How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Do you ever have a moment of illumination when you realize something you consider(ed) completely normal is actually rather abnormal? During most summers of my teenaged life, I did not spend my summers doing whatever it is teenagers do when they are not in school. Sleep in? Go to the pool? Hang out at the mall for no reason? I am not sure what the normal summer vacation activities of the American teen is. I spent a large part of my summers from 8th grade through high school taking part in The Great Adventure, a...thing my church has. I say "thing" because to call it a program or an event does not rightly convey what it is. So here is what it's all about...

The Great Adventure (GA) is for teenagers from 8th through 12th grades. The biggest "event" GA had was a week-long thing called Backyard Bible Clubs (BYBC). BYBC were held in the backyards (or front) of families from our church. Each host home would invite neighborhood kids to come to their house for this week and a team of 3-5 teens would go to 3 or 4 homes daily to play crazy games with the kids, tell a Bible story/lesson, share the Gospel, and answer any questions the kids, or the adults, had about God. The hosts provided snacks for the clubs, and each team had a driver to take them from one club to the next. Each team had one teen chosen by the youth leaders to be the team leader. This person was responsible for bonding the team together, choosing who did what on which day, and making sure the team was prepared at each club.

We, the teens, had phenomenal training leading up to BYBC week. Before we were accepted for GA, we had to learn a gospel presentation (either Wordless Book or the Hand Presentation, depending on the year). Most years, we spent 2 or 3 days at an encampment being trained on the stories, games and gospel presentations, and bonding as a team. Then we traveled to Waco, where we did BYBC for inner city kids at government housing projects. It was bananas. Sleeping four people across on expanded bunk beds, checking for needles at the playgrounds before clubs began, and keeping an eye out for people taking our supplies and suspicious people lurking around the clubs. If you were not bonded before going to Waco, your team was when you left!

For those who know me, as most of you do, I am not the most outgoing or take-charge kind of person. However, BYBC forced me out of my shell both as a team member and a team leader. Being a wallflower and sharing the gospel with 20 kids 4 times a day just does not work. I learned a lot about leadership, or lack of leadership, those summers. How to talk with peers so they understand and things are done properly. How to talk with adults so they understand what to expect and what is going on. How to talk with kids when they will not sit still, or 6-year-olds ask the big scary questions adults cannot properly answer. I had to know what the gospel was, how to present it, and how to explain it to children. I think doing this helped me understand it more, but being forced to simplify took away much of the extraneous details so many adults become wrapped up in.


The week ended with a big party on Friday night in our church's parking lot where it was transformed to SummerFest and hundreds, if not a thousand or more, people came. Lots of games for the kids to play, live music to enjoy, fire engines to climb on, hot dogs and sausages on the grill, cotton candy, snow cones, and popcorn. It was a way to bring the kids and their parents to our church so the BYBC hosts and drivers could connect more with their neighbors and we as a church could throw out the welcome mat. The kids in my clubs were so excited to find me and my other team members every year, and we were equally excited to see them and their families.

But the best part of the whole BYBC week may have come months later when I walked around my church and a kid would run up to me to say hi - I taught them at BYBC! To know that the little time I spent with a child not only provided them with fun things to do with their neighbor friends, but that they went home and became an influence on their family to go to church is truly awesome and humbling. Perhaps more importantly, it showed me that even though I may not directly see the impact I had during that week, the work that began with BYBC continued on in the children, families, homes, and neighborhoods we teens visited.

So, while I did not get to go to the pool a lot, hang out with my friends, and my family virtually postponed vacations together for 6 or 7 summers, I would not change one moment of my summers spent taking part in the Great Adventure. What I learned during that time - about myself, God, evangelism, the world, and being a good neighbor - has and will continue to follow me throughout my life.