The Super Summer That Never Ended
By Mark A. Scribner
June 2009
In the student ministry world, people have been trying for years to bottle up the excitement and closeness to Christ that is evident at their summer camps and bring it home. Year after year we go to camps and on the last evening (you know the one where everyone cries) we talk as a group about how to “keep the fire burning” when we get home. We ask, “How can we share this same feeling with our friends and peers back in our hometown?” Camp ends, you drive home and the students are excited about their relationship with God… until the following week. They get back into the world and the world gets back into them and the fire they felt at camp is nothing more than a smoldering ember barely emitting any smoke. The above has been the story of my camp life from when I was a camper and now as a leader, until Super Summer 2008.
Our church had historically closed down for the summer except for Sunday services. About six weeks after our final meeting before the summer, 31 students arrived with their bags and bedding and loaded up on the bus to head to Webster Conference Center for Super Summer 2008.
This was not my typical group. We had a lot of new students, friends and friends of friends. Among them, was an openly agnostic student. It was time for worship on the opening night. I was ready for some loud and crazy band to get up on stage, introduce themselves, and tell us why they were there and why they were good at their instruments; but that didn’t happen! With no introduction, the worship leader begins to sing… “Turn your ear to heaven and hear the noise inside…O Praise Him.” Then the camp pastor gets up, opens up The Word, and shares from the heart of God. The place was moved by the power of the Holy Spirit. Night after night this happened. I could only think about what it must have been like in Acts 4:31 where the place they were meeting was SHAKEN!
Never before in my life have I been involved in such a movement of the Holy Spirit as I was at Super Summer 2008. It was amazing! When we left, I received the decision cards for our church and 14 of the 31 students that we brought made some sort of a decision for Christ. Most were rededications and there were a couple of vocational ministry decisions; but there were also a couple of salvation decisions, one being the agnostic student who we had brought! On the way home I just kept thinking to myself about how cool it would be if we could keep this momentum going and bring this fire back to our group at home.
At the request of the students, we immediately started meeting again during the summer and I started noticing something amazing. These camp decisions were actually real to these students. They started getting serious about their relationship with the Lord. They started inviting friends to church. They started evangelizing!
Since we got home from Super Summer 2008, West Haven Student Ministries has seen our average attendance more than double. We are not shutting down for the summer; but most importantly, we have seen 50 students come to know the Lord as their personal Savior! Praise be to God!
As I write this, my desk is cluttered with registration forms for Super Summer 2009. With eager anticipation, I cannot wait to see what God is going to do this year!
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