Vol 2 No. 14 Urban Camping

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

lbrazeau@questnet.ca

 

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:

 

  1. A Friday evening to Sunday afternoon experience where campers stay in a church building
  2. 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

 

 

 

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