Eastern Synod

I have magical memories of Vacation Bible School (VBS); Bible stories came alive with costumes and sets, there were so many crafts (I wanted to do all of them), and I still know some of the songs with actions!

The VBS of my childhood was a community effort of church folks providing a half-day camp for a full contingent of children from the community. Today, these kinds of programs seem difficult to bring together. There is a smaller volunteer force at church, there are fewer children at church, and non-religious families seem reluctant to trust the church with their children. And then there is just the practical fact that in most households all parents work full time, and a half-day childcare program, no matter how affordable, doesn’t fit with the economic realities of many families.

So, how can our kids have a magical week of learning and growing in faith in our own community? Peacemakers Camp at Trillium Lutheran Church in Waterloo, ON, was born partly out of a desire to find a way to do this, and partly to meet the need in our community for affordable full-day childcare.

To get a critical mass of children and volunteers for a summer program, we shifted our focus from VBS Bible learning to themes that are not only important to Lutherans but that we can also learn about from practitioners of other traditions. This year, our second year of Peacemakers Camp, the theme was Sacred Balance, inspired by David Suzuki’s (1997) book of the same name. Each day we focused on a different element—earth, air, water, fire—and then, on our last day, we explored sacred bal-ance itself.

We told the story of each element as it shows up in the Bible, culminating in the vision of the Tree of Life in Revelation, and we learned about how each element is reflected in our liturgical practices too. We invited teachers from other traditions to come and tell us about the role of a particular element in their stories and practices. For example, guests shared about the shakuhachi flute (a Zen Buddhist wind instrument), Balinese gamelan (instruments made of metals from the earth), and teachings and songs about water from the Anishinaabe. We had afternoon science activities that helped us learn about the many ways our existence is bound up with the health of all creation. Over the course of the week, artists and activists working for peace or balance in our world came to collaborate with the kids; campers wrote letters to children in a refugee camp in Gaza with Neruda Arts, and they also participated in a forum theatre workshop about peace in our local communities led by Theatre of the Beat. Of course, camp wouldn’t be camp without music, and we gathered each day to sing songs of faith and songs of peace with community musician and justice worker Laura Enns.

And just like last year, people came! Camp was full of volunteers and kids from our church, but also from our ecumenical neighbours and our secular neighbourhood. We are clear in our advertising that stories from the Christian tradition will be told and that we assume the presence of a loving God, expressed through Jesus. We take the Bible seriously, but not literally. We are also clear that we will respect differences of belief and that we learn just as much (or even more) from the people outside our church. This, along with publishing official safety protocols and registration forms, seems to have been enough for some non-religious families to brave participating in a church program.

While I have to admit running a full day of programing as a parent who has to take three campers home with me at the end of the day is much more exhausting than being a 19-year-old camp counsellor back in the day, I am so incredibly grateful and heartened to see my kids surrounded by the magic and the energy of an immersive week of spiritual engagement and community in my neighbourhood. This is what I was looking for—it is like VBS, but it is VBS expanded and enlarged by the needs and gifts of our community beyond our church walls.

There is one more thing that I think is important to note. Practically speaking, we can run this program because our church has funding for innovative youth and family programing. Our church is an amalgamation of three congregations; two of the three properties were sold, and the members of our church took the brave and transformational step of re-
serving the resulting funds to shape a new generation of disciples. Because of this choice, we have the resources to pay four young adults for a week of full-time work as camp counsellors; we can keep young adults involved by compensating them for their time, and we benefit from having more mature young leaders. We can provide honourariums to guests for the work they do in sharing their knowledge and experience with our campers. We also pay our camp music co-ordinator who works collaboratively with the Trillium team to develop the camp theme, choose the music, and organize volunteer musicians.

While the idea of Peacemakers Camp might have begun somewhat out of nostalgia, what has taken shape is something new. It is a space where we can delight in our own Christian stories and practices, while at the same time listening to and learning from the stories of others. It is wonderful to have a full camp at church and to feel that we share many of the same goals and desires with ecumenical, interfaith and secular neighbours. —Rebekah Ludolph is a member of Trillium Lutheran Church in Waterloo and contract faculty at Martin Luther University College. She plans Peacemakers Camp collaboratively with musician Laura Enns, the Mission, Peace and Justice Co-ordinator at Stirling Avenue Mennonite Church, and Nathan Mantey, Trillium’s Youth and Family Ministry Co-ordinator.