Leadership Encouragement
 
        Throughout the summer we try our best to put people in place that can best show our campers the love of God and the life of Christ. This requires giving the campers a lot of attention a lot of the time. However, we also value investing into our staff and counselors lives. This summer we have been blessed to have a great God focused man that has taken the lead on this through our Sunday night bible studies. David Luck has taken time every Sunday to meet with our staff, and occasionally counselors, to help show them what biblical leadership looks like. During the study we looked at the life of seven individuals who symbolized biblical leadership and ended the study with David, Beth (David’s wife and camp nurse), Alan, and Lisa praying over our staff about God sending them out to continue His mission as the summer ends. I would like to share a little bit about those leaders we looked at this summer with hopes that they can inspire and encourage you the same way they did us!
 

1. Joshua              
   

               A.    Mentored by Moses – Numbers 11:28-30
                      i. With Moses from his youth
                      ii.Respected the Spirit’s leadership in Moses
            B.    We must also find a mentor who is lead by the Spirit who will help to teach and encourage us the same way Moses did Joshua
   
    2. Deborah
              A.    Delegates when needed – Judges 4:5-6
                     i.She had a lot on her plate as a judge
                     ii.She trusted others to accomplish a task when God told her to
            B.     As leaders it is easy to want everything to be our responsibility because of pride or a desire to do things “right”, but a great leader listens for God to tell you when to delegate
   
    3. Gideon
             A.    Seeks God’s guidance and leading – Judges 6:36-7:1
                    i.He wanted to confirm his calling
                    ii.Listened for God’s response and obeyed it
         B.    Sometimes we feel like God is asking too much of us, and it causes us to doubt our calling as a leader. God usually asks to much of us so that through our success we realize it was His guidance that brought the success not our skills or talents

    4. David
          A.     Example of God being our source or power – 1 Samuel 17:45-47
                  i.He was not afraid because he knew God was on his side
                  ii.His faith in the power of God was well placed
          B.    This makes me think about the saying “God does not call the equipped, He equips the called”. If you are called by God to be a leader, He will equip you for all the battles that are ahead
   
     5. Peter
          A.    The Spirit at work – Acts 2:14-41
                  i.He becomes active when he realizes what has just happened
                  ii.He immediately capitalizes on the opportunity to share the story of Christ with all who could understand him
         B.    There will be questions asked of us when we are leaders that we do not know the answer to. Make sure you leave every door open for the Spirit to speak through you during these times. Just because we do not have an answer doesn’t mean that the Spirit within us doesn’t have an answer
   
     6. Paul
          A.    Reality of a lifestyle change – Galatians 1:11-17
                  i.He did not hide from his dark past
                  ii.Pointed to God saving him from his sinful flesh
        B.    In Romans 12:1-2 Paul teaches us as believers, and especially as leaders, that we have to change our mindset. The reality of a changed mindset is that it quickly changes our lifestyle too

    7. Jesus
        A.    All of these leaders and more – Luke 22:42
              i.Being 100% man meant Jesus became broken while bearing the weight of our sins (sweat like drops of blood; verse 44), He wanted another way
                  ii.Knew the importance of God’s will being fulfilled rather than ours
       B.    Running from a problem is easy even for a leader, but that does not fix the problem. Christ showed us in his darkest moment that perusing the will of God is what truly what makes a leader great 


​I hope that you can learn and grow from the examples set by these leaders. Anyone can be a leader, but it takes someone special to be a God centered leader. You can be that someone special!!

                                                                                   Summer Update:
 
        We have been having an incredible summer so far! It has been week after week of seeing God move in the lives of our campers. Here is a breakdown of what our weeks have looked like so far:

• Boys Outreach – 43 Campers; 6 Salvations, 1 Rededication, 4 Other*
• First Baptist Knoxville – 50 People
• Boys Week/ Spec Ops – 57 Campers; 2 Salvations, 2 Other*
• Middle School Camp – 55 Campers; 8 Salvations, 5 Rededication, 5 Other*
• Girls Week 1 – 92 Campers; 5 Salvations, 2 Rededication, 11 Other*
• Summit Camp – 7 Campers
• Girls Week 2 – 67 Campers; 1 Salvation, 3 Rededication, 5 Other*
• Little Rascals Camp – 20 Campers
• Grace Camp – 82 People

* - if questions about faith are asked or prayer request made
 
We serve a God that is so good! We cannot wait to see what He has in store for us the rest of the summer!!
 
                                                                             God Moment update:
         I received an email from a young lady that had two God moments that happened in her life recently. The first happened while she was at Fuge camp and one of her friends was not open to the idea of active praise and worship or even to the concept of who Christ is and what He has done for us. Through the Spirit working in his life during the week he had a huge transformation. He went from not wanting anything to do with Christ, to being curious and asking questions as well as opening up during their bible studies. By the end of the week he was also joining in on their active praise and worship. It is awesome how God transforms people! The second happened while she was here serving at camp with her church. Their group was asked to help with a lot of behind the scenes stuff and she felt as though what she was being asked to do was not helping the campers at all. Throughout the week she slowly realized how important everything was in the grand scheme of things. God worked in her life in such a powerful way that she is now interested in coming back next year as a counselor!
 
         If you have a God moment that you would like to share with us please send it to [email protected]. If I get enough feedback I would like to start a God Moment Monday or something similar to that where we can all stay connected to each other and be able to praise our God together!!

                                                                               God Moments Abroad:
 
          Last week I had the privilege to join a team of young people and help put on a sports camp for middle school aged kids in Arezzo, Italy! It was an amazing experience and the reason for this blog post being a week late. Hopefully there will be no hard feelings for me pushing it back a week, and if there are…look on the bright side, you will get two in two weeks now! With that out of the way, let’s jump right into this post.
 
          Accompanying us on this trip was none other than our Director of Mission, Phil Young! He is an avid watcher of things that he likes to coin as “God moments”. These are moments in which you can clearly see the hand of God at work in your, or someone else’s, life. When you make habit of looking for God in all sorts of areas of life, you will find out quickly that He is heavily invested in the lives of those who He has created! In honor of Phil and his encouragement to look intently for God moments, I would like to share a few that we had while we were there!
 

1. In my personal opinion this was the biggest God moment we had all week. There was a young lady whose name was Sarah and her entire family are all practicing Muslims. She was young enough to know there was a difference between what we were sharing and what her family believes, but not old enough to critically think about the severity in which they are different. Every day we would sing songs of praise in English and Sarah would follow along the best she could, just singing away to a God that she didn’t quite know that much about. We would also have daily bible studies and during that time we would look at different “I Am” statements made by Jesus Christ during His ministry. Every day when we asked someone to tell us what was spoken about the day before Sarah’s hand would shoot up with excitement to share with everyone that she remembered. Like I said earlier, she knows there is difference between the Muslim faith and Christianity, and she may not have become a believer in Jesus Christ last week but as Isaiah 55:11 says “so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I send it.” ESV Regardless of decisions made last week, those kids heard truth from the Word of God! That word will not return to God empty!
2. Another great God moment happened in the life of a young man named Jesaja (Jesiah). Jesaja is from Holland and spoke no Italian, which made it a lot easier for our students to communicate with him. Right out of the gate Jesaja was nervous about being at the camp and was reluctant to stay. Thankfully we were able to persuade him to stay because he had an amazing time! During the week Jesaja was working through his nervousness and tried out the different groups to find the right fit for himself. He decided to join the yellow team and once the chaos settled he found himself loving every activity we did. Our students made sure to help him feel welcomed and through the week a few got to create relationships with him. By the time Friday rolled around Jesaja didn’t want the camp to end. He had a total transformation from crying about having to stay on Monday to crying about the camp ending on Friday. Somewhere in the middle of those two days Jesaja was shown a love so strong that he felt safe, comforted, and valued. No one can drastically change a child’s mindset like that other than God. It was awesome to see his transformation and to know that it was solely because of God bringing peace to his heart through the love he received from his teammates and leaders!

          If God moments are not something you look for everyday I would recommend that you start! Nothing is more validating of God’s power in action than seeing it firsthand. We would love to know about some God moments going on in your life recently. You can send those to Matthew at [email protected] and with permission they may get put in blog to help bring encouragement to others! God is good and the work He is doing in our lives and the lives of those around us should be shared!!