The rigorous cleaning was my response to a week-long accumulation of paint, dirt, grass, sweat, sawdust, and bug bites.
[Speaking of which, I have two bones to pick with God: ticks and chiggers. What is their purpose in creation? Seriously! They are evil! (No ticks this week, but chiggers? Oh yeah. Hence the Epsom salt.)]
ANYWAY. I just got back from a week of camp with Carolina Cross Connection. Here's the description from the organization's website:"Carolina Cross Connection is a Christian outreach ministry in western North Carolina. It is an opportunity for youth, youth groups, college-age folks, and adults to spend a week of their summer serving families in need. Campers will perform a variety of home repairs, such as building wheelchair ramps, repairing porches, painting, yard work, and much more. Campers also strive to meet the social, emotional, and spiritual needs of the folks we work for, and to share the love of Christ with them. CCC is also an opportunity for youth and adults to grow in their faith through worship, devotions, team-building, and other in-camp activities led by our summer staff."
Their motto is "Faith in Action. Love in Person." I had a great week at CCC and now consider myself a supporter of the program. CCC is held at a variety of locations around North Carolina; this year, HCUMC was at Joshua Youth Camp, a Free Will Baptist youth camp in Albemarle. The facilities are undoubtedly camp-like but still great, and each day we were sent out in small groups to work for people in Albemarle, Concord and everywhere in between.
I could tell a zillion stories about CCC (and some will probably come out later--most likely in my sermon for tomorrow, actually), but I'm going to try to be brief. Perhaps what I liked the most about CCC was that I felt like they struck a great balance among several important things, namely worship/spiritual formation, service, and fellowship. I've been on all kinds of mission trips in my life, and I've had great experiences, but the intentionality of CCC's schedule was, I think, a wonderful embodiment of the life to which Christians are called.
Anyone who knows me can see this comparison coming a mile away, but I found myself thinking about how monastic life depends on a rhythm of ora et labora--prayer and work. At Christ in the Desert Monastery in New Mexico, the monks at this Benedictine monastery follow a disciplined schedule of prayer (7 times a day, starting at 4:00 a.m.), and in between, they do manual labor and study. I couldn't help but see our week of camp as reflecting that general idea--each day, we rose at 7:00, ate breakfast, had morning watch (devotion/quiet time with God) or worship, went out into the community to work, returned for dinner followed by fellowship and fun activities (funtivities?), and we ended our day with worship.
That's awesome. So much youth ministry responds to our culture's self-centeredness by feeding it, but the very design of CCC is to take these teenagers' (and adults'!) focus off themselves for a week. Just about everything we did was geared toward pulling us out of ourselves to center on God and to see him in other people.
Like I said, I'll probably tell more specific CCC stories later, and since this week's Gospel lesson is Mary and Martha, you can bet I've got plenty of sermon material to draw on now. Speaking of which, I should go write that...
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