When I was getting into leading and planning worship services, blogs were an invaluable source of ideas and inspiration. So I resolved to keep an online record of what we did at Sumatanga in the summer. So without further delay here's part one...

Part 2 of the series... see the end of the article for links to the other installments.

Monday

As I said in part 1. One of my goals was to given the campers an overview of just what to have faith in. I handled that via Monday's program. It was a bit ambitious: Let's cover the whole story of the Bible in one program.

I was really excited about this one. There were a lot of moving pieces to it, video clips, re-enactments by campers, lighting, music. Below is just an overview of it. There were atmospheric videos while I was speaking and music to go along with it. 

The key idea was what I was talking about in the previous entry in my intro. What is the story God is trying to tell?

Part 3 of the series... see the end of the article for links to the other installments.

Tuesday

I've been extremely fortunate in my programs that none of them (at least in my mind) have completely failed to come together. Though, there was the program in 2007 where we put out the idea of the properity gospel for folks to discuss and the campers thought we were advocating for it. Sometimes you have this idea that seems great in your own head, but others don't perceive it as such.

Tuesday night's program was only going to work if the campers took it seriously. We let them drive the direction of it. It was only going to be as deep as they were.

Since the theme was Faith Alive, I naturally, wanted to deal with doubt. Camp is a safe place to ask questions. I had this idea of addressing controversial questions that was inspired by a Rob Bell sermon about the Parable of the Wicked Servant.

Part 4 of the series, see the end of the article for other installments.

Wednesday

One of the advantages to having done programs for several years is that if something really works, after 4 years you can use it again because the campers turn over after 4 years.

This program was a modified version of one we did back in 2006. Again, the overall theme for the summer camps in 2010 was Faith Alive. So I had this progression of things that brought to mind for me. What is it we really believe in, what's the story? Getting that down was important, but the next part was to move into how to be ready to listen for when God calls to you.

May 21 is Coming.

"I am worried at the ways in which so many North American Christians are wedded to particular views of the second coming and find this so dominant a question, while other central and vital areas of Christian, and Gospel, thinking are marginalized."
Bishop NT Wright

This has been an issue I've been paying attention to ever since I saw a segment on 60 Minutes about Christian Zionism back in 2003.