Summer Camp Prep and Painting a Room

The hardest part in painting a room is the prep work. Prep includes all the things I dread so much in painting – taking down pictures and then patching the walls, taping the trim, moving and covering the furniture, and finally cutting in all the edges with a brush. Only after the preps competed do you get to use the roller. And using the roller is fun because you get a lot done in a short period. But the prep, on the other hand, is just plain hard and tedious work.

A friend who farms for a living reminded me of this fact recently. We were both sharing how busy our springs are as we prepare for our big summer seasons. He said that he always felt that farming was like painting a room, spring was the prep and summer was the rolling of the paint.

It’s also describes of our work at SpringHill. Starting around April 1 we’re kicking it into high gear doing our final prep for the summer. I always tell people that spring prep is busier, more stressful and more pressure filled than actually running of summer camp – if we do a good job of prepping. And that’s a key “if”. Because to have a smooth summer, like painting, requires doing a great job in prep. The better the prep, the easier and better the painting, the better the spring, the smoother and better summer camp will be.

So the SpringHill staff is in the middle of prepping – hiring our last staff, filling our last camp spots, making sure our property, facilities and equipment is ready, finalizing training, and completing our programs and curriculum. But when the preps done, we’ll get to paint, that is, we’ll get to provide life transforming experiences to over 20,000 campers, and that makes all the prep worth it.

What it Takes to Be Influential

This week I had the opportunity to have lunch with Enoch and Joan Olson. Enoch is SpringHill’s Founding Director and under his leadership the vision, core principles and values of SpringHill were clearly developed, articulated and built into our organization.

I asked to have lunch with Enoch and Joan so I could hear their current perspective on SpringHill, and what they believe God could be calling SpringHill to be and do in the future. As with all my meetings with Enoch and Joan, I walked away with a some helpful and challenging thoughts.

One of the more provocative perspectives Enoch shared is his belief that SpringHill needs to continue to expand its influence in Christian camping, youth ministries and, most importantly, in the lives of young people. This led to the discussion around the question “how does a person or an organization become influential?”

Enoch provided the following insightful answers.

First, we need authority. Not authority which comes from power or position but the kind of authority that is the result of wisdom, knowledge, and depth and breadth of experience in a particular field or subject. The more authority we have in this sense, the more potential influence we can have.

Second, we need to have relationships with others. True influence comes through and in the context of relationships. We gain relationships through networking, and we build relationships through quality time. Quality time means asking lots of questions and doing even more listening. The greater the number and the depth of relationships we have, the more potential influence we can gain.

On my way back from my time with Enoch and Joan, I thought to myself, as I’m sure you’ve just thought,  ”Wow what a lunch. I may have just been blessed with a glimpse into SpringHill’s future.”

 

 

 

 

 

The Wise, the Foolish, and the Evil

Every Thursday at lunch a number of SpringHill staff view one session of the 2011 Willow Creek Leadership Summit videos. This past Thursday we listened to Dr. Henry Cloud teach on the three different types of people in the world – the wise, the foolish and the evil, and the strategies leaders need to use for dealing with each. His talk comes directly from one of the chapters in his most recent and insightful book – “Necessary Endings“.

After finishing the video we had a short debrief about what we learned, what new thoughts we each had and what challenged us. Ironically, the one challenge we all shared was that, as we watched, we all asked ourselves “which person have I been or am I now?” For each of us, it was a challenging moment of personal evaluation that cut right to the heart of many issues and relationships in our lives.

So in the spirit of seeking the light, below are the characteristics of each type of person. Take a moment and do your own self-reflection and ask “what kind of person have I been or am I now?”

Wise Person: When the light (truth) comes to them, they adjust themselves to the light, so who they are a person matches reality. In other words they seek and receive feedback and change themselves as a result.

Foolish Person: When the light (truth) comes their way, they try to adjust the light (deflect the truth) instead of changing themselves. When receiving feedback they deflect, blame and do not take responsibility for their own actions and performance.

Evil Person: When the light shines on them they want to destroy both the light and those that shine it. They have destruction in the hearts and want to retaliate against truth and those who share it.

When Plan B is really the A Plan

Over the last couple of months our two oldest children, MD and Christina, have experienced the disappointment of being turned down for college jobs they really wanted. In walking with them through this process my wife Denise shared her own disappointment concerning a job she applied for in college.

During Denise’s sophomore year she decided she didn’t want to go back to her old summer job at the local K-Mart. Her A Plan was to stay on campus and become an orientation mentor for incoming students. It was a highly sought after job. But in spite of the competition Denise applied and went through the entire process before being told she would be an alternate.

Disappointed, Denise turned to her Plan B, which was to apply for a job as a counselor at a Christian camp near Evart, MI. Her good friend, Jodi Urban Blanchard, had been both a camper and a summer staffer and raved about the camp. So when Denise received the offer for the job by the program director, Mike Hollenbeck, she took it.

Well, you know the rest of the story. The camp was SpringHill, and it was during this summer that Denise and I fell in love with SpringHill and became good friends with Mark Olson (we were dating at the time so I’d come visit on her day off).

It was through our friendship with Mark that we continued our involvement with SpringHill, first as ambassadors and donors, then eventually, in 1998, going on full-time staff.

With hindsight we clearly see how God used this disappointment in Denise’s life to lead us to the place He wanted us to be and to do the things He planned for us to do. It was this lesson that she shared with MD and Christina – “God has a better plan for you, though you might not see it now, one day you may be able to look back and see your B Plan was really God’s A Plan.”

A Letter of Anticipation

I love it when we receive letters from campers telling us about their summer camp experience and thanking our staff for all they did during their visit to SpringHill. But, up until this week, we’ve never received a pre-camp letter written in anticipation of a child’s visit to camp. But, as they say, there’s a first time for everything and one of our campers, Brynn, sent such a letter to her future counselor.

In it Brynn thanked, in advanced, her future counselor for a great week, for also becoming her good friend and affirming what a great counselor Brynn knows she’ll be. It obvious Brynn’s been to SpringHill before because she knows what to expect – great staff, new influential relationships, memorable experiences and transformational moments.

I, as well as the SpringHill team, are both humbled and challenged by Brynn’s confidence in us.

A Prayer for a Spring Day

Oh Lord, the Creator, the Giver and the Sustainer of all Life,

You are the God who awakens the earth and all its creatures from their winter slumber.

Lord, You bring forth life each spring and turn it’s still and icy nights into choruses of song,

You fill empty branches of trees with the source of all of the world’s life.

The animals make their way from their winter homes to the fields and streams

overflowing with the winter snow melt and the spring rains.

How can we experience this rebirth, this new life, this transformation each year

and not immediately turn to the new life given to us through Your Son Jesus?

In the spring, when the entire world is awakening, Your Son went instead to sleep,

When life arrived from what appeared to have been dead, Your Son died,

With the arrival of scented flowers and fruitful trees, filled with singing birds,

Jesus lay three days in a silent tomb, having only the aroma of death.

Yet the world and all that’s in it would one day go to sleep again,

to experience death, Lord you planned it this way,

But You also planned for our Jesus, to come alive, more alive than the best spring day.

Jesus rose from His death, to live forever, to give hope that all of creation would one day be rescued

from its assured death, to be delivered from its winter slumber.

And Your Son’s return to life on that spring morning, is a promise to us, who put our faith in Him,

that we too will not be bound by the eternal winter, but will one day live forever in a place

where there will be no winter, where there will be no death,

but only life found on the best spring day ever and one that will never end.

Amen

The Power of Shared Experiences

In response to the question in my last post – “the beach or the mountains or somewhere else?” my good friend Tony Voisin answered “honestly wherever my family and friends are. I’d hate to be either place without them.” I love Tony’s answer because it highlights the powerful impact shared experiences have on relationships.

At SpringHill we define a shared experience as any new, challenging and adventuresome activity shared within the context of a small community of people, be it a cabin group, a family or small group of friends. It’s within this context that the building of the lasting foundations of life time relationships happen.

This is why my friend Tony wants to have these experiences with those he loves and it’s why shared experiences are integral to the SpringHill Experience. We feel so strongly about shared experiences that we assure all our campers participate in all camp activities together with their cabin groups. It’s why our ziplines have 6 or 8 lines so entire cabins can go down together. It’s why we have ropes courses that can accommodate an entire cabin and why we have small distinct and creative housing villages. We want to create shared experiences because we believe they build powerful and lasting relationships with others, and most importantly with Jesus.

Over the last few years we’ve also come to believe that these same shared experiences can create power relationship building opportunities for families. We’ve witnessed God using shared experiences to heal wounded families, lay the foundation for lifelong relationships and build families able to weather the storms that will inevitably come. As a result we’ve added additional summer family camp experiences at both our overnight camps.

So plan a family vacation or attend a SpringHill family camp this summer and create some powerful and lasting shared experiences. Your family will be stronger for it.

The Beach or the Mountains, or the …?

I remember late night debates with friends about which were better – the mountains or the beach? At the heart of the debate was the romantic calling of the sea and the laid back life on the beach versus the adventure and majesty of the mountains. What both have in common is that they show the immense size and beauty of God’s creation while often creating existential crises because they make us feel so insignificant in their midst.

When pressed in those debates I always landed on mountains as my choice. But over the last 15 years my preference has slowly shifted. As our family traveled down to Myrtle Beach for spring break I posed the question to them – mountains or beaches? After a bit of discussion they asked my choice to which I answered – neither.

You see a couple of years ago I realized that my answer was now “C. None of the above”, though I still love and appreciate both (especially the beach after a long Michigan winter), my first choice has become, what I call, the great north woods, especially the forests and glades around the Great Lakes.

There is nothing I love more than a summer morning filled with the sweet smell of firs, pine and poplar combined with the coolness that the natural air conditioning of the Great Lakes provide, or watching the sunset over a spring fed lake or over the coast of Lake Michigan. I still love to watch white tail leap a fence or catch a trout in a lake or a stream.

There’s just so much that I love about great north woods, but in the end, I find the same majesty of the mountains and the same romantic calling of the sea but in an environment that’s personal, intimate and accessible.  They have truly become my sanctuary.

What’s your favorite place?

The Culture of Opinion

Over the last few months I’ve traveled 90 minutes to and from Grand Rapids on a weekly basis. As I started this routine, I turned to the local sports talk radio for my on road entertainment. But within a few trips I grew weary of listening to the callers spouting off with their opinions about local teams, coaching decisions and player performance.

I grew weary because I had just come off of 5 years of coaching middle school and high school sports and I had discovered that there’s much more to coaching decisions than what the average fan sees during a game. I came to appreciate that coaches have significantly more information about their players and their team than any person could conceivably gain just by being a fan.

And what made sports talk radio even more wearisome was simply that most of the callers had so little experience playing or coaching, and none at the highest levels, yet felt they could, with authority, criticize coaches and players. They seemed to ignore the obvious fact that those they criticize have significantly more knowledge, experience and ability than all the callers combined.

Yet this culture of opinion isn’t limited to the world of sports. It’s in every facet of our society including politics and business. So as I listened during those first few trips I realized I no longer want to be filled with a litany of uniformed and inexperienced opinions, instead I need facts and perspective that I can trust, value and act on (such as a good interview with a player or coach). And I also decided I will not be one of those people who criticize others, whether they’re close to me or far off, when I’m not capable of doing any better myself, and when I know I have significantly less information and experience than they do.

 

What I Believe to Be True!

In The Leadership Challenge the authors Kouzes and Posner recommend an exercise that helps clarify one’s vision. They recommend writing on paper “what I (we) want to accomplish” followed by asking the question why, writing down your answer, and then keeping asking why until you’ve run out of reasons. The result is an insight into your core motivations and the beliefs behind what you want to accomplish.

When I did this exercise, answering the “why” behind what we do and what we want to be at SpringHill I ended with a core set of believes that I then articulated in a form of a confession.

Though this isn’t an official SpringHill statement it does, I believe, hit at the heart of many of the reasons behind why SpringHill staff are so passionate about what we do and why we do it.

What I Believe to Be True!

1. I believe the most transformational moments in a person’s life begins with a saving faith in Jesus Christ and a vibrant, growing relationship with Him.

    

2. I believe that the most likely time for a person to have these transformational moments is when they are a child.

    

3. I believe these transformational moments in a child’s life best happen through the partnership of parents, local churches and ministries such as SpringHill.

    

4. I agree with Bill Hybles, that the local church is the hope of the world.

    

5. But I also believe that the future hope of the local church rest with children. Therefore, if we want to strengthen the local church and thus change the world, the most important thing we can all do is to focus our time, energy and resources on the spiritual development of children.

    

6. I believe that, through the partnership of people and organizations that share these same convictions, we can create more opportunities for more young people to have these transformational experiences, thus preparing them to join us in creating a better world.

    

7. Finally, I believe God has called SpringHill to create significant transformational experiences for young people where they can know and grow in their relationship with Jesus. I know this to be true because I’ve been privileged to be a part of and witness to 1000′s of young lives being transformed every year.