the green spot blog

On Sunday, I (Kerry) spent the day in the lovely (windy) city of Lethbridge. I spent the morning at College Drive Community Church -- one of Evergreen's supporting churches. College Drive does a very neat Camp Sunday each year -- this is the second time I've had the privilege of being involved. I was joined by representatives from Southern Alberta Bible Camp and Crowsnest Lake Bible Camp, and kids from the College Drive youth group interviewed us -- about our camps and about our relationships with God. The kids also lead the worship through music, did a short drama and one of them preached! They did a really fantastic job of the whole thing, and it was lots of fun to be there. After church, I met five of our past and future staff at Moxie's. All five are both "past" and "future" staff, huzzah! I brought their hiring packages with me for hand delivery, which was a source of great excitement (see the picture below, taken on my phone -- explaining th...

Relational Integrity! We worship, live, work and play as a team. Our relationship are driven by love ( 1 John 4:7-21 ) and defined by grace ( Ephesians 2:8-9 ). We seek transparency and accountability in our discussion and decision-making, we trust authority, and we practice mutual respect. We strive to be the same on the inside as we are on the outside ( Proverbs 10:9 ; 11:3 ). Relational integrity. What does that mean? Here at Evergreen, it's recognizing that we worship, live work and play together ... pretty much all the time. And if we don't love one another, if we are not willing to extend grace to one another, if we're not accountable to one another, if we don't respect one another: everyone is going to be miserable, pretty much all the time. We honour God and one another when we practice relational integrity. We build a community that's worth being part of. We become trustworthy people. Relational integrity is an important value! We need to practice r...

Prayer! Prayer is foundational to the very existence of Camp Evergreen. We will seek God continually as we listen, pray and read His word ( 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 ). Prayer is how we communicate with God. When we pray together, we're not just communicating with God -- we're encouraging one another and building community. Prayer can clear our heads and hearts. We can sing our prayers, speak them, journal them by hand or computer, yell them ... we just need to pray! My favourite prayer story from summer 2009 was from a Trail Blazers chapel. Jenny, our Chapel Coordinator, often invited campers to talk to God. One morning, she invited anyone who wanted to to "stand up on their bench and pray really loud!" One boy stood up on his bench and yelled, "aaauauuuggghhh!", really loud. Everyone froze and Jenny walked over to the boy and quietly asked him what he doing. His response? "You said to stand up and yell really loud!" Once we'd cleared th...

Love! We represent Christ. In everything we do, we seek to be a community that serves one another, driven by our whole-hearted love for God and self-giving love for one another ( Matthew 22:37-39 ). "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!" (1 John 3:1). The Bible is full of descriptions of what love is: for example, 1 Corinthians 13 or the entire book of 1 John . Matthew 22:37-39, the verse above that simply and completely describes why love is one of our values, says: "Jesus replied, 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: love your neighbour as yourself'." It doesn't get clearer than that, does it? As for the why, it comes back to one of the first memory verses I ever learned, in Pioneer Girls , was 1 John 4:19 , which explains that "we love because he first loved us....

Dependency on Jesus! Apart from Christ, we can do nothing ( John 15:5 ). We rest in His strength and power and we fulfill our mission ( 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 ). We rely on his inerrant word ( Hebrews 4:12 ). If celebration is our alphabetically-organized first value, dependency on Jesus is alphabetically-organized second value. But dependency on Jesus is deeply foundational. We know that we need to rely on him for everything: for wisdom, for safety, for hope, for purpose. Depending on Jesus should never, ever absolve us of responsibility for using our brains (which, of course, God gave us). Rather, depending on Jesus should give us courage and confidence as we follow him. It was a little harder to find a picture to represent dependency on Jesus. I've chosen one of the challenge course because last summer, during Friday night fireside chapels, several kids talked about how the challenge course had taught them something about relying on God. One of the elements on the upper ch...

Celebration! Today is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it" ( Psalm 118:4 ). Evergreen is a place for celebration! We celebrate all that God does; all He has made; each life devoted to Him ( Psalm 47:1 ). So, the first value (alphabetically) in our renewed vision, mission and values is celebration . Why celebration, you ask? Since we have Christ in us, we have every reason to celebrate. And we want to be people of hope and people of joy! Camp is all about celebration - we see God at work in people's lives so often and we get to worship, live, work and play in the his creation. We have lots and lots and lots of fun ... when we're being crazy action doers in chapel (Jill, top left); while we're just having good times with good friends (Impact 2009 campers, top right); while we're running and playing in fresh air, on green grass, in God's creation (Jug 'n Jog, bottom left); or when we're praying (bottom right). Hmm, Jill is in t...