I was having a conversation with a friend of mine tonight. He was bummed out that he wasn’t going to Short Mountain for their usual retreat this year. I have tried to invite him on our retreat, but not surprisingly he doesn’t want to go since he doesn’t know anyone in our youth group.
Anyways I think there are just too few superior church camps out there. Short Mountain Bible Camp and Taylor Christian Camp both meet my expectations for having the best facilities. Taylor will always be my sentimental favorite, however Short Mountain is the crown jewell among Christian camps around here. I’ve been to others. Meribah? I’d like it better if there were more individual cabins instead of big giant cabins. Y.E.S. Camp? I think its a bit too rustic for me. Tear down a few of the cabins and rebuild and you’ll have something going there. And I haven’t been to Whispering Pines. It must be pretty decent since the ladies had their women’s retreat there once upon a time. And I think we’re going to Valley View Christian camp for our Fall Retreat. Never been there either. But Madison Church of Christ sponsors it, so it probably has reasonable facilities.
But who am I to nitpick and little measey things about camps. Plenty of churches in remote areas don’t have Christian camps to go to. I guess we are lucky to be blessed with a wide selection of locations to go to.
In any case I’m really looking forward to camp at TCC this June. We’re supposed to have some kind of new bigger better faster bionic slip-n-slide, which Mark Sexton and gang are building. Whatever new element they’ve discovered that will be as permanent as concrete, yet as slippery as plastic tarp, must have been the most significant scientific discovery since penicillin.
My first church retreat was when I was in 5th grade�.about 1984 or 1985. Since I was a big weenie and needed someone around to cling to, both my parents went along. Maybe for that reason, or just in general, I never got along with kids my age then. Usually it consisted of me being talked down to. Never letting me in on their reindeer games.
At this particular venue, we were all in one big building. Girls and boys on separate wings. Tall ceilings. Bunk beds. We pushed our bunk beds together to make it easier to talk to each other. Then the adults made us separate them apart. Community showers. Not surprisingly I didn�t shower at all that weekend.
So anyways there were these 2 kids which I didn�t get along with. There was a history there for some reason. They didn�t like me for one way or another. I remember being particularly upset about it, having a private conversation at a table with my mom�.and then one of them coming along and wanting to clean the table. Egging it on.
I survived it, but didn�t go on another one for a long time after that.