David Friedli

By the Dashboard Lights

August 28, 2008

Planning for a Half Century

This weekend I was able to join two hundred other folks who came together to celebrate fifty years of Christian camping ministry at Camp Calvin Crest.

Located on the bluffs overlooking the Platte River just southwest of Fremont, I have been going to the camp for twenty-five of those years.

The memories I have of camp are numerous and meaningful.

My experiences there are among the benchmarks of my faith journey.

Spiritual people often refer to others and “brothers and sisters”, but the riendships that began there have developed into relationships that truly are better described as family.

Life is different because of my Camp Calvin Crest experience.

One week each summer I volunteer to direct a Senior High work camp, an opportunity for young people to do rehabilitation and enhancement projects on camp property.

Often, a weekend or two is spent there during a retreat. Church-related meetings usually get me on the camp grounds another couple of times.

Volunteering at camp seems natural to me. I want to give back to something that has given so much to me.

This weekend, as I sat at meals and campfires with former campers, directors and staff members who have a similar gratitude for camp as I have, my recurring thought was for those individuals who fifty years ago determined there was a need for a Presbyterian church camp in northeast Nebraska.

Perhaps that group of far-sighted church leaders considered the impact of camp ten, twenty, fifty and even one hundred years beyond their efforts in 1958.

Knowing Presbyterians, who vow to do all things “decently and in order”, the camp site selection committee outlined how a former farmstead, pasture and woodlands could be used immediately and perpetually for producing a spiritual harvest.

But those individuals could hardly have imagined how canvas tents and teepees could give way to air-conditioned motel-quality rooms, or how an open cooking shed would develop into a state-of-the-art dining facility.

Nor could they have thought over 300,000 lives would be impacted by camp over the first fifty years.

While the facilities and grounds have changed, the initial mission statement has not: to provide an outdoor camping experience demonstrating God’s love to all people.

This weekend, I sat in the shadow of legends and rubbed shoulders with spiritual giants who had a vision that was big enough to include me.