Camping

Camping is the experience of moving from a familiar environment into a new one, usually simpler and almost always in the out-of-doors or wilderness. It is done for fun, rather than work, and is a form of play. As challenge, as exploration, as experimenting with new skills without the compulsion to make or produce something, camping is a renewing form of recreation and leisure. It is also one of many creative ways we put ourselves into a more receptive mode to hear, observe and respond to our God.

When children ask if they can sleep in the backyard on a summer’s night, they have taken a step toward untangling themselves from the complexities of their world and discovering a simpler way to live, even for a night. Camping gives us the opportunity to be around the “stuff” that our God has created. When we are immersed in God’s creation instead of our humanly made environment, we are confronted with “God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—[which] have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). Whether it is a family trip or a residential program, camping is an important vehicle to get away from it all, to challenge our abilities and to be more in tune with who God is and what God says.

Life on Life

There is more to relating to the physical environment than mere brawn. For the solo camper it provides opportunity for meditation and for developing self-control. Solo campers must confront themselves. But most commonly families and groups of people camp, thereby providing an opportunity to relate not only to God’s physical creation but also to God’s human creation in life-on-life experiences. Not only did God create us to live in and care for the created world, but God has also invited us into community (Genesis 1:27). It is difficult to role-play on a camping trip when we are reduced, as we usually are, to the bare essentials and cannot merely slip into our occupational lifestyles. Whether on a weekend retreat or fishing trip, a formal residential program or an informal weekend venture with a group of friends, campers usually return to their normal life refreshed with a new perspective, sometimes with a new perspective on themselves.

I once took a group of boys on a three-night camping trip around the Gulf Islands of British Columbia. When we left our base camp, we looked painfully awkward trying to maneuver the large voyager canoe as a team when we were not yet a team. In our struggle we learned a great deal about ourselves and one another as we paddled all day and arrived at the campsite in the pouring rain. No one wanted to help get a fire going to cook dinner, and we could not simply go to our favorite fast-food restaurant. We had to put our selfishness aside and look after each other. On the ocean by day and on the shore by night, we learned survival skills. We also learned how to work together as a team. And when we arrived back at camp three days later, our cooking had not improved very much, but we had! We also had wonderful stories to tell the others in the camp. In contrast to the highly competitive environment in which most live today, camping draws out cooperation and invites community.

Sometimes lifelong friendships result from camping together. Relationships are central at camp because our God is a relational God. Before anything else was, God was and is three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Therefore when we camp together, we enjoy a double divine context: creation, which declares the glory of God, and community, which declares the relational nature of God. Making friends often happens because we have allowed ourselves the leisure to be relaxed and open, a form of wasting time profitably.

The benefits of camping are numerous. Not only do we get a chance to work together and make friends, some which may prove to be lifelong, but there is time to observe God’s creation and see how it functions, to sit around the fire, to look at the stars and talk significantly about the One who created this earth. The order and sometimes the seeming chaos of God’s physical creation, the awesome power and unpredictability of the weather point us godward, inviting us to be creatures dependent on God’s provision and care rather than autonomous beings attempting to control everything. A camp environment is a great place to explore the teachings of Jesus and to discuss issues that really matter: Is there a God? What is the purpose and meaning to life? What is the future of our planet? What happens when we die? Both children and adults may entertain questions at camp that they have difficulty discussing at home.

Informal Learning

In addition to being a good place to ask questions, camp is a great place to seek answers, learn new skills and become a more mature person. All of this happens without a classroom, indeed partly because there is none! Informal learning is the kind that happens when we do not think that we are learning. It happens by repetition, mimicking the actions of others and solving problems, in contrast to more intentional methods of instruction. How to light a fire when it has just rained, how to make a meal for ten people when you have one pot, how to set up a tent and make a campsite comfortable, how to climb a steep slope when you need to be roped to others, how to paddle a canoe or sail a boat, how to put together a campfire skit are skills that are learned by doing them rather than by mastering manuals and doing simulations. Camping is an enriched learning environment for crucial life skills: cooperation, leadership, caring for God’s physical creation and caring for God’s human creation.

According to anthropologists, those things we have learned informally stay with us longest and are the hardest to change. This is certainly true of things learned informally outside of the camping context, including what we have learned about God both negatively and positively. Often people need to live in a temporary Christian community—which is what Christian camping offers—to change their negative attitudes about God and the Christian life. Tragically, many people have difficulty associating play, enjoyment and hilarious pleasure with the Christian faith. But the informal learning environment of camping can lead to a paradigm shift, a changed worldview and sometimes even a personal conversion.

When people have an exhilarating backpacking adventure in the mountains, get up in the middle of the night to go swimming under moonlight, race with the wind down a channel in a small sailboat, dress up for a hilarious skit, play a wide game that takes all day, they are learning all the time. Often their lives are transformed as they come to know God and experience the beginning of abundant life. And the process of transformation continues long after. It need not stop. The Christian faith is about joy, and camping is one way of entering into that joy. By the way, what are you doing this weekend? Let’s go camping!

» See also: Backpacking

» See also: Creation

» See also: Leisure

» See also: Play

» See also: Recreation

» See also: Simpler Lifestyle

» See also: Vacations

References and Resources

C. Nicoll, This Could Be Your Life Work, (Imageo, 1992), videocassette; H. Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus (New York: Crossroad, 1993); T. Slater, The New Camping Book (Sydney: Scripture Union Ministry Resource, 1990); T. Slater, The Temporary Community (Sutherland, N.S.W.: Albatross, 1984).

—Al McKay and R. Paul Stevens