A Tribute to My Wilds Family, 371 Days Later

So it’s been a year, since all of it.

No new Wilds t-shirts to wear out, no camp inside jokes, no crucial week of recuperation and revival after 11 straight weeks of camp. Living in an (air-conditioned) cabin in North Carolina, waterfall hikes, Monday night Big Ball, scanning crowds for the color red (or the summer before, green) because it’s probably someone on my team. A year ago, those were bits and pieces of ordinary life. Being always sweaty and tired, mostly both; all of it’s a told story.

And if you were there, too (and you probably were, since you’re reading this), I need you to know something.

You were part of what I have only ever experienced to that degree at The Wilds. If you’ve had it somewhere else on earth, I am glad for you. I’m sure it exists in other places. But what camp tastes like, to me, and what I hope, deeply hope, it tasted like to you, is what heaven must be.

Not the gold streets, not sinlessness, not glorified bodies that can’t die anymore--absolutely not that.

But one faith, one common goal, one family, one Savior living in us all. And believers, so many believers, building each other up, bearing each other’s burdens, loving in that raw way that doesn’t have to do with personalities or veins of common interests, but Christ-centered fellowship, and love the ligament holding the body together. Notes in mailboxes from people praying for you. Grins and greetings on the sidewalks, on the ballfield, on the hikes, in the rush to get to seats before service started, during the nighttime walk back to the cabins, up and down the hill to the lake, even in line at the health service building. Genuine “how are you really doing?” questions, people who care and who say “I’m praying” (but actually, they are).

Never, before or since, have I known the kind of fellowship and battle fighting I knew at camp.

What I mean is this. At camp, our job was so incredibly simple:

Love people and show them Christ.

Using truth. God’s Word, which He promises doesn’t return void.

Rolling the weight of changing hearts and lives back onto Him, breaking that misconception that changing people was on us. He didn’t disappoint, did He? He showed us, over and over again, the fruit of His Word and His power to change people.

We were messengers, and we warred in prayer, and we gathered weak and groggy for morning meetings to talk through the day’s schedule and to pray for our campers, to get ready for the battle to begin all over again.

At camp, we never fought alone.

You were there beside me, all of you, and I need you to know what that meant to me.

You were there, gripping me by the shoulders, telling me that God would have His way: He would fulfill the purposes He had in mind. He is good, He is immutable, and He changes mutable people. There you were, asking my motives, pressing me to love the people around me harder, better, not based on what they brought to the table, but because of their souls, because they were image bearers of Christ and that gave them such incredible value. You listened to me confess sin and, in turn, reassured me that God will finish the work He’s begun in my own deceitful heart, that He uses us in spite of our sinfulness, that the gospel really does change people, that He’s not done yet. You were there, pouring your heart out in the drenching rain during a hype game of Big Ball Volleyball, which matters so little in the scheme of things but matters so much for building relational bridges and breaking down barriers and showcasing a picture of unity and one-mindedness that mirrors the body of Christ. You were there, broken over your sin, your selfishness, your motives—everything in you that was contrary to who Christ is.

And every time my gaze caught on a counselor with an open Bible, a camper across from them,

every time a camper came out after a service and you followed them, scared and excited and hoping you’d know where to take them in Scripture,

every time I could see in your posture how tired you were but heard in your words the joy and the selflessness of your Savior, because you knew camp was all about God, not you,

every time I saw you loving that hard camper who hated God and hated you,

every time you gave up sleep to pray or to get up early to steal a few minutes in your Bible on your porch in the damp morning dark,

every time I overheard you encouraging another staff member,

every time you couldn’t hide tears because there was someone else’s pain filling you up,

every time I saw rows of mailboxes full of notes from prayer partners in that morning quiet right after everyone goes to breakfast,

every time we stood onstage together and worshiped our God in Friday night counselor choir and the campers stood and joined in on the chorus, all their faces fixed on us,

every time I saw you sick and resisting being pulled from counseling because you wanted to be there for your kids,

every time we prayed as a team on a Friday night and you held up your burden for a camper still unsaved or with a death grip on the sin destroying them,

I felt the war around me,

and I felt you fighting it, too.

Every time you did it, you strengthened me, too.

I saw it in your eyes and heard it in what you said.

And that, I think, is what heaven will be. Not the battle, but the heartbeat. Just that one heartbeat, one goal. Worshipping Christ for all that He is.

There, the battle will be over. The sin will be gone. God will have won, and the war for souls will have ceased. But I think that’s one of the best parts about earth, that the battle is what brings us together. The battle unites believers. You fought it with me. I fought it with you.

Same army. Same leader. Same goal. Same beating heart.

I’ve been asked a dozen times this year if I miss camp.

And to be honest, parts of being home have been easier than I expected. I’ve been fine with not being at The Wilds. I’ve answered the do-you-miss-camp question with, “I miss the people,” but guys, here’s why.

I miss the people because you were in combat with me. I miss the soldiers. I miss fighting the battle with you. We were fighting for the same things. It was a one-mindedness that affected everything done and said.

The truth is that we’ll all be fighting this battle our entire lives. There are always people trying to convince us to leave the war. So many people can’t even see it. And there are always distractions from the battle, always an easy way out, a side street.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned since leaving camp, it’s that it’s hard to fight alone.

I’m absolutely not saying it’s not possible, because the strength to fight never came from us, anyway. We are sufficient because of Christ, and because of His power working in us, not because of our own sufficiency or strengths or gifts (2 Cor. 3:5) So if we must fight alone with God, we can. We are enabled to do that (2 Tim. 4:16-18).

But I understand now.

I understand what it is to go into battle with other believers who are passionate in their pursuit of Christ and His Kingdom, and I understand what it is to walk into that same battle alone.

I understand our need for each other in a way you can’t until you’ve actually lived in the middle of that kind of fellowship.

Camp was one of the sweetest gifts of my life. You have all been, to me, the words of Ephesians 4:15-16:

“Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

There’s just nothing like that kind of friendship, or fellowship, or whatever name you want to slap onto it. There's not a thing like it.

Why is that so rare, guys? The body, building itself up in love. I wish it weren’t. I know it won’t be forever.

Thank you for being a part of the body that was growing, that was building me up in love. You are my brothers and my sisters. You have walked in this war with me. And even though we don’t fight together anymore, it’s not over.

So please don’t stop fighting.

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.

(2 Corinthians 2:14-16)