing the prospect of shutting their doors in a sour economy. According to Bob Kobielush, the president of the Christian Camp and Conference Association, dozens of Christian camps across the nation closed in the last three years, and this could be the last summer for as many as 10 to 15 percent more. Camp Sumatanga in Gallant, Ala., is one example. A recent study of the camp
revealed a $300,000 annual budget deficit and a 30 percent drop in visitors since 2000. When the economy worsened, both churches and other groups quit coming as often, making the situation worse.
But to blame the financial woes of church camps solely on the sour economy would be overly simplistic. In many ways their decline began long ago:
The Baby Boom turned into a bust for the camps, though, and many began losing visitors as religious denominations began contracting, TV replaced the campfire and kids’ schedules were filled with Little League practices, music lessons and dance recitals. Declining revenues meant renovations and repairs never happened at many camps as they aged, Kobielush said.
What’s the state of church camps where you live?
back to top29 Comments to “Church camps closing”
Pinecove dotcom.
Great place. The Sawgunner family has already paid too many installmts to have it go belly up now.
Report comment to moderator
There is one church camp in my county. It is run by the Episcopal church but is open to every denomination. It is THE place for the children to see and be seen. Even though we are Episcopal my child has never been. First it fills up so fast that you have to register in October for camp. Second, a friend of mine has her two daughters there this week. From what she was telling me, I am just not a competitive enough mother for my child to go. I also am not rich enough. She had to buy sheets for the beds, “egg crate” mattress covers, all sorts of supplies, you also fill up “goodie bags” for the children to get every day at mail call. Some of these kids come in “out-fitted” for camp out of Pottery Barn Kids. Sunscreen, shower shoes, robes, you name it they had to have it. This year all the girls had some sort of trunk and Amanda had to leave camp and go buy her girls whatever it was. She dropped them off on Tuesday at noon, but was there until 7pm getting them settled in. She also went by yesterday to drop off some books so Claire would have something to read. With all the money spent on “camping” I would rather troll Cheap Caribbean dot com until I can find another cheap package out of here and actually let Chloe get a stamp on her passport…and I would get a vacation as well!
Report comment to moderator
This is distressing. There is no place I know of where children grow more spiritually, intellectually, physically, socially, and personally than at church camps.
Churches need to do a better job of promoting this option for families and children. Forget calling your congressman for today and call your minister and get him to pitch your church camp options enthusiastically and get your church leaders to help sponsor them!!!
During hard economic times, movie and entertainment sales invaribaly go up, often dramatically. The problem here is not the economy, it is falling values and rising disregard for the wholeness needs of our children!
Report comment to moderator
Camp Nikos is a great camp experience run by Mission Possible! out of Austin Texas. Its a great way for fatherless welfare kids to escape (at least temporarily) all the bad stuff Satan has waiting out there to devour/derail them.
Report comment to moderator
Camps like these, which, my comments the other day notwithstanding, can be excellent experiences, are a luxury, affordable only by larger denominations and churches.
As denominations and churches schism and split and generally become less organized, they become less affordable.
And of course, both the surge in women in the workforce over the last 40 years and the current economic mess, make volunteer counselors harder to find.
Report comment to moderator
#3
The problem here is not the economy, it is falling values and rising disregard for the wholeness needs of our children!
the failing economy and stock market reduced income from endowments. so the problem is the economy.
Report comment to moderator
The problem is not the economy. That’s bologna. When a parent wants something good for their child, heaven and earth cannot stop then, let alone a measley economy. All parents are free to choose and free to have different views of what is best for their children. But the economy is not the decisive factor on issues where the good of children is concerned. Churches will come through to help too.
Don’t send your kids if you don’t want to. But don’t blame the economy for such decisions either way. It’s the children, stupid (not a personal reference but just an attempt to remind us of Clinton’s neo-marxist campaign theme about the economy).
Report comment to moderator
#5 Arcadia
“Camps like these, which, my comments the other day notwithstanding, can be excellent experiences, are a luxury, affordable only by larger denominations and churches.”
My mother’s cousin (Does that make him my Second cousin?) bought and built his own church camp in Bass Lake, CA. It may be owned by the Mennonites now.
Report comment to moderator
Maine has a long history of summer camps, and many of them are struggling this year; it’s not just church camps that are feeling the effects of the slow economy.
I’ve worked for several years with a Christian camp that runs just one week-long session each year for high schoolers. We are sponsored by our small church denomination but not financially supported by the denomination. The long-running camp – I think it’s about 70 years old now – is basically self-supporting.
We don’t have our own facility but rent from a summer camp that finishes its own sessions a little early. Due to a combination of late-summer camp and the early start for many high school sports, we lose quite a few kids each year who have to choose between sports and camp. Some of them feel they have made commitments to their coaches and need to honor those commitments, while others try to work things out with coaching staff so that they can both come to camp and play. Over the last five years or so, that situation has depressed our enrollment numbers, especially among the junior and senior guys.
Enrollment numbers for this year are below expectations and behind what they were last year at this time, and much of that is the economy. We charge less than $350 for the week, but for many families, even that amount is out of reach this year.
Report comment to moderator
I think economics are probably a factor, but I have a guess that there’s at least one other factor no one else has mentioned: parenting philosophies. That is, the subgroup of Christian parents who may be most likely to send their kids to camp (conservative, involved, intact families) has largely swerved conservative over the last few years, moving into homeschool only, for example, and separating itself in other ways even from less conservative members of the church. Many of them rarely, if ever, let kids out of their sight, and they won’t let their kids go anywhere that the atmosphere might not be as perfectly protected as their home.
I grew up going to camp frequently–probably not every summer, but I think it probably averaged out to every other summer, one week each summer. Then in my young adult years I frequently took a week of vacation and counseled at camp. The experience of counseling was a little bit disillusioning, because I saw quite a few ungodly or irresponsible teenagers put in as junior counselors. And in fact I once spent a week counseling under a group of leaders (not from my church, but from a different church) who had such weak discernment that they showed a bunch of barely pubescent kids a video that included footage of all the women counselors’ bras hooked together and stretched across the room–not only immodest, but hideously embarrassing to any normal 12-year-old girl! That was just one example out of many that those leaders were woefully unprepared for the physical and spiritual nurture of ten- to twelve-year-olds, yet in fact they’d been doing it for many years by that time.
But I’d still send my kids to camp, as long as I knew the leaders and could basically trust their ministry philosophy. Meanwhile, I told my sister too many “horror stories” from my years counseling at camp, and furthermore she simply decided that “mixed bathing” is out for her family (in spite of the fact that all camps I’ve ever attended or counseled at require one-piece suits, and often boys and girls swim at separate times). The swimming issue is enough for her, enough that her kids won’t go to camp unless she finds out that a particular camp shares her views on this one.
(I was never a boy, of course, but it seems to me that boys will inevitably see girls in swimsuits as they grow up, whether in ads or in real life, and seeing them when they’re little and not particularly focused on girls might actually make them less prone to ogle than they’d be if their first sight of the female body in a swimsuit is when he’s 15 and she’s 16. I do rather doubt that the average eight-year-old boy at camp spends a lot of time watching eight-year-old girls in swimsuits, but maybe that’s because I’m a girl and I thus spent no time watching boys in swimsuits, even when I was a teenager.)
Report comment to moderator
Cheryl, there’s a thread called “From Youth Groups to Agnosticism”. One cause of this may be parents who protect their children from the opposite sex.
The only thing that will keep boys from looking at girls is to remove the testosterone.
They did that to many boys years ago. That’s what a eunuch was.
Report comment to moderator
(This is in regard to #10 and #11, though it might not seem immediately obvious.)
We have several people working in our department who are from Brazil (IT contractors in long-term assignments), and last week two of them gave us a brief introduction to Brazilian language and culture. One of them (who happens to also be an Evangelical Christian who attends the same church I do) talked about how important family is to them, much more than what he observes here in the U.S. (And we live in the rural midwest, where people are fairly conservative). He emphasized it over and over again, including when he explained that “Carnaval” (Mardi Gras) in Rio is a family-oriented event, to which parents feel very comfortable taking their children, not at all like what people here think from what they see on TV (and apparently not much like what goes on – or at least used to – in New Orleans).
So then I was surprised when he explained that because of the “beach culture” in Brazil, they grow up used to seeing people in swimsuits a great deal of the time (most of the population lives near the coast). And therefore it’s no big deal, nothing to make a guy pay any attention.
I have heard that idea before, but more as a hypothetical. It was interesting to hear it from someone from a culture that actually views things that way.
Report comment to moderator
Chas et al,
As I’ve said before, we send youngsters off frequently to the world beyond high school and youth group (in-residence college or even the military) at ages where the siren songs of peer pressure are often quite loud to the exclusion of whatever else they have been taught or claim to believe. The value of Christian parachurch activity (yes, even for young sailors or airmen) cannot be de-emphasized.
Unquestionably the fact that these young men and women now find themselves amidst folks who have no idea who they are or where they come from does contribute to “straying”. Moral compromise to one degree or another does cause youngsters to feel bad. That they were able to so easily betray firmly-held convictions invariably is understood that the youth’s commitmt was flawed or weakened. So the downward spiral sets in.
I wonder about the process’s rate at secular vs overtly religious schools with a clear Christian theme permeating the intellectual pursuit.
Report comment to moderator
Pauline – being born in a beach city, enjoying the beach since I was a child, always wearing a swim suit, I find nothing wrong with going to the beach, walking around in a swim suit and that would include the ’snack bar’ – If one is going to become so rigid that they wouldn’t allow their children to go swimming with boys and girls at the same time, it appears those who are this conservative would never visit the beach with swim suits on, OR maybe ONLY on a moonless night – though I suppose they could wade into the water with a skirt over the suit, and then tie it around their neck and swim out. LOL – some things are taken to extreme.
Report comment to moderator
Chas – ll
If kids are protected to the point of not going swimming for fear they might see or be observed in a swim suit, they have a big surprise when they leave home. Taking modesty to far will most likely cause most kids to become even more curious.
Yes testosterone is an issue, but so are a lot of other things – what would a wedding night be without it? – LOL
Report comment to moderator
“single sex bathing” — Muslim groups agitate for this.
Report comment to moderator
Pauline, I tend to think the same thing. I will say that I believe modesty is very important. When I was younger, I wore the most modest bathing suit I could find, and put my towel as close to the pool as I could, and hurried to it and wrapped in it the moment I got out. That was in Phoenix, where swimming was a very common event in summer. Today I’m not at all sure I’d be comfortable swimming where I might be seen by men who knew me, say men in my church, even with such precautions. But I don’t see anything wrong with small children wearing modest swimsuits and swimming together, and I suspect that in a culture where swimsuits sometimes are “street clothes,” a boy who’s used to seeing swimsuits is probably better prepared than one who isn’t.
Report comment to moderator
This may be long overdue. I went to church camp one year with a friend. It was in the 90s with high humidity, and we were not allowed to wear anything but long pants. Twenty years has passed. But every time I’m wearing khakis on a sweltering day, I think back to my one experience attending church camp.
Report comment to moderator
RSD – what denomination hosted the camp?
It’s ridiculous to insist anyone where long pants, boys, girls, men and women. I attented some conservative Christian camps and never were we told not to wear shorts – of course they couldn’t be short short, but they certainly were not down to the knee’s –
I’m sorry your experience brings back such memories.
Report comment to moderator
Bob: Good for your cousin! Getting any kids out of the city, or away from their families for a couple of weeks is, IMHO, very important.
BTW, the Mennonites are, as far as I know, not exactly a poor denomination.
Report comment to moderator
Bob,
No I don’t think that makes them second cousins. This is the way I understand it:
When cousins have kids, those kids are second cousins. And the kids are the first cousin, once removed from their parents cousin. So if you go down a generation from each of the cousins, it is second cousins. If you just go down a generation on one side it is still first cousins, but once removed. If you go down two generations on one side but none on the other it is first cousins, twice removed.
Report comment to moderator
I think Cheryl hit it on the head in #10. The decline in attendance started long before the economy went south; that was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. At any rate, this is just more evidence that Christianity as a social force is fading away.
Report comment to moderator
Just got back from picking up youngest son from Bible camp. Daughters went last week. All had a grand time. This is not something I did with first batch. I do not think they would have benefited from it. I do think these get something positive from it but not so much as I would like. It is good for them to see kids having good fun.
Report comment to moderator
My daughter and I just had a little giggle over the long pants rule (although I’m not dismissing how that was frustrating to the OP). She (our daughter) just returned from a 6-day camp where all the girls had to wear long skirts, long-sleeved shirts and head coverings — in 80-90 degree weather — and a great time was had by all. She was so glad she got to go, and loved everything about it.
Report comment to moderator
Victoria (19):
Church of the Nazarene. I’m sure that I could have worn shorts at a Calvinist church camp.
Report comment to moderator
RSD – I’m not a Calvinist, however you certainly could have worn shorts to ours, any color you like
I have good friends who are Nazarene – One of my friends from school married her H.S. sweatheart, he is a Nazarene pastor – in fact my father performed their marriage ceremony -
Report comment to moderator
Here in the deserts of Arizona, when I am going to be out in the sun for a long time, I wear the appropriate long pants and long shirts to protect myself from the sun. Yes its over 110 degrees here. Its actually cooler for your skin if you wear the long clothes while you are in the sun. And a wide brimmed hat is important too, to protect your face. Those who don’t wear the long clothes and hat have a much higher instance of skin cancer.
The important thing is to drink plenty of water. We try to avoid the sun in the middle of the day if possible.
In the mountains, where it is cool (only getting up to the 80’s or 90’s), the damage to your skin is actually more likely since the atmosphere is thinner and, therefore, you get more UV rays. This damage is exaggerated since you don’t feel the heat of the sun so much and usually stay out in it more or don’t feel the need for the long clothes.
I’m sure also that at some camps (ours here are all in the mountains) you need the long clothes to protect from things like poison ivy and chiggers as well.
Report comment to moderator
I do, though, usually wear shorts and short sleeves and flip-flops most of the time in the summer, but try to avoid much time in the sun. With flop-flops, the sun is so hot on the top of my feet during the middle of the day that I quickly look for shade.
Report comment to moderator
Demographics:
1) Mainstream denominations have all been in decline for years thus fewer kids, fewer contributors
2) Declining birthrates (particularly amongst sophisticated, urban mainstream denominations). ditto above
Economics:
in particular last years oil price rise coupled with this years general economy.
I never went to “Church Camp” – barely went to church and wasn’t a believer. The stories I heard though, about church camp shocked even me.
That said, my youngest two are leaving tomorrow morning, we’ll go get them in 5 days. They are pumped. If I’m not mistaken the genders swim at different times. That is probably more for benefit of the teenage staff than the kids.
Report comment to moderator
back to topJoin The Conversation
You need to be a registered user of WORLDonTheWeb.com to "join the conversation."
If you are not a member yet, what are you waiting for? Register / Login Now!