Semester in Review

            Coming to Launch was exciting for several reasons.  As strange as it is to think of it now, it was the first time I was away from my parents.  This was a challenge, most of which consisted of finding something for myself to do with no urgency.  At home as a senior in high school busy was the name of the game.  Sabre Dance may as well have been playing as my life’s background music.  Now it’s more like Be Still My Soul, which is now my favorite hymn.  But new songs to sing in the dishroom and the car are not the only thing I have learned here.  I have been taught by well nigh everyone I come into contact with since Launch began, including my parents, and with special mention to His Exalted Majesty, Jesus. 

            Work was expected when I showed up.  In fact, work ethic was the only foreseen benefit I could come up with at my interview.  Camping ministry is all about work, well, all about Jesus.  And work.  The general principle of work around here is, in my opinion, most aptly summed up in Earl’s statement, “Life is 95% cleaning toilets.”  Meaning, of course, that the vast majority of things which we have to do in life and in ministry are rather mundane, boring, nondescript, and unglamorous.  Oh, well.  I did arrive with what I thought was a love for manual labor, though I even at the time admitted it was in principle only.  In other words, I thought I loved manual labor.  But work ethic and appreciation for labor are not learned via intellectual assent.  They are learned through practice.  And we get plenty of practice around here.  The most important thing I learned about ministry, though, is still its purpose.  To glorify Jesus Christ.  This is why we are here, both at Hidden Acres and on this planet.  We are here to glorify Jesus.  And this brings us joy.  Back in September or October, I think, I was washing out the deep sinks when it occurred to me that Jesus was glorified by the purity He had put into my heart, which can be demonstrated in any capacity, so long as it is not sin.  Therefore, my joy is not dependent in any way upon what I am at any given moment doing, but rather on Jesus.  Since He does not change, whereas what I do changes every day (sometimes more often than that), my joy may be constant.  So I had a joy party with my head in the deep sink, rejoicing that in Jesus’ glory.  This, and experiences like it, have been the highlight of Launch.

            Particularly concerning Hidden Acres, I have learned a good deal about why we are here, how we operate, and why our quirks make sense.  Hidden Acres keeps in mind its founding values.  Earl talked to us one day about our stakeholders, which means, those people who have a vested interest in the camp.  Our primary stakeholders are those men of the Evangelical Free Church who were around to see the founding of the camp thirty-two years ago.  What they value, we value.  Being a history person and liking old-fashioned stuff I greatly appreciate this fact.  I wouldn’t mind if the rules were three times as strict, (I’m not exaggerating), but I think what we’ve got is working very well and is glorifying the Lord, so I’m all in favor of sticking to what we’ve got.  Another thing I’ve noticed is Hidden Acres’ passion for hospitality.  This place is big into whatever makes the guests feel at home.  We could be a five star hotel if we wanted to be.  I don’t know if there’s a “Customer Service” star, but we’d totally get it.  As Launch students, we have been told time and time again to do such-and-such a thing in order to make the guests more at home, serve them more, etc.  This is good.  It is right for a Christian camp to be hospitable.  God is hospitable, after all.  He’s letting us live on His best planet. Yet the most important thing of Hidden Acres I have gleaned is that we facilitate the Gospel.  As a Launch student I don’t see a whole lot of opportunities to actually present the Gospel to someone, especially in the dishroom.  But what I do, yea, what we do, makes it possible for the Gospel to be clearly and forcefully proclaimed by the retreat leaders and speakers.  The Gospel is so awesome and we want people to know Jesus, so we provide an environment for that to happen.  If you think about it, that’s pretty big.  Having the amount of stuff we do, the buildings, the staff, the years of labor, it’s pretty huge that our sole purpose is to proclaim the saving message to Jesus Christ. May we never lose sight of that.

            Leadership.  Ah, leadership.  I have often joked during my time here that the only thing I have authority over at camp is my bedroom.  Oh, well.  Yet I have learned.  And from my leaders, no surprise.  From Earl I learned two valuable principles.  Firstly, “Always keep enlarging your circles.”  The more influence a leader gains, the more people he leads, and the more effective his leadership is.  Secondly, “If a leader does not change over time, he won’t last.”  This one hit me between the eyes.  I greatly dislike change, which I suppose is at least in part due to the fact that I was raised Lutheran.  I have hidden in the shadows of fifty to five hundred years ago for most of my life, trying desperately not to be influenced by the times, but this principle forced me to think again.  In fifty more years, the vast majority of the people who agree with me will be dead.  Bummer.  Now I have to do something or become horribly ineffective.  I suppose I’ll just have to deal with it and cling to Jesus, who, much to my liking, doesn’t change.  Finally, I learned from Brett that discipleship has a lot to do with living life with people.  This is both encouraging and depressing.  Depressing because communities do next to nothing together anymore.  How does one live life with someone without an event these days?  You must nearly live in the same house with them to even hope to get any quality time together.  And then, many folks get the least quality time with their families.  Yet it is encouraging also, for I tend to take things too seriously.  To give an example, I will contrast our experiences at Sunstream and Twin Lakes. 

At Sunstream, the director welcomed us and brought us into his office, where he sat us down and told us everything imaginable about the camp in only half an hour.  Being and auditory learner I thrived on this, and enjoyed it very much.  It was intense, I could have taken notes (if I wasn’t overconfident in my memory), and I learned everything in a neatly packaged way.  Then he took us on a short and very informative tour of all the buildings, explaining the history and philosophy of the camp while he was at it.  At Twin Lakes, the program director invited us to have some coffee (I opted for hot chocolate), showed us the building we were in, and visited with us for the rest of the morning.  The other camp staff served us lunch and told us about what they did over lunch, after which we were shown even more buildings, and went out on the frozen lake to fly the program director’s training kite.  It was delightful. 

When I am thinking of discipleship, I tend to think of Sunstream’s method.  I want to sit down and have a good, long, informative conversation with the other person, whether I am informing them or they are informing me.  I want to be forward and frank, get to the point, taking as long as necessary, and pray at the end.  Brett has both explained and demonstrated to me the method at Twin Lakes.  Living life together.  I learned more about Twin Lakes and grew to like it that much more, not from an informative sit-down meeting, but from a nonchalant, care-free day of just being with the people there.  Delightful indeed.

Concerning myself, I learned that I am an extrovert.  How I ever thought any differently, I don’t know.  Secondly, I arrived here about 50% postmodern, 40% modern, and 10% premodern.  Now, I’m about 70% postmodern, 10% modern, and 20% premodern.  One of the most valuable things I have learned here is the concepts of Values, Mission, and Vision.  That blog assignment was definitely my favorite.  I took great care and joy in writing it and will likely not change it much for the rest of my life.  When folks ask me what I’m learning at Launch, I tell them, “Trusting God.”  So many times I have begun something by my own power, only to find that God has other plans, totally smashes mine, and brings His to pass.  What He does is basically take something away from me that is sinful, mostly idols, and then utterly obliterates them, leaving a hole in my heart.  Then, He fills that hole with more of Himself.  This as an utterly heart-wrenching and joy-exponentiating experience.  The greater the intensity, the greater the adventure, the greater the joy, the more of Jesus Christ.  Yes, always more of Jesus, my Savior and my God! 

Definitely the best and most important thing that I have learned this year at Launch is this: the Being of God is the Ultimate Reality, the bedrock of all truth, and the center focus of all existence.  Sadly, no expression of words can describe the weight of this concept.  Think of it this way: everything is the way it is, because GOD IS.  Nature is beautiful because it is God’s creation, and God is gloriously beautiful.  The standard of the Law is holy, high, and perfect, because so is God.  We are made in God’s image, so to be like Him is our created purpose, so when we are like Him our greatest longings are satisfied.  And the Gospel is filled with mercy, grace, peace, joy, love, hope, faith, thanksgiving, blessing, truth, power, majesty, mystery, wonder, honor, wisdom, and glory, because so is God.

Praise Jehovah!  Praise God in His holy place; praise Him in the expanse of His might.

Praise Him in His mighty acts; praise Him according to His excellent greatness.

Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet; praise Him with the harp and lyre.

Praise Him with the timbrel and dance; praise Him with strings and pipes.

Praise Him on the sounding cymbals; praise Him with the resounding cymbals.

Let everything that breathes praise Jehovah.  Praise Jehovah!

-Psalm 150

Q 'n' A at Twin Lakes

1.  When was the camp founded?

1956

2.  Why was the location chosen?

It was a central location for the Evangelical Covenant and Brethren churches in Iowa, who founded the camp.

3.  Why was the Swede Bend building moved to camp?

I believe I forgot to ask this one. 

My guess is that since it is the first Covenant church and holds a particular history for the denomination, the camp was a better place for people to see it, rather than south of Stratford where it originally was.

4.  Can you give me a brief history of the Evangelical Covenant Church?

It was originally Swedish, and was the same as the Evangelical Free Church, but they split over a few small things, like infant baptism.  Another difference is that they allow the ordination of women.  In recent years, the Covenant Seminary in Chicago has gone liberal and is cranking out liberal pastors as a result.  This has caused the conservative churches of the denomination to either leave, go liberal, or die.  It is a sad thing to see.  The camp, however, is still quite conservative.

5.  What is a particular strength of Twin Lakes?

The waterfront.

I witnessed this strength while we were there.  They have a huge chunk of waterfront as part of the lake community.  The lake is surrounded with houses and the camp works well within the community.  They are able to do sweet boating, wakeboarding, and kiting with the use of the lake.  Kiting was a particularly intriguing thing about the camp.  Our tour guide, Joe, showed us how he uses his kites.  They are large enough that a good wind will drag the one flying the kite across the frozen lake, especially with skis or a snowboard.

Team Launch

            In teambuilding, so we have been told, eight components contribute to its health.  They follow with their respective explanations:

1. Direction: The team has a shared understanding of its purpose and goals.

2.  Talent: Each team member knows and shares his talents with the others.

3.  Work Process: The way things are done is planned and efficient.

4.  Roles: Each team member understands his own function and that of the others.

5.  Team Process: The team communicates and cooperates well.

6.  Team Norms: The culture of the team is generally understood and articulated.

7.  Reinforcement: The team members build one another up with encouragement in love.

8.  External Relations:  The team understands its larger role in the organization and relate well to those outside the team.

            In Launch, probably our greatest strength is External Relations.  We know, as our team, how we relate to everyone else here at camp.  Our function as a team is to do the things that need to be done, whether that means we are each off in different directions helping in different areas, or working together on a particular project, such as the log cabin or pop cans.  Since we work under everyone, we have excellent relations as a team with those not in our team, because we are constantly working alongside of them in support roles.

           

            Perhaps our weakest area is Reinforcement.  We don’t really tell one another when a good job is done.  A good job is expected, so when it is, in fact, done, nothing special has occurred.  It’s normal to do a good job.  The only feedback we really get is if we are doing something wrong, partly because this is out of the ordinary, but partly because this is the only time we demand attention.  Flaws draw our attention in a task-oriented environment, but we must be ever-mindful that the tasks are not eternal, but our co-workers’ souls are.

Introspection Again

                Today in class we had some more introspection time to examine where we each fall on the social pattern graph.  The importance put on this process by its propagators makes me wonder how folks in the early Church functioned without all these charts, diagrams, categories, functions, pros and cons.  But perhaps I am a bit cynical.  I have grown to resent introspection because it smells like selfishness, and methodology because it smells like legalism and self-sufficiency.  Yet here I am.

            We examined ourselves on two respective axis, namely, Assertiveness and Responsiveness.  These axis were measured to the degree of Ask or Tell and Control or Emote, respectively.  The long and short of it is, we were asked to discern whether we make our opinions known or not on the one scale, and whether we hide or gush our emotions on the other.  I fell strongly on the side of Tell, or making my opinions known, and weakly on the side of Control, or concealing my emotions.  This means that I tell it like it is, I will be the first and last one to speak if allowed, and if anyone happens to disagree with me, I will hasten to battle.  And as to emotions, I often conceal them, frequently behind a mask of general happiness or blunt honesty.  Other times, I do not, but rather splash my emotions all over everyone.  This is almost universally the case with my enthusiasm.  When I am genuinely excited about Jesus, I let the whole world know.  Usually, I do not feel this way, so I am often hiding my emotions.

            This particular quadrant on the nifty Cairn graph is named Driver.  The qualities they list that particularly ring true for myself are as follows, both good and bad: not easily discouraged, tends to know the right answers, leads and organizes, energizes others, unsympathetic, wants constant activity, and  dominates others.

            Finally, I have been asked how I may better interact with those of the other styles.  This is not as simple as a three-step process or nine tips, it is, in fact, as simple as one thing: “Trust in Jehovah with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.”  (Proverbs 3:5-6)  This is so marvelously simple, but it is in fact, the universal how-to.  Yet it is not properly a how-to, because it leaves all the burden of action on Jehovah.  How positively glorious!  The fruits or results of trusting Jehovah in this situation would likely look like this: I will listen and ask engaging questions to my quiet and less domineering friends, I will carefully consider their opinion without plowing over them, and I will be a good listener when they are explaining their emotions to me.  Listening, questioning, being interested, in short, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself, I am Jehovah.” (Leviticus 19:18)