I wish to pick up a theme we began just a few weeks ago; the theme of Urban Camping. I have reproduced (actually Shelby has reproduced what Linda Kilburn has researched) the 2001 census figures for under 30 year olds in Western Canada. It will be interesting to see how these numbers will change in the 2006 census which are available in 2007.The point of reproducing these numbers are to underscore the huge challenge before us and to re-configure our resources to meet that challenge.
As you can see from the charts, there are 3,072,625 individuals between 5 and 18 in the West. This issue doesn’t begin to deal with Family and Children’s ministry (another newsletter topic) nor other youth initiatives but just camping. We have outstanding camping programs in the Baptist Union. We support and facilitate camping in the following provinces. They are listed below with their director(s) and contact information.
Manitoba
Pelican Lake Baptist Camp
Contact Person: Lloyd Talbot, Board Chairman
Co-Administrators: Tom and Karen Wenham
Address Camp: Box 95, Ninette, Manitoba R0K 1R0
Address Home: 2 McCallum Cres., Winnipeg, MB, R3R 2S6
Phone # Home: 204-831-9724
Phone # Camp: 204-528-3246
Email: camp@plbc.ca
Website: www.plbc.ca
Saskatchewan
The Quest at Christopher Lake Baptist Camp and Retreat Centre
Phone # Office: (306) 982-2615
Fax #: (306) 934-0059
Address: 1351 – 28 St. E., Prince Albert, Saskatchewan S6V 6T4
Email: info@questnet.ca
Web Site: www.questnet.ca
Contact Person: Managing Director – Lynda Brazeau
Phone #: (306) 934-0591
Katepwa Baptist
Contact Person: Board Chairman: Neil Sundeen
Address: Box 224 Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan S0G 1S0
Phone # Office: 306-332-4727
Phone # Home: 306-332-2888
Web Site: www.kbk.ca
Alberta
Gull Lake
Contact Person: Executive Director: Jeff Dyer
Program Director: Todd McLaren
Address: RR #3 Lacombe, Alberta T0C 1S0
Phone # Office: 403-782-2495
Email: info@gulllakecamp.net
Web Site: www.gulllakecamp.net
Mill Creek
Contact Person: Director: Calley Erickson
Address: Box 132 Pincher Creek, Alberta T0K 1W0
Phone #: 403-627-4400
email: info@millcreekcamp.org
Website: www.millcreekcamp.org
Wapiti
Contact Person: Director: Darren Andres
Address: McLaurin Baptist Church 10315-114 Ave., Grand Prairie, AB T8V 1X2
Phone # Office: 780-532-2823
Fax #: 780-532-2821
Email: campwapiti@hotmail.com
Website: www.campwapiti.ca
British Columbia
Keats
Contact Person: Executive Director: Kirk Potter
Program Director: Jay Young
Address: 234 Brooksbank Ave. North Vancouver, British Colombia V7J 2C1
Phone # Office: 604-980-6799
Phone # Summer: 604-886-7612
Email: info@keatscamps.com
Web Site: www.keatscamps.com
Sylvan Acres
Contact Person: VIA Moderator: John Wilton
Program Directors: Pat MacDonald and Adam Richards
Address: General Delivery, Lake Cowichan, British Colombia V0R 2G0
Phone # Office: n/a
Phone # Summer: n/a
Email: info@sylvanacres.org
Web Site: www.sylvanacres.org
We the Baptist Union will continue to support, finance, expand and pray for our residential camps. We will however never have enough spaces for all the children who need to attend our camps. Children for whom urban camping may be their only exposure to the Christian faith, whose only opportunity to discover Christ as their friend and their saviour may be lost.
Our present residential camps can only accommodate 3700 – 4500 children annually, a figure for below the needs, numbers and opportunities for ministry in this age group. Our camps have another capacity problem; each year we train hundreds of young people (15-30 somethings) and after a brief time of service they need to work at more lucrative summer jobs, they graduate, or they find ministry opportunities elsewhere.
This proposal seeks to create an ever expanding opportunity to share the camping experience with tens of thousands of Western Canadian children and to re-involve in our life as a church the leadership God has used in so many of our camps in the past.
I am proposing that this next summer we try six town and city non residential camp pilot projects in our constituency. I have identified 3 of the six and am looking for 3 more. The format is as follows:
- A Friday evening to Sunday afternoon experience where campers stay in a church building
- A Monday to Friday camp where children stay at home.
The day would be formatted like any residential camp day; activities, bible study, and good food.
The leadership would be former Union camp counsellors.
The costs would be born by the church, user fees and the Union.
The teaching curriculum would be provided by the camp committee (most of it is in hand).
The “urban camps” would be conducting in conjunction with existing residential camps.
We would use easily accessible public facilities like swimming pools, climbing walls, hiking areas and arrange lease agreements for bicycles, etc.
We will attempt (by God’s grace) to meet and integrate between 500 – 1000 new youth to our Sunday School and Youth Groups and will carry some of these urban camping experiences into the fall and spring.
For more details please contact me or Shelby Gregg at jbell@buwc.ca .
Warmly,
In Christ
Jeremy Bell
Lent 2006
Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward
Let man’s soul be a sphere, and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
And as the other Spheres, by being grown
Subject to foreign motions, lose their own,
And being by others hurried every day
Scarce in a year their natural form obey:
Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit
For their first mover, and are whirl’d by it.
Hence is’t, that I am carried towards the west
This day, when my soul’s form bends toward the east.
There I should see a sun, by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget;
But that Christ on this cross, did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees God’s face, that is self life, must die;
What a death were it then to see God die?
It made his own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made his footstool crack, and the sun wink.
Could I behold those hands which span the poles,
And turn all spheres at once, pierced with those holes?
Could I behold that endless height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our souls, if not of his,
Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn
By God, for apparel, ragg’d or torn,
If on these things I durst not look, durst I
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was God’s partner here, and furnished thus
Half of that sacrifice, which ransomed us?
Through these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
They are present yet to my memory,
For that looks towards them; and thou look’st towards me,
O Saviour, as thou hang’st upon the tree;
I turn my back to thee, but to receive
Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O think me worth thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rusts, and my deformity,
Restore thine image, so much, by thy grace,
That thou may’st know me, and I’ll turn my face.
John Donne- taken from The Lion Christian Poetry Collection
A Quiet Roar
one
he lays his left hand along the beam
hand that moulded clay into fluttering birds
hand that cupped wild flowers to learn their peace
hand that stroked the bee’s soft back and touched death’s sting
two
he stretches his right hand across the grain
hand that blessed a dead corpse quick
hand that smeared blind spittle into sight
hand that burgeoned bread, smoothed down the rumpled sea
three
he stands laborious
sagging, split,
homo erectus, poor bare forked thing
hung on nails like a picture
he is not beautiful
blood sweats from him in rain
far off where we are lost, desert dry
thunder begins its quiet roar
the first drops startle us alive
the cloud no bigger
than a man’s hand
Veronica Zundel – taken from The Lion Christian Poetry Collection