Foundations

Foundations. Everything I've been doing lately has me thinking about foundations. Foundations, anchors, bases, footing, bedrock. A bunch of us staff went climbing at Wasooch creek two weeks ago on a day off and were instructed on the importance of finding a good place to build an anchor. If you're going to put all of your weight on a bolt, you want to make sure it's bolted into solid rock that will hold it. Last week we started setting up our second rink for pond hockey (coming January 8, 2016!), which involved spreading a lot of gravel to make a good base for the ice surface. If you read our plan for Reaching Higher, our fundraising campaign for upgrading our lodge, kitchen, and activity spaces, you'll see references to work that will “lay a foundation for growth and sustainability”. Even thinking back to this summer, I find that much of the work we do here can be analogized by the building of a foundation. Every time we share the gospel of Jesus Christ with campers that come here—especially campers hearing it for the first time—whether we share it in our post-chapel cabin discussions, or through our encouragement out on the zipline, or through the songs we sing in chapel, we build a foundation for others to build on as they leave camp and return to their homes and schools.

In the letters he wrote to first-century churches, the apostle Paul uses this same metaphor several times—“like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation…which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:10-11). If any lesser foundation is laid, the results will make it known. A bad foundation for an ice rink will result in bumpy and unplayable ice. A bad foundation for a climbing anchor can result in a nasty fall. Likewise, we can hardly expect to build the kingdom of God on a foundation other than the gospel.

I think it's easy to lose sight of this during these seasons of camp where making the gospel explicit is hard to do. The roar of the summer dies down and we settle into serving food, cleaning, and doing small maintenance projects. This is something that I struggle with—how exactly does one go about gospel-centred toilet cleaning? Gospel-centred hole digging? Gospel-centred pot scrubbing? I'm not sure I've answered this, but I suspect it has something to do with building on our one foundation. To develop Paul's building metaphor, few people find a house to be beautiful by examining its crossbeams, joists, wiring, or other components hidden behind walls and floors, but this doesn't make them less important. Rather the aesthetic parts of a house are supported by those which are unseen, much like how our actions in sharing the gospel are supported by our actions elsewhere.

At Camp Evergreen, our vision is to see “individual lives transformed through the power of Jesus”. If I'm honest (and I certainly try to be), it's not always clear how this vision plays out, and I've already spent 6 years trying to parse it. This is far from a complete explanation, but I'm only just learning how to build on the foundation that I have as a Christian.

In Christ,

Nate (Bacon)