I’ve sat through hundreds of Falls Creek services throughout my time, working as a summer staffer and BGCO employee, but tonight I’m watching my first service solely via the livestream. Since my job while at Falls Creek primarily put me behind a monitor during the services, watching on a TV in my home feels natural and hearing the student respond with applause, laughter and singing makes me feel like I am in the room.
While thousands of students and sponsors are at camp each week, countless parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, Sunday school teachers, and friends pray for God to speak to those campers and for the past century, He has. But in addition to those campers filling that beautiful tabernacle, I think of those summer staffers sitting in the back few rows just to the right of the sound booth.
It’s currently week two and most of the staff are starting to really be confident in their jobs. They are speaking in cabins at night; they are encouraging students who make decisions, and they are getting to know each other both as co-workers and roommates. While a summer working at camp is incredibly rewarding, it’s also crazy exhausting. As you pray for your campers this summer, I want to give you three ways to pray for our summer staffers at both Falls Creek and CrossTimbers.
Sunday nights at camp are for staff worship and are such a coveted time of praise and thanks for the work God did in the previous week and hopeful expectation for His work in the week to come. Pray that as the staff worship on Sunday nights they are spiritually refreshed, and that their time in small groups after worship would be uplifting, vulnerable, and encouraging.
From archery to ropes course, lifeguards to program staff, media to accounting, there are so many areas in which our staffers minister to campers each week. Pray that as these faithful college students minister to our guests, that they also stay unified as one staff and that Satan’s attempts to break them up yield no fruit.
Just like campers who often leave a difficult situation at home when they come to camp, there are members of our summer staff who are surely stressed about school, concerned about their home life, are burdened for their lost family members and are struggling with how difficult it is to work at camp. Pray that each morning as our staff wake up still tired from the day before that the Holy Spirit would comfort them in their stress, worry, and struggles, and give them energy to affect positively students who undoubtedly need positivity from someone who genuinely cares about them.
Make time this summer to watch the Falls Creek livestream and as you occasionally hear the audience, think about the summer staffers who have given up their break to work a job that is exhausting, thankless, and hard, but incredibly rewarding, and thank God that He faithfully calls students each year to serve at Falls Creek and CrossTimbers.
You can watch the Falls Creek evening services at skopos.org/live Monday-Friday at 7:00pm CST.