Camp Fireside Celebrations
One of the rhythms we strive for as a church is to remember, reflect, and give thanks. It’s easy in our fast-paced culture to move on from one thing to the next without taking the time to pause and to see the hand of God at work in our lives. Knowing this tendency in us, God was constantly telling the Israelites to pause and remember.
In fact, God instructed the Israelites at different times to specifically construct monuments for the purposes of remembering. One such example is found in Joshua 4. As the Israelites are marching to conquer the Promised Land, the Lord miraculously stops up the Jordan River. In so doing he commands Joshua, the leader of the Israelites, as follows:
When all the nation had finished passing over the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, “Take twelve men from the people, from each tribe a man, and command them, saying, ‘Take twelve stones from here out of the midst of the Jordan, from the very place where the priests' feet stood firmly, and bring them over with you and lay them down in the place where you lodge tonight.’” Then Joshua called the twelve men from the people of Israel, whom he had appointed, a man from each tribe. And Joshua said to them, “Pass on before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up each of you a stone upon his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel, that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever.” [Joshua 4:1-7]
So as we come to another milestone in the life of our church, we want to pause and remember all that God did during the week of Camp Fireside.
This was our first year doing a vacation Bible school style camp and we saw 84 kids participate over the course of the four days.
Almost half of these children indicated that they were not a part of or affiliated with any church in our city, which means for many of these children it was their first experience in a local church and hearing about Jesus.
We had two amazing missions teams (one from Two Cities Church & the other from Center Grove Church) from North Carolina join us. They provided essential help as well as encouragement throughout the week.
In total we had just over 40 volunteers give up their time and expend a lot of energy helping each of these children to have a blast but also learn about Jesus in a safe environment.
The kids participated in a coin war to see who could raise the most amount of money for one of our global partners: Child of Mine. After the competitive dust settled the children raised $1043.53.
That Sunday (July 7th) was our concluding day of camp and we saw one of our highest attendance totals ever as a church. Many new families connected with us that week.
Port City: take time this week to pray and thank God for how he worked during the week of Camp Fireside. Pray for the kids who attended - specifically that He who began a good work in these children would see it through to completion (Phil. 1:6). And pray for the families who connected with us during Camp Fireside that don’t have a local church family. Pray that many of these families would jump in and join us.
“To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” — 2 Peter 3:18
