Covid 19 has put a stop to school camps. Earlier in the year my oldest grand daughter (11) went on her very first school camp. I think my daughter (her mother), was more a drama Queen than was anyone else, except for her grand-father – me.
This is a good time therefore to look at American and Australian camps. American school aged students go on summer camp. Summer Camp is big business in the USA and it's cultural significance is beyond measure in the psyche of the nation. Summer Camp is the USA is one of those icons – such as apple pie, Shepherds Pie in England and Vegemite in Australia.
There is a constant stream of Australian and New Zealand young people who sign up as “part of a summer camp oversight team” often in their gap year or after university and get involved. One of our current young writers from Wellington New Zealand Helen McIntosh was one of these and her articles on her experiences serving in a summer camp can be read on her site: http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/helen-mcintosh.html
This is not only first hand, rather it gives an insight into the nature and heart of the summer camp movement in the USA.
There is a plethora of Australian summer camps – such as science, mathematics, youth orchestra's, golf, tennis and cricket and the like. Cost can be a prohibiter in the Australian context.
My experience
Surprise, surprise 'summer camps' (school holiday camps throughout the year) are nothing new in the Australian church scene. They've been around since the turn of the century but came alive to evangelism from the mid 50's through to today.
As a teenager in the mid 60s I recall attending two such sport camps run by Scripture Union, one featured cricket and the other featured hockey. They were both held at the Kings School Rural Campus not that far from Mittagong and my parents drove me from Canberra where we lived and then collected me again. They ran for 7 days.
The coach of the Scripture Union hockey camp was Dr Bob Wheway an engineering lecturer from Wollongong University and associated with St Matthews Hockey Club in Wollongong in the Illawarra Hockey Association. When I relocated to Port Kembla (Wollongong) in the late '60s it was to Bob Wheway I made contact to join a hockey club. That was first experience of the benefits of networking (perhaps a term not widely known back then).
That initial contact led me to representative honours, to writing hockey initially for the Illawarra Mercury, for The Australian newspaper for 24 years as a stringer covering Olympics, World Cups and Champions Trophies and writing five books on hockey.
This led me to being invited to Hong Kong for an international sport mission conference and from which I initiated the Sports and Leisure Ministry (1982) and becoming the Australian cricket team chaplain. I can attest the value of those Scripture Union sports camps - a straight line can be drawn.
My own son likewise enjoyed a Scripture Union cricket camp as a high schooler in the late eighties and one of the coaches at that camp was Andrew Bennett who served as one of our sport writer ‘Panellists’.
Christian School-Youth Camps
The list of such camps or such-like run by Scripture Union and other Christian agencies are phenomenal.
Not only are there a myriad of such camps, but there are specialised “time away' such as Schoolies Week options. Just as one example, there is a Scripture Union yacht cruise on the Whitsundays for schoolies.
NSW Scripture Union web site provides a list of such camps
http://www.sunsw.org.au/camps
Fishing & Diving Camp
SUPA Serve – Emerging Christian leaders
Shearing Camp –
SU Rendez-vous –
The V Journey –
Craft Camp –
Cricket Camp –
Bike Camp –
Boys Ag Camp –
Girls A Camp –
North Coast Junior Ag Camp –
Junior Bike Camp –
Dare2BDifferent – Camp Conqueror
Chaffey Dam Water Sports Camp –
That's NSW let alone the other States. These have been running for years. Qld SU even has a Whitsundays cruise camp. My son went on a cricket camp. The costs are minimal.
Sign up, (when able), your teenagers for one of these and volunteer with Scripture Union to help out.
Dr Mark Tronson - a 4 min video
Chairman – Well-Being Australia
Baptist Minister 45 years
- 1984 - Australian cricket team chaplain 17 years (Ret)
- 2001 - Life After Cricket (18 years Ret)
- 2009 - Olympic Ministry Medal – presented by Carl Lewis
- 2019 - The Gutenberg - (ARPA Christian Media premier award)
Gutenberg video - 2min 14sec
Married to Delma for 45 years with 4 children and 6 grand children
