A Glimpse of Summer Camp, Part 4: Discipleship

After a fun week, full of classes and activities, engaging songs and programming, and making new friends...it's finally the end of the week. You think back on all of the experiences you've had, and it's hard not to be a little tired. However, your heart is full: not just from a satisfying week, but because all week the songs, the pastors, and the play have been pointing toward saving message that Jesus is Lord. Your eyes are on Christ and you feel, perhaps for the first time, that He truly is your Best Friend. What happens next? You pray a little prayer as you're heading to the final program: "Jesus, I want to follow You. Please lead me."

All of our staff training, our class and activity preparation, and our programming at Camp Wakonda are geared toward helping our campers to make a personal decision at the end of the week. Whether it's to study the Bible for the first time, to be baptized, or to make a re-commitment to Jesus, young people come away from a week at camp with a renewed focus on their spiritual walk. Following are some of the ways that Camp Wakonda is intentional about the discipleship journey of the camper.

It Starts With the Staff

It may seem like camp is primarily a ministry to the camper, and in many ways it is, but before staff can minister to campers, they need to be ministered to and to learn how to minister. In other words: picking the right individuals to run the varoius aspects of the Summer Camp program, and training them in helpful ways has the result that the program runs smoothly. Here are some of the qualities that set Camp Wakonda staff apart as individuals primed for ministry.

• Mission-Minded: We don't just hire anyone as Camp Wakonda staff. We want to make sure that we get the right people on the team. That comes with a lot of prayer and discernment. That doesn't mean that everyone who works at camp is perfect or that they won't make mistakes, but it does mean that there's an intentionality behind the hiring. The best staff are the ones who are already feeling called by God to do something for His mission. Maybe they're Pathfinder TLTs or Sabbath School teachers, or even missionaries in their own rights: but ultimately we look for staff who want to do something significant for God and who want young people to know about Jesus. Aside from looking for individuals who are already of this mindset, we also do provide training for how to bring young people to Jesus, how to share a testimony and teach a class that incorporates God's word, and how to listen to and answer a young person's questions about life and spirituality. The more summers that a staff works at Summer Camp, the better they get our culture, and the stronger they are when it comes to the missional side of the ministry.

• Safety-Focused: Satan truly loves to ruin a young person's spiritual journey with issues like injuries, sickness, and allergic reatctions, so it's our team's job to do the best we can at keeping our young people safe while they are in our care. While many of the activities that our campers participate in are inherently risky--like mountain biking, swimming, horseback riding, and so on--our staff are trained to keep people safe. Psychologically, participating in an activity that seems "too scary," and then being coached by friends, counselors, and staff to overcome fears and to trust those running the activity...has a profound impact on our campers. If they can try this and survive, what other fears can they conquer? That's part of the process of camp as well: because God will have all of us get out of our comfort zones at some point, when we're following His calling. Maybe trying mountain biking for the first time helps a camper to see: God can keep me safe, even when I'm not in my comfort zone.

• Trained and Ready: We spend about a week-and-a-half with our staff team (and that's not including setting up, running, and taking down Camp Meeting) before we unleash them on the campers. Whether it's training them how to put out literal forest fires, or metaphorical fires of conflict , how to save drowning campers, listen for signs of abuse, or coach a young person spiritually: by the time our campers arrive, our staff team are ready to keep young people safe and to help them learn more about Jesus. That is training that will not only help them for the summer, but for a lifetime of church and ministry involvement.

• Locally Contextualized: Many of our staff are not only trained for ministry in general, but for ministry in Wisconsin specifically. We often are hiring young leaders from Wisconsin Academy, our various local Pathfinder Clubs, and local churches in general. In fact, the best Camp Wakonda Summer Camp staff are usually found among the Camp Wakonda campers. They get the Wisconsin Conference culture, they know the Summer Camp expectations, and they are around the camp (and often, our campers) year round, not just for the summer. This means that at Summer Camp, we're not only ministering for one week, but we're also creating an ecosystem where ministry can go beyond the camp. Counselors get to see their campers at Pathfinders, young church members get to see their Summer Camp class teacher at their local church, and the connections grow stronger as a result. Ministry and discipleship can't start and conclude in one week: so we treat the process as if it has to be a more year-round one (which it is). More on this concept below, in the section labeled "Pipeline."

The Counselor: The Front Line

We take special care to train counselors how to minister to their campers. Whether it's having devotionals with kids, helping them memorize memory verses, dealing with conflict and unhelpful behaviors, or finding those special moments to share the Gospel in a practical way: our counselors are the first responders when it comes to discipling young campers. Counselors make sure the group is getting along and acting redemptively, that the group is encouraging each other and working as a team, and that the team follows rules, shows up for appointments on time, and ultimately doesn't miss out on anything that the Summer Camp program has to offer. It is, in large part, due to our counselors that campers get the most out of their week at Camp Wakonda.

Support Staff: The Backup and Backbone

While counselors are preoccupied with their campers, the rest of the staff keep the camp running well. Whether it's foodservice, making sure campers are fed and safe, class teachers making sure their lesson plan is ready, or kapers crews making sure everything is clean and ready to use the next day: our staff work together to enhance the experience of camp, in ways that counselors alone cannot. It may be a Nature Center staff who helps contextualize God's love through a blue-tongued skink, or a Mountain Biking instructor who prays for safety before each ride. Maybe it's a lifeguard who saves a weak swimmer who needs help, or a ceramics teacher who helps kids to see that we were all uniquely created by God's creative hands. We strive for every aspect of Summer Camp to be one in which a camper can have a Divine encounter.

Decisions for Jesus

At the end of the week, our staff work together to help each camper to look upward and inward: "how is God calling me to respond to what I've encountered here at Summer Camp this week?" The play is written so that the final evening helps campers to think about the big picture of faith, as well as what Jesus has done for them, and how He is calling them to follow Him. The songs are arranged so that young people can be in a comfortable atmosphere of praise and devotion. The pastor crafts his messages so that they would be inspiring to the age group they are ministering to. And finally, there is a call: how do you want to respond to God's love at the end of this week? There are a lot of ways a young person could respond, but typically we look at three categories:

1. The desire to begin a deeper study of the Bible with a pastor, elder, or parent.

2. The desire to be baptized and follow Jesus more closely.

3. The desire to re-commit to the journey they are already on, whether that means turning away from being astray, or simply dedicating themselves to continuing the good path they are already on.

At the end of the week, there are often a few who are ready to be baptized at the camp, and their families are in support, and so they make the decision to be baptized in our lake. If things line up so that it is possible, we celebrate the end of the week with baptisms. However, every decision that our program yields is a precious one, whether inward or outward. And we do have dozens of decisions every week, where kids are dedicating their lives to Christ in one way or the other.

The Pipeline: Long-Term Discipleship

We are starting to be very intentional with our Summer Camp program to turn campers into volunteers, volunteers into staff, and staff into staff directors. Remember how I mentioned above that the best staff are young people who have been campers already? This is where that comes into play. We start hiring staff around the age of 16 and up. However, campers can try volunteering as a CIT (Counselor in Training) as early as 14 years old. So let's say a camper starts attending summer camp when they are 8 years old. They can enjoy Cub Camp, Tween Camp, and eventually Teen Camp. Once they are old enough, they can volunteer as a CIT, and that give them some experience at what it's like being a staff, without having to commit to the whole summer. After a couple of years of volunteering, they will come in as a staff who understands the program and what being a staff looks like. And once they have been a staff for a few summers, they may become a director of a department or another aspect of camp. What this means is that, while we may only have campers for a week every summer, we actually have the ability to enhance campers' journeys over several years, as their experience becomes more advanced, more intense, and more lengthy. When a camper grows up coming to camp, trying new experiences, making new friends, and being open to God's calling: they get how it is a ministry that impacted their life, and if they become a staff, they treat it as a mission field, wanting to impact younger people for Jesus. Thus: our intentionality about creating a camper-to-staff pipeline. Those campers become excellent staff, those staff often become excellent directors, and those directors often become excellent local church leaders, wherever they end up as adults.

Pictured: Left & Right were our 2026 Cub and Tween Camp CITs, Center is Caleb, a camper-turned-volunteer-turned staff for the first time this summer.

Bonus: Youth Ministry Intersections

When campers are also involved in Adventurers or Pathfinders or Master Guide ministry, when they also attend Wisconsin Academy, when they are involved in Public Campus Ministries, and so on...there are helpful intersections that even futher enhance their Summer Camp experience. When the Youth Department is able to interact with the same campers (or staff) through multiple outlets throughout the year, the Summer Camp experience doesn't have to end. We often bring our Pathfinders, Adventurers, and Master Guides to Camp Wakonda for special camping weekends, or work-bee involvement. We show up to work with our public college missionaries, for various events throughout the year. We often have youth programming at Wisconsin Academy, and will go there for weeks of prayer and recruiting. These intersections serve to keep campers and staff connected throughout the year. They help young leaders continue leading and helping with various events throughout the year. They even help our staff to maintain connections with their campers in the off-season (like when a staff becomes a Pathfinder Club Director, and works with campers as their club members year-round). These are long-term plans that pay off in dividends when it comes to discipling young people in their spiritual walk, training young leaders to become strong adult leaders, and keeping campers and staff returning for multiple summers of ministry. By God's grace: we're seeing many of these efforts pay off, and that has resulted in an atmosphere where lots of kids are making decisions for Jesus, many campers are becoming volunteers and eventually staff, and many staff stay on as directors, or help year-round in other youth leadership capacities.

Pictured: Left is Grace, our Summer Camp Waterfront Director and our Watertown Sentinels Pathfinder Club Director; Center is Joash, a Coulee Coyote Pathfinder TLT (Teen in Leadership Training) and our Summer Camp Photographer; Right is James, the Green Bay Church Head Elder, our Northeast Area Pathfinder Coordinator, as well as our Summer Camp Boat Driver.

Thus concludes our series of A Glimpse of Summer Camp. The vision is almost heavenly: one of closeness to Jesus, teamwork, and leading a family of connections to Christ in a long-range way. As we look forward to next year's celebration of 100 years of Summer Camp in the Wisconsin Conference, one thing is for sure: God isn't done with this awesome ministry, and it is still continuing to impact our young people for Christ in a sigificant way, nearly a century after its inception.