After Camp/Missions

Today marks the first Wednesday after two weeks of traveling with the Youth of FBC Rolla.  It all started back on July 6th.  I loaded up the bus with 14 students and 3 other adults and headed to Texas.  After a nights stay in Corsicana, TX we continued our journey to Houston First Baptist Church.  This was our second year participating in the Houston Project and it was a great success.  The people at Houston First gave us a lot to think about when it comes to reaching our world for Jesus Christ.  On top of all the training, we also had the opportunity to serve the community by picking up trash, working in community gardens, and recycling mattresses.  Our upperclassmen also had the opportunity to take a bus tour that enlightened them in the subject of human trafficking and modern slavery.

The students of FBC Rolla left Houston with a new vision for the world around us and a passion for serving and reaching others for Jesus Christ.  A huge highlight to our trip was the fact that one of our students, Eireena, accepted Jesus as her King during the week.  WooHoo!!!

We packed up our things on July 12th and headed back.  We stopped in Muskogee, OK to spend the night at Grandview Baptist Church and was welcomed with open arms by some great people.  We even had the chance to get up early the next morning and hit the Disc Golf course before we left.  We returned to Rolla around 4:00pm on the 13th and I began shifting my focus from Mission Trip to Church Camp.

On July 14th I gathered a group of guys, loaded up the church van with sound equipment, and headed out to the PCBA Church Camp.  We set up the sound system and ran through a couple of songs so that we would be ready for a week of worship.

On the 15th camp began.  This year, our theme was PCBA vs. Zombies!  We used the passage in Ephesians 2 as our theme verse, "Because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved."
There was an extreme spiritual battle going on this year at camp.  For the first couple nights, the students at camp were passionless and quite frankly, dead.  The speaker, Chuck Miller, was awesome.  He was hilarious, intelligent, and inspirational, but our students would not respond in any way to his talks.  Worship was halfway accepted, but you could see a real spiritual wall built up between the students and Christ.  After much prayer and discussion by the leaders, the wall came tumbling down by the third night.  The camp was brought back to life in a way that has never been seen at PCBA camp before.  Students flooded the alter and spent a lot of time in prayer for each other.  (Even spending an extra hour at the alter after everyone else was dismissed.)  Many students committed to giving 100% of their lives to Jesus this past week.
After two weeks of working tirelessly with teenagers and seeing some amazing "God Stuff" happen I have one major question.

What now?

We all know the story.  Youth lives life.  Youth goes to camp or on mission.  Youth gets excited about Jesus.  Youth goes home.  Youth resumes life like before.  Youth loses excitement.

We tend to put all the responsibility of keep their faith alive onto the teenager.  We pump them up at camp and then tell them not to fall away and to remember the joys of being close with Christ.

I would like to issue the challenge that it is not only the responsibility of the teenager to keep their faith alive. It is also OUR responsibility to disciple them.  It is OUR responsibility to mentor our students.  It is OUR responsibility to love and guide our teenagers.

So I ask again...

What now?