Last weekend, I was up at Nanoose Bay Pentecostal Camp for the first ever Young Adults Camp. This was organized by Pastor Doug Slack from my church, and it was a great success. About 60+ people were at the camp which isn't bad at all for a first time.
I went up Thursday morning with Doug to help get things set up. The weather wasn't exactly cooperating. We had torrential downpours of rain when we passed through Nanaimo. We arrived at Nanoose Bay (home of a Canadian military base complete with a torpedo test range) shortly after noon. We checked in, and opened up the lodge which was where the services would be held.
The lodge was gross because we were probably the first ones to use it in a long time. Lots of dirt, spider webs, random insects, and water from a leaky roof. We gave the room the extreme makeover and turned it into a coffee lounge. By the end, we spent 4 hours sweeping, vacuuming, moving furniture, etc.
This coffee lounge was complete with a $4800 coffee machine that Doug borrowed. In addition, we had a certified Starbucks employee running the machines during service. I don't drink coffee, so I don't quite understand why a coffee machine could be that expensive. My theory is that the thing is either made of gold, or there's magic gnomes inside the machine that makes the coffee for you. In either case, it was quite amusing watching Doug accidentally making a double strength espresso and being completely buzzed after it.
As for the services, Mr. Dave Funk who's a chaplain at the University of Victoria led the pre-service prayer. A band from the mainland also played unplugged for the weekend as well. As mentioned before, Doug Slack was the director of the camp.
The speaker was
Jeremy Postal from Abbotsford. I really liked his preaching style, very direct and real. He had a number of talks aimed at young adults. In particular, one of the themes was for young adults to stop being so apathetic about church since we are the next generation that will be taking on leadership roles, and that it was time to step up and get involved. The analogy he used was that young adults graduate from their faith once they enter their 20s, and they start disappearing from the church.
He nailed the apathy part pretty well though. He said that our generation is lost and disillusioned, and we don't care about things. We treat traditional institutions with distrust because they have failed us in the past. Our favourite response is "whatever."
Another talk that he had was provocatively entitled, "God Doesn't Have A Plan For Your Life." It was targeted to people who were trying to find direction in life, and was waiting for God to tell them what to do. However, sometimes you won't get the answer, but there is a set of criteria that ensures what you're doing is a part of God's plan. He said to pursue something that you passionately loved, and it helped serve others, and it served God.
What I found most inspiring about the camp was that people were up there because they wanted to be there to seek God. A lot of times at youth events, people are there just to hang out with friends or they're there to find a boyfriend/girlfriend. It's not that these are bad things, it's just that it can be distracting. Anyway, about 66% of the campers showed up for pre-service prayer, and this is a bit of a rarity.
I was up there as staff, and my job was to be the computer technician. I programmed the computer with song lyrics before a show, and projected the lyrics during the show. The job quickly snowballed into being a sound technician as well because the band's vocals were too quiet so the whole "unplugged" band concept wasn't working out. In addition, a few people needed to play video clips during services which required audio. So, I scavanged some sound equipment and got a rudimentary sound system up and running. It was such an ugly hack, but it worked.
On top of that, I was running around each night setting up projectors and what not for movie nights and video game tournaments. It was pretty busy. One of the movie nights, we watched Shooter in the main sanctuary which featured a giant screen and a big sound system. It rocked. The next evening, we set up an XBox and PS2 for video game tournaments. It was a night of Ghost Recon, Halo, and Sports games.
Other activities included board game nights (chess, settlers of catan, ticket to ride), soccer, basketball, ping pong, and bonfire.
The food was also really good. All hail chef Randy. One night was roast beef dinner with all the fixings. The horseradish sauce was absolutely amazing.
One of the perks was that my church owns a private cabin up at Nanoose Bay, and Pastor Doug got it for the weekend, so I got to stay there as well. Private kitchen, washrooms, bedrooms. This was really nice to have because some of the dorm-style cabins didn't get much sleep because of noisy campers.
Anyway, very good relaxing weekend. I'm sure next year's young adult camp will be bigger, better, stronger.
