PYV Summer Camp 2017 - A final report

"Under the Sea" - Summer Camp 2017

From December 27 2017 to January 1 2018 over 200 wonderful people met together at Rawson Village for the 2017 PYV Summer Camp. Right at the start I want to acknowledge the amazing work done by our convener, Ash Haughey, and the executive leadership team she put together. Nothing works without preparation, and this group were well prepared for the camp.

Our theme at this camp was “Relationships” with Pete Sorrenson as our speaker. It is important to have a Relationships camp every now and then to remind each generation of teenagers what it is that God has been teaching about relationships. Many of us will remember these kind of camps for all that we were told not to do. I’m pleased to say that this camp had a much more positive focus. 

Pete has been involved in ministry to university students for a number of years, and is well able to see the changing trends in how people relate to each other. His experience and wisdom was evident as he spoke, but also his knowledge of the scriptures and his desire to see the youth of the PCV understand God’s will. His love for God was also evident. 

We learned why it is that we love ‘love’ – something that is made clear in movies and songs of any age. God has created us and God is love, so it is natural that we would love ‘love’. But this leads to the difficult question of why love is so hard and so painful. The fact that love is painful isn’t something we need to explain. We all understand it. So looking back into Genesis chapter 3 we see how that first relationship was damaged, and then see the consequences of that on all of us. 

Looking to Jesus we heard about the one who got relationships right, and from there Pete showed us how we can get them right in following Jesus. Romance was a key aspect of one of these talks.

Recordings of these talks are now one the PYV website. If you had children attending the camp, then we would be pleased if you listened to these talks yourself. It would be good for you to hear what your kids heard and then to talk with them. I think you’ll be encouraged. 

The camp also included a lot of time for activities or free time for campers to run around playing soccer, to play board games & table tennis, to sit under trees talking with friends. It looked like a number of new friendships were formed at this camp too. 

There were two other highlights I want to write about. The first was one evening where the girls and guys went to separate rooms to hear from some of the adults in the camp. Naturally I was in the boys group and we heard from some of our leaders about life and relationships. What was very helpful was having three blokes with different life experience to speak, one married but no kids (dogs don’t count), one married with children, and one single. The feedback from this evening’s events, both for girls and guys, was very positive.

The other was a Q&A evening. We normally have a question box set aside for campers to leave questions which will be answered by some wise and learned people. As these are anonymous, people can feel free to ask some fairly personal questions – and they did. It was a privilege to sit with wise people and seek to answer these questions. 

PYV exists to glorify God by assisting local congregations of the PCV in the development and nurture of youth for the service of Christ Jesus. We know that this mean we want people to know Jesus before they begin to serve him. I am delighted to report that through this camp we had six people come to faith in Jesus as Saviour and Lord. Would you please be praying for these young people?

I should also comment on YouthMETRO. Each year there is a group of youth ministry trainees who are at Summer Camp but are involved in a separate program. These are the YouthMETRO crew. This year we had thirteen trainees who were learning theology with Matt Deroon and evangelism with Nate Barbieri. It was exciting to see this group learning together and forming into a solid friendship group. What was also very exciting was to see them putting their evangelism training into action. This contributed to the young people who did come to faith. 

Summer Camp 2018 will be held at Campaspe Downs Resort near Kyneton, with Toby McIntosh as our speaker. Please put this camp into your church calendars for Dec 27 to Jan 1, and can I also ask you to include it in your church budgets? If you can help some young people get to these camps, you are investing in the next generation.