Behind the Scenes: Camp Bible Study

We often hear the question, "What do you guys do all year?" We do a lot of things, actually. Believe it or not, planning CentriKid Camps for the summer is quite a long process. In fact, we just finished our writers conference for 2013 and 2014 where we outlined the spiritual direction for each of these two summers. Here's a look at what our process looks like.

We begin with two questions:

1. What do we want kids to walk away with? Knowing that we can't spiritually form a child in a week of camp, we can support the discipleship efforts of the local church and weave the gospel message through everything we do.What's the big picture we want a kid to really know and understand when they leave camp? How will they be changed? How can they live it out?

2. How can we get there? With a big theme in place (studying who God is, or who we are, etc.) we can then begin to plan how we will get there. We work hard to shape the content -- what we'll focus on in Bible study and worship, and how we will keep in kid-friendly. Our writers take it from here and begin to really put the pieces together.

Believe it our not, our camp theme or motif does not come into play until after these first two steps are complete. We believe the spiritual content should drive our theme, rather than having the theme drive what we teach kids at camp. For 2013 and 2014 we finished these steps and just yesterday decided on a theme for each year. These are some INCREDIBLE themes, and you are going to love them! Look out for an announcement about 2013 this summer!

Meredith Teasley works directly with our Bible study writers and leads our writers conference each year. Camp Bible study is one of her favorite projects! Meredith also plans recreation for the summer, and loves to see staffers make direct connections between games on the rec field and content covered in Bible study!