Rhythms of Faith

RTLC Part of a Select Group of Camps to Initiate Project

 

We’ve said it for years. “Take it down the mountain!” It is really THE goal of summer camp at Rainbow Trail: To take what we’ve learned and what we’ve practiced and bring it home! Down the mountain! Into our communities! And this past summer, RTLC was honored to be one of a select benchmark group of outdoor ministries that helped identify the most promising strategies that are currently learned and practiced at overnight Christian summer camps that influence faith practices in the home.

The Rhythms of Faith project aims to strengthen the partnership between families, churches, and camps, and to empower parents and caregivers in family faith formation by leveraging the power of camp experiences to establish rhythms of faith through regular Christian practices.

The project is a five-year initiative led by Wheaton College’s HoneyRock Center for Leadership Development, in partnership with Sacred Playgrounds. It is funded by the Lilly Endowment’s Christian Parenting and Caregiving Initiative.   The project involves scholars and practitioners from Lutheran, United Methodist, and Evangelical traditions. This work of this this initial benchmark group will help inform the next stages of the 5-year research project (see rhythmsoffaith.com), which they hope to share with camp, church, and academic communities through presentations, publications, and training materials.

Rainbow Trail interviewed and was chosen as one of eleven outdoor ministries that were selected across Lutheran Outdoor Ministries (LOM), United Methodist Camping and Retreat Ministries, and Christian Camp and Conference Association (CCCA).

Once selected, RTLC worked directly with Sacred Playground’s director Dr. Jake Sorenson. Jake surveyed parents of our 2023 campers and was part of a four day on-site visit to see our program in action. He led focus groups with campers, summer staff, camper parents, and adult leaders & pastors during his time with us.

A narrative of Jake’s visit was posted on the Rhythms of faith website.  We felt the narrative perfectly captures our program and our ministry.  Here is a short excerpt: “Parents joined in the closing worship service, as campers and staff sang their favorite camp songs and walked through what they learned in Bible study. Dave addressed the parents, thanking them for trusting camp with their children and reminding them of the parent devotional they had received in the mail. He encouraged them to walk through it with their children in the coming week. He also addressed the campers: “I saw the real you here. Will that real you go home with you?”

 “It was an open question and one that the campers had struggled to answer during my focus groups with them. They loved camp. They wanted to keep coming back year after year, and several indicated a desire to serve on camp staff. They felt like their faith came alive here in ways that were difficult in other spaces. There was clear evidence from the observations of church leaders and parents that faith and leadership skills developed at camp continued to bear fruit in the weeks and months after camp. But the campers struggled to imagine how they could experience something like camp in any other space.”

We are excited to be part of this important work. The project seeks to help parents and congregations maximize the impact of the deeply transformational experiences shared at camp, and to help campers continue the lessons learned so that the spiritual and lifestyle seeds planted at camp may grow, especially once they go down the mountain!

 

The entire narrative can be found here.