Camp Part 8
Special to United Methodist Insight | Oct. 8, 2025
If you’re just now joining us, welcome to the Camp Crystal Lakewood series! Head back to the first page to catch up on the story so far!
Having brought their 8(ish) youth to a camp they thought met their standards of theology and practice, John and Charles Wesley discover their youth being picked off one by one by masked horror villains with a variety of motives most non-Methodist. Having lost the two most popular students to the Vibe Life para-church campfire, they are in hot pursuit of the two youngest students lost to a very…nationalistic Mess Hall.
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I hadn’t mentioned before but the third chaperone in the group this series is Benjamin Ingham, (1712-1772), a friend of the Wesley’s from their Oxford Holy Club days, who had even traveled with them on their mission to Georgia. He even joined John on his visit to Count Zinzendorf at Herrnhut, the hub of the Moravian movement. Eventually, Mr. Ingham’s congregations in Yorkshire became known as the Inghamites, attempting to hold tightly to Moravian-Methodist core faith and practice. In this series, I have been subtly leaving Ingham behind, constantly watching the students (or left among them) as John and Charles run off searching for the missing ones. I see him as more of a build up a congregation and stay with them type, whereas John and Charles were more of the travel far and wide types.
This series is leading us together somewhere, and in the end I’ll publish it all together so you can read it from start to finish as one story. For now, I’d like us to reflect together on ministry leadership in a culture surrounded by vastly differing Christian messaging. I find it is impossible, and even unnecessary, to “protect” one’s flock from theology they will hear from other faith traditions. Your congregation members are gleaning theology everywhere, from their news sources to their Tiktoks, from billboards to tee shirts to bumper stickers. More and more it is difficult to disentangle faith from political parties and organizations.
So. How are you walking beside your congregation through all the noise? How are you practicing discernment and holy conversation together? How are you challenging yourself and your siblings in Christ to pay attention to both the people who stayed and the people who are “missing,” or who went away? How are you defining ourselves together in God’s expansive love, rather than defining ourselves by what we’re not, or who we’re not like?
We’ll see you next week, friends.