JEFFERSON CITY – After a modified schedule in 2021, preceded by cancellation in 2020 due to COVID, Super Summer week-long camps for middle and high school students resume this summer on two MBC university campuses. The first takes place at Hannibal LaGrange University, June 13-17. Southwest Baptist University hosts the second June 20-24.
Bob Caldwell, an independent contractor for the Missouri Baptist Convention’s Making Disciples team, is facilitating the camps this year. He says through the years “Super Summer has continued to be a training ground for hundreds of students, leaders, youth pastors, and pastors.”
The youth camps are for students from sixth through twelfth grades. They’re led in part by vetted university students who will serve as MBC summer missionaries, plus additional leadership from pastors, worship leaders, and others.
“Each year the training has centered around sharing the Gospel and making disciples. You cannot separate the two,” Caldwell says. “In the process of teaching these truths, God always provides a harvest.”
The camps include team and small group sessions. Additionally, “we will have fun
outdoor activities, missional projects, specialized breakout sessions, and end each day with all of us gathering for a time of worship and word,” Caldwell says.
Around the theme of Finish the Task, inspired by Acts 20:24, he prays the camps achieve three things: helping students learn to talk about the Gospel so they can take it around the world, providing them opportunities to reconnect with the Holy Spirit, and affirming and encouraging youth pastors.
Caldwell says learning how to talk about Christ is important because “there are 11,750 people groups in the world today; 7,050 of these are unreached. Of these unreached people groups, 3,150 are unengaged. This means that not only are they unreached, but as far as we know no Christian has taken the gospel to them.”
“The world has come to the point that “if a believer learns to share Jesus in the United States, he or she will be equipped to share Him anywhere.”
Super Summer will also help students reconnect with the Holy Spirit in an atmosphere “where the music glorifies God and they have intentional times of hearing and studying His Word.
“After a week of relying on God, these students realize what they have been missing,” Caldwell says. “Living for Christ is not one day a week, or a pursuit of good vibes, but a daily surrender.”
The camps are intentionally planned so no sessions are led by youth pastors. “We want to affirm our youth pastors and their wives,” he says, through sessions specifically planned for them.
Caldwell says preparation for camp should be “pray, pray, pray. If anyone arrives ‘prayed up,’ it will allow them to hear from God with clarity.”
Online registration for both camps opens March 1, 2022 at www.mobaptist.org/student-ministries.
Discounted rates of $229 per student and $169 per adult are offered March 1 through May 1.
Rates May 2 through June 6 are $249 for students and $189 for adults.