Camping out
United Methodists’ ‘Voyage’ travels to churches across Oklahoma.
With all the trappings of a day camp — inflatable bumper balls, archery sets, water games, a bounce house and a waterslide — a team of camp counselors are on the go this summer.
“Voyage,” the new United Methodist mobile day camp, hit the road in early June and will continue through July 28.
The Rev. Ed Parker, director of the Oklahoma United Methodist Conference’s camp and retreat ministries, said a team of college students is taking the camp for youths age 7-12 to eight different churches across the state.
The first camp was offered June 5-9 at Asbury United Methodist Church in Ada. It was followed by camps at Oak Park Retreat Center in Perkins and at Faithbridge United Methodist in Heavener. The next camp is set to begin on Monday at West Tulsa United Methodist.
Parker said he designed the mobile camp concept as a way to connect youths to the Lord in an informal and fun setting. He said the camp also is good way to introduce the United Methodist Church to youths who don’t regularly attend any church. “I think it’s a great opportunity for us
to get out of our bubble,” he said.
Parker said United Methodist Church is full of warm, friendly people who readily welcome new families into their midst, but if youths and their loved ones encounter Christ at the day camp, he would be thrilled with only that.
“From my perspective, quite candidly, I don’t care if they become United Methodists. I just want to introduce them to the Good News and a relationship with God,” he said.
Some Methodist churches have partnered together to host the camp. For instance, First United Methodist of Tulsa, Grace United Methodist-Tulsa and St. Paul’s United Methodist-Tulsa have partnered with West Tulsa United Methodist for the Voyage camp set to start Monday at the West Tulsa house of worship.
Similarly, Lost Creek, Eden Chapel and First United Methodist Church of Perkins joined to host the camp held June 12-16 at the Oak Park Retreat Center in Perkins.
Neil Tate serves as program director for the Methodist conference’s camp and retreat ministries.
He said the churches that host the Voyage camps are asked to help recruit youths. Some churches have gone door-to-door in neighborhoods and some have sent out flyers to the surrounding community.
Along with promotion, the host churches also are responsible for providing room and board for the mobile day camp team members and raising scholarship funds for campers. Startup and development funding for Voyage was provided by a grant from the Methodist conference’s New People New Places initiative.
The camp costs $100 per camper, but scholarship funds have been set up to help disadvantaged youths.
‘Fantastic experience’
Tate said he and the Voyage camp counselors never know how many youths will show up to the camps, but thus far, they’ve always had a nice size group.
“You never really know what each small town is going to do. You don’t know if the whole town is going to turn out, or if there are just going to be a few kids,” Tate said.
“We show up with the stuff, and hope the kids will come.”
The Rev. Travis Muse, senior pastor of Asbury United Methodist in Ada, said Voyage helped his congregation with about 100 members offer a camp experience that they wouldn’t have been able to provide without the mobile camp program.
“A church our size couldn’t have done a camp this size on our own. If fact, I kind of described it as vacation Bible school on steroids. Usually churches will do a couple of hours for vacation Bible school, but this was an all-day activity,” he said.
Muse said about 40 children from the Ada community attended the camp, and volunteers from the church showed up to help Voyage team members run the camp program.
He said campers were asked to bring their lunches each day, but the church decided to offer hot meals and a snack daily so that no child would feel excluded if they did not bring food.
“It was really a fantastic experience for us,” Muse said.
“Asbury is located in a neighborhood so we are off the beaten path, and we don’t often get a lot of driveby interest. This allowed us to reach back into our neighborhood.”