Posted: 1/30/20 at 11:00am. Article by Alexis Epperly.

Explaining Impact! Mission Camps to someone who is unfamiliar with its mission is rarely anything but entertaining.

First you say how Impact is a week-long Christian camp, and upon further discussion you begin describing how you wake up early, worship together, complete major construction projects (amid the relentless heat with a bunch of people you hardly even know) in hopes of completing the job in just one short week.
But Impact campers usually explain how all of this adds up to an epic, memorable, summer project that they look forward to throughout the year. Upon hearing this, people’s facial expressions are often priceless! Some people will offer their blessings, while others are confused why anyone would want to spend a week like this.
When we go on mission trips such as Impact, we go to serve others, but we easily forget how much we can be filled on these journeys with God.
I enjoyed attending Impact for three years as a camper, but each year I always left wanting more. The fellowship among campers and staff, the ability to help others, and learning new skills has always drawn me back.
I joined Impact staff this past year, and frankly I was terrified. However, looking back, I see that God was pulling me toward Impact staff more for my own growth. I worked to share God’s word with the community and campers however God was working in me this summer to open my eyes and heart just a little bit more. It seemed as though each sermon spoke my struggles within my faith.
I was reminded that I need to be asking the hard questions, searching for God in everything, laying my struggles before God, and being willing to follow God’s plan and share his amazing love with others. Impact leaves you on a “spiritual high,” but it is hard to maintain that feeling.
One pastor explained this while telling the story of Zacchaeus: how right now it is easy for us to see past the crowd because this amazing spiritual refresher has just taken place, but as the weeks pass since our Impact experience it gets harder and harder to see Jesus through the crowds of life that begin to block our view.
Summer 2019 came to an end, and we said our goodbyes. I truly felt the reality of the “Impact Family” that I’d heard many others describe in the past. It was an absolute pleasure worshiping, laughing, sharing, playing games, and working alongside everyone last summer.
The experience helped me grow so much as a person, especially in my faith, and I became ready to take that feeling and share it with my little part of the world. Impact is something that I will always look forward to.
I will always hope for a good crew that is able to work together to get the job completed in such a short time frame. I will pray that everyone stays safe and look forward to the new friendships that make up this Impact family.
The connections we were able to build in such a short period of time are like none other. It’s not uncommon to see tears as campers say goodbye to their newfound friends and return home, and I relate as I say goodbye to my Impact family.
We may be separated geographically now by many hours; however, we are all called to do the same thing, which is to share the love of Christ to those around us.

Impact! Mission Camps have been an important part of my life for a long time. I have been to Impact four times before as a camper, and camp has always been a highlight of my summers. While I was at Impact during the summer of 2018, one of the staff members encouraged me to apply for staff for 2019. I submitted an application and was accepted, I and have spent this summer working for Impact Mission Camps. It has been one of the best summers of my life.

I really did not know what to expect as a staff member. As a camper, I would see the staff visiting job sites and running worship services, but I was sure there would be more than that this summer. There were so many more opportunities for me as staff. But the two things I enjoyed most while working for Impact this summer were working on job sites and sharing my testimony during evening worship services.

I have always enjoyed working with my hands and building things. I learned parts of construction from my dad for years and minored in carpentry during college. This summer, I got to use these skills during Impact. As staff we visit job sites throughout the week and occasionally go out and help if they are short-handed. But this summer I even got to work as a crew chief on a job site one week. I got to work on a house and teach the students some of the things I knew, and I got to watch as the home transformed through the week. Getting to use the gifts God has given me was an awesome experience.

While I love carpentry and working on a job site, I hate public speaking. However, to my surprise, giving my testimony each week was one of the most rewarding parts of the job. I realized early this summer that after my testimony, students were more likely to come to me and talk. I loved talking to the students and hearing their stories and sharing mine. That has been my favorite part of this summer. Getting to know people and making connections has been the highlight of this experience.

I am so glad that I applied for staff and got to spend the summer working for Impact. Getting to use my love for carpentry and my love for people has been a great experience. I loved getting to see a new side of Impact that I never got the chance to see as a student. While I will not be able to work on staff again, I would if I had the opportunity and would recommend it as a great way to spend the summer having fun and serving God.

Impact Mission Camps, in its 26^th year overall and its second year of five-year partnerships with communities where it serves, gave students and partners new opportunities to share God’s love through service this summer.

For the last several years, the theme for Impact has come from the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, with themes such as Hungry, More than Welcome, and Robes of Hope. This year, we practiced Just Visiting—being one expression of the presence of Christ by visiting, forming relationships, and serving.

Over the course of the summer, over 700 participants served during six weeks of camp—repairing 60 homes—ensuring families would be safe, warm, and dry. Students also had new opportunities to serve this year and created new ways for partner churches to engage. They were part of a community lunch celebration in Chesterfield, hosted by the local faith community.

Kids in grades 3-5 got to be part of the overall mission experience in Bluefield, serving each other, the youth campers, a homeowner, and the wider community. In Danville, we saw a new partnership begin with the Pittsylvania Baptist Association, Averett University, and Impact to create pathways to year-round engagement.

And on the Eastern Shore, Impact participants helped expand Splash Camp, a summer camp that provides much-needed childcare and shares the gospel, to a second site. During our two weeks in Jones County, Impact participants served homeowners still displaced by Hurricane Florence as part of the overall BGAV Disaster Rebuild efforts there.

Participants went home ready to explore how they can be part of God’s mission, how God may be calling them, and how their worldview needs to expand in light of what they experienced this summer.

They learned new ways their churches can engage their communities by learning about Fresh Expressions, saw a glimpse of what a life of faith beyond high school may be like from collegiate ministers who served as camp pastors, and saw that they will always have a home away from home at Impact as several former staffers came back to serve as worship leaders and as the camp coordinator.

The work for next year has already begun, and the work of our faith never really ends.

Kids are not the future of the church.

We hear a lot about how churches need to invest in children, youth, and young families because they are the future of the church.

At Impact Kids in Bluefield, a kid-friendly mission camp that coincided with our youth construction mission camp, we saw that the future of the church is right now. Children in grades 3 through 5 (or 6, depending on where their churches group sixth graders) participated fully in a missions experience tailored to them.

The theme for the week was “Just Visiting,” inviting kids to learn about how God visits us and calls us to visit others in return. They learned how God can use them to show love to the world, and they then spent each afternoon expanding their circle of care.

They learned through lessons, videos, and a Tyvek suit relay race about ways churches can serve the wider community through Disaster Response. They learned how to be part of community and how to create a community that reflects the Kingdom of God.

They served each other as campers by making individual gifts for each other, they served homeowners who were receiving home repairs by creating teacup flowerpots for each crew to share, and they served homeowners directly by doing yard work alongside the teens doing construction on the site.

One of the leaders said they looked like a “plague of friendly locusts” as they descended on the yard and cleared every leaf and weed from the site.

After cleaning the yard, they had a birthday party for Mrs. Cecil (she turned 94)—complete with cupcakes and a joyful rendition of “Happy Birthday.” After the kids sang, Mrs. Cecil said, “With all my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, I’ve had a bunch of birthday parties this month. But this one tops them all!”

But the kids weren’t just there to learn—they were there to lead. They led the rest of the camp by teaching them the proper way to sing “All the People Said Amen” (hint: you have to yell “Amen” really loudly).

They took the lead in the community on the day they visited the pool. One of the boys wanted to jump off the high dive, but he got a little nervous and climbed down. An Impact staff member offered to help him, but before we knew it, all the kids—and then everybody at the pool—were chanting his name, encouraging him to jump. And he did!

His smile when he came up out of the water showed us more clearly than anything that kids have a lot to teach us about Just Visiting and welcoming others into community.

In the end, Impact KIDS showed our churches what’s to come for them in their lives as part of God’s mission, especially as they grow into youth and adults. But the kids who served during the week showed their churches that they’re not just the future of the church.

Kids are a critical part of what the church is and what the church needs to be—right now.

I have been a part of Impact Mission Camps as a camper, staff member, and now as on-site coordinator since 2009. While on staff in the summers of 2015 and 2016 I was able to meet so many wonderful people.

Since I have been a part of camp for ten years now, I have had the opportunity to meet and bond with other fellow Impacters over the years and when I became a staff member I was able to reconnect with previous crew chiefs, youth leaders, and even some campers.
Mikayla Barnes

One that really stuck out to me most though was my very first crew chief, Stanley Clayton, who even seven and ten years later could tell you exactly what I—not just my crew, but me as an individual—did on our job site that summer.

Stanley has been to Impact for many years and is an awesome, godly man, and being not only recognized and remembered but also gratified by him means more than words can describe. It truly touches my heart to see God working in all of us. Stanley is only one of many people who have touched my heart through the Impact family.

Starting back with Impact after being away for almost three years was a major adjustment. I have finished college, I am now married, and I have started graduate school, but it was like I never missed a beat. We have now completed two camps and are in the midst of the third this summer, and tons of people have recognized me, given me hugs, asking me about my life like they saw me last summer or even last month.

I have been welcomed back with open arms and felt like I was missed, which is a true blessing. This is because Impact is a family. I had a crew youth leader in 2013 who was with me in the hospital the very next week at camp because he just so happened to work at the same hospital my grandmother was in. He was there for me and prayed with me and my family, because I was a part of his family—the Impact family.

In summer 2016 another crew chief became like a father figure to me and treated me as his own when my now husband came to visit. He took on that role very well. Then three years later, that same crew chief welcomed me back into his family at camp in Bluefield. He acted as though he had seen me every step of the way in the past three years, when I had not seen him once. Last week, he pulled me aside after the last night of worship and felt as though he needed to tell me just how proud he was of me, how much he has seen me grow, and how God is using me in amazing ways.

God spoke to me through him that night to help confirm my calling to Impact, because of this family it has created. Impact is not just a summer mission camp; we are a family, bonding together summer after summer.

Originally Posted at BGAV.org. Article by Lara De Haan.

As for me, I will always have hope; I will praise you more and more.–Psalm 71:14 (NIV)

It amazes me how sometimes we go on mission trips with the idea that we are to chase others who need love and God’s word, but sometimes our reason for going is actually God chasing after us.

This summer I had the opportunity to work as a staff member for the Baptist General Association of Virginia’s Impact Missions camp.

Having gone as a camper for the five previous summers, I thought I had an idea of what my summer would be like as I sent in my application.

Early wake-ups. Hot afternoons. Humbling living conditions. (Anything but the typical summer vacation dreams of lying on the beach like I would do at home.) Looking back, I actually had no clue what this summer truly had in store for me.

I jumped in with the inspiration to be a staffer who was remembered for adding energy to the mornings, genuinely getting to know the campers, always being in front worshipping as though no one was looking, joining in on the work on sites, and for opening the minds and hearts of these high schoolers.

I hoped that at the week’s end that they would long to come back. I hoped that they would continue to spread their good works back at home. And I hoped I would, too.

But more than the accomplishment of any of these goals, I believe God gave me this opportunity to open my own eyes and heart. Having been super distant from worship and scripture while studying at college for a couple years, I think God gave me the opportunity to hear through others and be reminded of his reckless love that I’d forgotten about.

I don’t think she knew it at the time, but one girl (we’ll give her the alias, Grace) flipped my thoughts and led my heart back to where it belonged.

Grace asked me to talk after worship one night. That one night was the night of worship I shared my testimony for the first time. She relieved my vulnerable feeling by admitting she, too, had been feeling some of the same ideas I had shared, one being a recent uncertainty in God and a guilt because of that doubt.

I sat down and listened to her, and when she asked what I thought, I couldn’t control it; my mouth just opened and began to pour out reasons why I know we can’t doubt God’s presence in life.

I don’t remember quite what I said, but as soon as the words left my mouth they came right back and hit my ears so hard that my heart absorbed the punch, and suddenly I knew that I wasn’t just speaking to Grace anymore. I was speaking to myself.

And as the weeks went on, people continued to share their stories of life with me: the heartache of losing a wife and a daughter, the fear and miracle of a son surviving a bullet to the head, the pain of growing up with a manipulative and alcoholic father, and the loss of a friend who sacrificially stepped in front a bullet.

I was baffled as I sat through these stories of pain and suffering that always seemed to have a happy end. Each being a “happy end” because each storyteller ended with an unbreakable confidence in God’s intervention, love, and purpose.

My soul needed this summer opportunity to be on staff. Being at Impact gave me a platform to have deeper, more intimate conversations about God with those who came. Ultimately, these conversations helped refocus and reaffirm what I believe in.

The song that will remind me of all that I was blessed with this past summer is Reckless Love by Cory Asbury. When I thought I was going to chase after others, I myself was being sought after.

Lara De Haan is a student at George Mason University. Her home church is Westwood Baptist Church, a BGAV-member congregation in Springfield, VA.