Church Campout

Every September, my church forsakes the comforts of New Holland and travels northwest to the forest of Manheim for a weekend of privation and fellowship.

Well, not really. We the people of Oasis Mennonite Fellowship had our annual church campout at the United Zion Camp Grove earlier this month with communal meals in a dining hall, church services in a tabernacle, and sleeping accommodations in tiny cabins with electricity and indoor plumbing. United Zion Camp is located in the woods between farmland and the state game lands near Mt. Gretna. Unless you count lumpy mattresses and creaky doors, this kind of camping isn’t high on the rustic and deprived scale.

But the fellowship part is true— this is the longest time we spend together all year. Between the scheduled activities, kids love to ride their bikes and play in the gym, adults sit around and talk, grateful for a break from the daily routine. People come and go throughout the weekend. Some church folks decide that camping is not their thing, and don’t come at all, and that’s fine.

A committee planned events through the weekend, including games and face painting for the kids, prayer meeting for the adults, and activities for all ages.

On Saturday afternoon, I went with a small group to hike to the observation tower at Governor Dick park. The parking lot where the trail started was only a few minutes’ drive from the camp.

The tower is 66′ tall and to climb to the top, you have to climb ladders that “switch” about every ten feet. A little scary, but everyone from age 6 to 79 made it. From the top, you can see the whole way to Park City mall in Lancaster.

Saturday evening everyone divided up into teams for bag skits. Every team got a garbage bag filled with random items and a story to act out. The skit had to be performed without speaking, and the audience had to guess what historic, literary, or Bible event we were trying to portray.

Our team was assigned the Apollo 11 moon landing. The three kids in our group got to be the astronauts, carried on a “spaceship” (table) by the “rocket launchers” (guys) while the rest of us stayed in Houston. The craziest item in our bag, a large planter shaped like a Holstein cow, provided the crowning touch: after the astronauts landed on the moon and planted their flag, the cow “jumped” over them.

Other skits included The Three Little Pigs, Annie of Green Gables, and Crossing the Red Sea.

We were all assigned to help with one meal. As usual, there was plenty of delicious food—but hilariously, every meal and snack except the breakfasts and Sunday lunch started with a base of tortilla chips. So it was hamburger dip on chips, buffalo chicken dip on chips, pork and cheese on chips, etc. Next year, the committee will probably have the meal-planners compare menus.

Campout is a lot of work and can be tiring, but as I reflected on the weekend, I feel blessed to be part of a community like this— Christians who are doing their best to serve God, serve others, and willing to keep learning from mistakes. Yes, our church has problems like any other. If you are reading this from afar and imagining this looks like a perfect group, be assured I don’t write every detail about a weekend like this. We are Mennonites, we wouldn’t make good Hutterites. (At least I wouldn’t!)

But the rewards and blessings of being part of a church make the efforts worthwhile. A Christian on his own can only do so much, church is how God truly works in the world. “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another,” Jesus tells us. Sometimes it’s easy to fantasize how wonderful life could be under different circumstances, while overlooking the value of serving where we are, right in the moment, one act of love at a time.