Burning Questions with Bill: How to stoke the fires of enthusiasm after a surge of personal inspiration

• By Bill Dobbs, Clergy Assistant to the Bishop •

Question: This month’s question came from a younger pastor at Annual Conference who came up to me right after the ordination service, face still full of the emotion we all were feeling, and said, “What now? What do I do with all this passion and enthusiasm for ministry with the poor in my local church?”

Dobbs: I recognize the question. It’s the same question I’ve heard from youth over the years when I was counseling at one of our summer camps. (Shameless plug: Christian camp counseling is an outstanding opportunity to share with, and learn from, children and youth, and I highly recommend it, pastors!)

More than one teenager, full of a week of faith-changing time, has been disillusioned when they arrive home only to find that people at home don’t share their newfound enthusiasm for the faith. Even worse: they find a kind of patronizing tolerance which knows, from experience, that if you just wait a while, the “camp fires of enthusiasm” will pass and things will go back to normal!

Will that be our experience of annual conference this year? Will we go home, full of enthusiasm for what we have heard and experienced, and find a congregation that does not share our passion for ministry with the poor? Will we find a congregation that has come to expect these annual surges of enthusiasm on our part, but which knows, from experience, that they only have to be patient for a time and the enthusiasm will pass. “How can this year be different?” the pastor asked. Please let me share, briefly, something of what I’ve learned over the years:

First, do everything you can to help those who were not at annual conference share your experience. It is much easier today that it used to be, but the principle still holds true. Get together with your lay or clergy partner at annual conference and develop a strategy for reporting back on annual conference. Don’t let that report just be about the ‘business’ of conference, even if that was part of what excited you.

Share the messages you heard and the things you saw. If your people were following the ‘live-stream’ of the conference, that will be even better, but there are recordings and videos of the conference which are available for you to use as a way to tell the story of annual conference. Just don’t wait too long. Your excitement will be contagious.

Second, don’t get discouraged. Your people were not there. They didn’t have your experience, so they don’t share your excitement. But that doesn’t mean they can’t get excited or don’t care about the poor.

They have been called by Christ, just like you. The Holy Spirit will change them just like you have been changed, if you keep the door open to God. Share the stories you heard and how they impacted you.

Your personal witness is powerful testimony that God can use to reach others, so keep sharing.

Finally, don’t try to do this alone. Partner with the other person or persons from your congregation who attended annual conference with you. Form a small group. Invite people with like minds and passions to join you. Become an “Acts Two” church within a church. Devote yourselves “to the apostles teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper) and to prayer” (Acts 2:42, NLT).

And then hang on! God did “signs and wonders” in that first century church. People were changed – transformed by the Holy Spirit – so that they shared their money and meals, joyfully and generously, with those in need. And I’m here to tell you that God will do “signs and wonders” in your church as well! Thanks be to God!

It all begins with you. You must be willing to share what God has given you in these few days of annual conference! Don’t go back to business as usual or that is, most assuredly, what you will find.

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Finding faith through recreation and renewal: UMC Camps play vital role in spiritual transformation of youth, young adults

The scenery on a colorful fall day at Lake Myers Campground in Byron.

By RJ Walters, Editor

For the Rev. Jeremy Peters camp is “where it all started.”

It was “definitely in camp” where Amy Mayo-Moyle began her journey to being an associate pastor.

And for first-year University of Wisconsin-La Crosse student Nathan Karnemaat, United Methodist Camp “truly changed his life” during his most pivotal years.

There are 10 United Methodist camps around the state with dozens of different programs for youth and young adults to immerse themselves in, but it’s one common thread that ties them all together— the ability to combine personal exploration, foundations of faith and recreation into one unforgettable experience.

A place to explore
A 2009 study by the International Bible Society found that 83 percent of Christians make their personal faith commitment between the ages of 4 and 14.

Peters, an associate pastor at Fenton UMC, said a place like Camp Michigamme in the Upper Peninsula is the perfect place to build on the foundations of the local church by letting young people explore their faith and character.

Rev. Jeremy Peters supervises a soccer match amongst campers.

He said it’s no accident that many “spiritual awakenings happen in a camping or retreat setting more reliably and more frequently than they do in other settings,” considering Jesus’ interactions with his disciples early on are the ultimate example.

“The first thing he does is he takes them away from their day-to-day lives and put them in a different environment or goes out to the country side or up the mountaintop or into the wilderness,” Peters said. “There’s something about putting aside all the distractions and tasks and stress of our ‘ordinary lives’ and moving into a space that’s been sort of sanctified or set aside for the purpose of meeting God.”

He believes so strongly in UMC camp that he started counseling at Michigamme in high school and spent six years as a dean of Bay Shore Camp in Sebewaing.

He said late elementary and junior high youth need strong Christian mentors as they flesh out their own worldviews.

“If you can catch them at that age and introduce them to God and get them familiar with the Gospel there’s a good chance they’re going to make a decision that impacts the rest of their lives,” he said. “I think kids really need some good news at that age.”

That good news is precisely what prompted Karnemaat to write one of his first college papers on the impact Lake Louise camp had on him during his adolescent years.

“The first thing you must understand about Lake Louise is that no matter where you come from, what you look like, or how you act, you are welcome with open arms,” he wrote.

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