I spend a good bit of every summer sleeping in strange beds and tending to odd aches. Summer is what I call "Christian camp season," and I usually preach several weeks each year at camps in Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina and other states.
This past week was a week of teen camp in lovely Hiawassee, Ga. The camp was Camp Hosanna.
Camp Hosanna is celebrating 15 years of serving kids all during the summer. One of the most unique things about Camp Hosanna is that it was founded with an almost unheard of philosophy: provide an excellent camp for kids without charging them a penny to come.
As you may well imagine, "experts" have repeatedly weighed in on just how impossible that is. And yet, for 15 years, it has been successfully done.
Pulling onto the grounds of Camp Hosanna is almost breathtaking. The scenery of the North Georgia mountains lends itself to the belief that when God was sprinkling beauty out on the Earth, when he got to that area the cap somehow fell off the bottle.
There is a lovely creek that borders two sides of the camp. Tubing in that water is like finding liquid winter in the midst of a sticky summer. But as a counterbalance to that pristine cleanliness, the camp staff has provided a mud pit for the kids to play games in.
And then there is the food. Many summer camps have food that accurately match the lyrics of a Patch the Pirate song, "ooey gooey uppy chucky." This camp has food that makes you regret ever having to go into town for supplies and miss a meal.
Each day is loaded with creative games and contests; the staff does such a good job on this that our hyperactive kids sleep most all the way home on Friday.
But the main point of the camp is found in the worship services both morning and evening. Over a 15-year span, right at 1,700 people, both young and old, have come to know Christ as their Savior. Many young men have been called to preach. Many teenagers have made vows of purity. Many marriages have come about as a result of godly young people finding each other there.
Ecclesiastes 12:1 says, "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth." There is no greater time than the formative young years for people to spend a week removing themselves from technological and societal distractions and immersing themselves in the things of the Lord and in fellowship with each other.
If I may be so bold as to say so, if you are looking for a worthwhile cause to support, this would be a good one. There are many fine Christian camps out there, but there are also many young people whose families cannot afford the tuition price to send them there. We used to take our church kids to a fine Christian camp years ago, but once the weekly price got to be nearly $300 per child, our families (many of whom have three and four kids) could not afford it.
Mind you, I am not knocking any camp that charges kids to come. I know that most of them are not even covering expenses based on what they charge.
Camp Hosanna operates by faith, believing that if they will not charge anything at all, God will motivate his people to keep the work going. Many of the kids who come do so from broken families who are struggling just to survive. Some of them eat more during that one week than they will for the next month at home.
And all of them are introduced to the one person who can change not just their lives, but also their eternity.
Check it out at www.camphosanna.org, I believe you will agree with me.
Bo Wagner is pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church of Mooresboro, N.C., a widely traveled evangelist and the author of several books (available on Amazon and at www.wordofhismouth.com). He can be reached by email at 2knowhim@cbc-web.org.