How God Keeps Us Humble

The following is a short essay I wrote for acceptance as a volunteer at our summer youth camp.

Camp St. Thekla Essay
Volunteer Applicant
Nathan Lee Lewis

"As a former youth pastor in several churches I have found my camp experiences to be the most memorable and rewarding. Camp allows for a focused environment away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. It allows the business of distracting activities to be put on pause. One’s heart and mind can be tuned in to the yearnings of one’s soul and to the prompting of the Spirit. I have watched young people who are on the fringe of a spiritual awareness step over into understanding and faith. I have seen the hardened heart of a troubled youth soften and receive truth and understanding. I have seen individual lifelong relationships forged and fragmented groups become community. The most rewarding memory is of those who say that their camp experience was the pivotal moment in their quest for God. To know that I had a part in that, to know that I was allowed the privilege of watching lives transformed, truly changed for a positive eternal destiny, is incomparable. It has been many years since I have worked with youth in a camp setting. The thought that I would have this opportunity again has not occurred to me in recent years. I find my heart coming alive with the resurgence of the gifts of ministry and the heart for youth that I once treasured. To be allowed the blessing once again to share in the camp experience is an unexpected joy. Perhaps, I will find myself a wiser more measured man than I was in the sincere, yet ignorant early years of ministry where I was very much a youth ministering to youth. Perhaps now that I have put away youthful things I can offer myself as a more refined instrument to speak wisdom and mold young lives. God grant that it be so. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner."

I was accepted. When I got there they put me in the kitchen for the whole week. I had no contact with the youth.