July Newsletter Article - Riverside Lutheran Bible Camp

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Summer is here, and that means it’s camp season! Riverside Lutheran Bible Camp is yet another of the important ministries we support with our benevolences at St. Petri, both as a congregation and as individuals. July is a great time to talk about the wonderful ministry we support just up the road to the north of Story City.
Riverside has been a camping presence in the Story City community for 75 years. “Riverside was established in 1943 thanks to the extraordinary vision of Pastor A.J. Bringle. Ever since then, Riverside has been a place of worship, rest, community, experiencing the Holy Spirit, and growing in a relationship with Jesus Christ. Tens of thousands of people have been impacted by the ministry here, along the banks of the Skunk River…” In 2017, Riverside welcomed over 2,500 campers, including local kids at day camps throughout the state, and approximately 7,500 people participated in some sort of event, retreat, or camp program hosted by or connected to Riverside throughout the year.
Riverside offers a variety of opportunities for people of all ages and abilities. There will also be a large shift in leadership in 2018 as longtime executive and equestrian directors Dave & Jan McDermott have announced their retirement, effective in October 2018. Riverside has already found its next executive director - Chris Dahl, current program coordinator, will step into that role this fall. Many of you know the years of dedicated service the McDermotts have given to Riverside and the Story City area - I’m sure an extra gift to Riverside in their honor would be appreciated.
As a longtime camper & staff veteran myself, I know firsthand how important camping ministries can be to the life of faith. There is something special about places set apart, like Riverside, where we can be invited to step out of our “boats” and into a new way of thinking or living the faith God has given us. I’m grateful that St. Petri supports Riverside Lutheran Bible Camp, and I look forward to a vibrant future for both our congregation and the camp just outside of town.
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Scott

Friday Five: Church Olympians

This week's Friday Five (surprise - I'm playing again!), posted by Deb at RevGalBlogPals:

With the Olympic Games in Sochi just around the corner, I started thinking about all the athletes who attend the Games and never win a medal. The hours of practicing, sacrifice and dedication don’t get noticed by the media. Yet, for the love of their sport, they persevere.
Then I began to reminisce about the “Olympians” in the Church. Perhaps you can think of faithful ones who never get up to preach, sing or read, but faithfully come, week after week, to serve. It seems to me they deserve a medal of sorts.
So, for this week’s Friday Five, share stories or memories of those “medalists” of the Church who have encouraged you in their faithfulness.

Sermon for the 20th Sunday after Pentecost

The Small Moments That Change Everything

20 years ago, I was a college freshman working in the snack bar of one of the dorms at the University of Nebraska. I didn't have a job for the summer and was getting nervous. One night, my co-worker Brigette's boyfriend Mike wandered down to walk her home after we closed. He was wearing the staff shirt of the Lutheran camp I had attended as a kid. I told him I'd been a camper there and always thought maybe it would be fun to be a counselor. He handed me a business card for the camp and told me to call them, since they were still looking for male counselors. 

I hadn't been to church since arriving on campus. I didn't think a lot about faith. I was going to be a band director and maybe get a job playing in a symphony on the side. But thanks to a chance conversation with the boyfriend of an acquaintance, my entire life changed. (Said acquaintance is now a friend, and also an ELCA pastor, but at the time we weren't anything more than co-workers. Love ya, Brigette!)

So, I asked my colleagues:  what are the small changes that led you to where you are now?  Here are the answers from those folks who’ve responded.

Music and the Making of a Pastor

Our local ministerium is doing a series of Lenten Luncheons this year, touring area churches and inviting one another to tell how we became pastors.  Today was my turn.  Here's the story:

There is a text of Paul’s that comes to mind when I think of my faith story.  Philippians 3.5-6:  “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more:  circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”  In many ways you could tell my faith story in this way:  “If anyone has reason to be confident in midwestern European Lutheranism, I have more:  a member of the people of Sweden, and also of a tribe of Missouri Synod Germans, a Johnson born of Johnsons; as to the farm, a native son; as to zeal for all things Cornhusker, a fanatic within the state religion; as to righteousness under the lutefisk, blameless.”  I’m a farmer’s son going back four generations in my hometown, baptized and confirmed at the same church my great-great-grandparents joined when they emigrated from Sweden in the late 1800s.  My mother’s family emigrated from Germany in the early 1900s and my uncles still live on the farm they owned seventy-odd years ago.  I grew up walking beans.  I’ve harvested Rocky Mountain Oysters.  I know what it’s like to stack straw bales in the loft of your barn and blow brown snot for the rest of the week.  I can put a fence together made up of rusted gates and baling wire.  I know how to hook a manure spreader to a tractor and spread fertilizer.  In many ways I could not be a more stereotypical midwestern farm boy.  But that is not the whole story of my faith, and frankly, I'll bet it's not the whole story for any of you, either.  

Campsick

In the summer of 1984, one week changed everything about me, changes that are still playing out today, 24 years later. All because I went to church camp.

I was ten years old, bookish, fairly unathletic, hopelessly self-conscious, an easy target for teasers. I had friends, good friends, and I'm pretty sure I was well liked by most of my classmates in our small town elementary school. But I had a very small sense of self-worth, and what I remember about those days was a fairly constant low-grade fear that whoever or whatever I was, it wasn't good enough, that sooner or later whatever goodness I'd found would be taken away from me. Melodramatic? Of course: but that's who I was back then, and in some sense that's who I remain today. I'm still plagued by fears of inadequacy, doubts about my worth as a person, as a father, husband, pastor. But over the course of six days in 1984, four more years of camp after those six days, and eventually five summers as a staff member, my experiences at Camp Carol Joy Holling in Ashland, Nebraska planted seeds of faith, hope and love in me that have never died. Sometimes I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that church camp saved my life.

This past weekend, staff members from years past gathered at Carol Joy Holling to celebrate 35 years of ministry in that wonderful place. They sang songs around the campfire; they hiked the trails I know like the back of my hand; someone did the "Shishi" skit before the all ate s'mores; the ookaleylas made an appearance (does anyone actually know how to spell "ookaleyla?"); maybe someone took a trip to the doctor's office and left with more than they bargained for. Most of all, I'm sure they laughed their heads off, heard gracious words of faith from the many skilled pastors who've risen out of that staff, and, maybe, even cried a little as they thought of friends who've left us since those summer days we treasure in our memories.

We couldn't go. Finances, the academic year and illness combined to make the trip out of the question for us. I know we made the right decision not to go. But, still...

When I was a kid, I never cried at church camp, never got homesick. I did my crying on the way home, and for a couple of days afterwards. I got campsick. Every. Single. Summer. And even when I came back as a staff member, I cried every August when I drove away from camp back into the "real world." In 1997, my last year on staff, I cried at least once a day for the last week, especially after the kids left and we were packing up "my camp" for the last time.

Tonight I feel like crying a little bit, as I think of all the friends I didn't get to see this weekend. Now that we're closer, we'll be back more often, especially as the girls grow up and they get ready for their own camp experiences. But it would have been really special to be there this weekend, and melodramatic me, well, I'm thinking of all those evening campfires, playing guitar and singing "Messiah" or "Come to the Water" or "Micah 6:8" and I'm really wishing we'd have been able to go.

So, camp friends, do me a favor. If you read this, drop me a line and let me know how your life is. Where are you, what are you doing, do you enjoy it or does it suck, what stirs your heart these days? Because I'm sure that's what we'd have been talking about if I'd have been able to be with you, and tonight, being campsick, it's what I really want to hear. Most of all, take care of yourselves, friends, and remember the most important thing you ever learned at camp: you are a child of God, and we are all family.

Grace and peace,

Scott

Friday Five: Summer Camp

Closing Worship at Inspiration Point, Camp Carol Joy Holling, Ashland, NE, June 2007

A great Friday Five from the RevGals: CAMP!!!!!

We're settling into our new new apartment, and after a
lifetime at Montessori Katie is having a fantastic summer at YMCA day camp.
Meanwhile, Nicholas is packing up for a week at Camp Julian, shared by the
Episcopal dioceses of Los Angeles and San Diego. His lists of supplies and
rules--except for the ropes course available to the teenagers and the ban on
IPODs and cell phones--bring back memories of my own happy times weeks at Y camp Ta Ta Pochon, funded by selling countless cases of butter toffee peanuts. So, in celebration of summer, please share your own memories and preferences about
camp.

1. Did you go to sleep away camp, or day camp, as a child? Wish you could? Or sometimes wish you hadn't?

I went to two camps as a kid: church camp at Carol Joy Holling Camp in Ashland, NE, and Camp Cedars Boy Scout Camp near Fremont, NE. Both were incredible experiences, but the more lasting impact came from my time at CJH, definitely. I went for five straight summers, and every year I'd come home and be "camp-sick" for a couple of days afterwards. Loved it loved it loved it!

2. How about camping out? Dream vacation, nightmare, or somewhere in between?

Kris and I have done some camping since we've been married and generally enjoyed the time together. We have different ideas about camping in some ways: I like to get into the woods and hike, while she'd rather find a ranger and do a guided tour, but we both enjoy doing the activities our partner enjoys. We haven't camped in the past two summers due to little ones, but in three or four years we'll be back in the woods with our tents and backpacks. My DREAM vacation is to packpack the John Muir Trail in California - I'm hoping to make that a sabbatical experience sometime in the next ten to fifteen years (provided I can find someone to accompany me, since you don't do stuff like that alone, and Kristin has no interest in that level of backpacking whatsoever).

3. Have you ever worked as a camp counselor, or been to a camp for your denomination for either work or pleasure?

Oh, the five summers I spent as a staff member for Nebraska Lutheran Outdoor Ministries were both work and pleasure! Really, anyone within 200 miles of Carol Joy Holling should take advantage of it - it's one of the best camps in the country in my ever-so-humble (and, of course, completely un-biased) opinion. For me, that time in camping ministry was life-changing; I wouldn't be a pastor today if it weren't for those experiences then.

4. Most dramatic memory of camp, or camping out?

Nothing REALLY dramatic for me in my memory. Oh, of course, there were the thunderstorms and tornado warnings every midwesterner learns to observe, but nothing really threatening ever happened. The most bizarre was the rapid temperature change around 3:00 one morning in 1997. I was site manager at Tipi Village that summer, so since I was sleeping outdoors I woke up sweating and scared because the light was weird. Got outside my tent to see an orange sky, really strong winds and the temperature rapidly rising - from 65 to 85 or so Farenheit in the space of 30 minutes. Crazy weird weather. But nothing else happened, so I just kept an eye on things and waited for morning to come. There's a meteorology term for what happened - I read about it in the paper that weekend - but for the life of me I can't remember it, of course. The most dramatic thing that ever happened to me & Kris was setting up our tent in the rain at Tettegouche State Park along the north shore of Lake Superior two summers ago - inconvenient, yes, but not dramatic - we've been lucky, I guess.

5. What is your favorite camp song or songs? Bonus points if you link to a recording or video.

As I think back on my days as a camper, Day Is Done was always my favorite "camp" song. Which is funny, since as I look back I realize that most of our camp songbook was actually '70s folk songs: Free To Be, Day Is Done, Pass It On, etc. Makes me wonder what my campers from the 1990s think of the songs we sang.

Let me also add my least favorite camp song here: if I get to heaven and the angels are singing Pharaoh, Pharaoh, I'm going to be one very unhappy saint.

Friday Five, Take Two: Summery

So, if one Friday Five is good, two must be better, right? HotCup ran this one at her place and it looked so fun I decided to play two. You know, like baseball - "Let's play two!"
1.) What first tells you that Summer is here?
The end of classes. Yeah, technically it's still spring, but when baseball practice is starting and kids aren't checking the clock every fifteen seconds for the last day of school to be over, that means summer has come, baby!

2.) Name five of your favorite distinctively Summer habits or customs.
Fire - either in the grill for cooking or in the pit for enjoying of a nice summer evening
Following the Minnesota Twins (although that's a bit harder to do here in Iowa)
Golf
Working around the house on the lawn/flowerbeds/etc. (hoping for a vegetable garden next year)
Spending time as a family on bike paths & trails (although the pregnancy is definitely limiting our time playing outside this year).

3.) What is your favorite smell of Summer?
Ooooh - tough call. Do I go with line-dried bedsheets, lilac blooms (technically Spring, but who's checking?) or meat cooking on the grill? Why not say all three? Okay - all three, plus lots of others.

4.) What is your favorite taste of Summer?
Burgers, sweet corn and homemade ice cream. Feed me that and I'll love you forever.

5.) Favorite Summer memory?
Oh, without a doubt my favorite summer memories revolve around my years at Carol Joy Holling Camp, both as a camper and as a staff member. No other summer experience has given me more joy or been more important. Even now, more than ten years after my last Fun Campfire, I'm still using skills I learned at camp and maintaining relationships from those days. Church camp ROCKS!

Well, there's the second Friday Five. Now maybe I oughta get some actual work done. :-)

Friday Five: Seasons Change...

reverendmother has the Friday Five this week at RevGalBlogPals:
It's Labor Day weekend here in the United States, also known as Summer's Last Hurrah. So let's say goodbye to summer and hello to the autumn. (People in other climes, feel free to adapt as needed.)

1. Share a highlight from this summer. (If you please, don't just say "our vacation to the Canadian Rockies." Give us a little detail or image. Help us live vicariously through you!)


Wow - can I share two? First, playing the role of E.K. Hornbeck in Prairie Wind Players' Inherit the Wind. It was a thoroughly enjoyable (and immensely cathartic) role and a real treat to work with some of my fellow cast members. Second, bringing a group of campers to Carol Joy Holling Camp in Ashland, NE, where I went to camp when I was a kid and where I served five summers as a counselor and Tipi Village site manager. It was the fulfillment of a dream thirteen years in the making: ever since I began to feel called to ordained ministry, I've wanted to do this. Glad it happened this year.

2. Are you glad to see this summer end? Why or why not?
I am and I'm not. I'm always excited about September because I'm an autumn person, but we had a pretty good summer. This summer went SO very quickly; I'd hoped to plant a garden this year (only got a garden tilled), hoped to have several woodworking projects completed (one is halfway cut and not at all assembled) and wanted to lose some weight (pants are still tight). But we've had a lot of fun with friends and family and are looking forward to a great autumn nonetheless.

3. Name one or two things you're looking forward to this fall.

I've got lots of things to be excited for this year: Husker football, the beginning of school, high school sports, Husker football, cooler weather, the beauty of Minnesota in September and October, Husker football, Husker volleyball, running the Siouxland Half-Marathon on 20 October with some good friends, Husker football, watching Ainsley learn to crawl and maybe walk, oh, and let's not forget, Husker football. :-)


4. Do you have any special preparations or activities to mark the transition from one season to another? (Cleaning of house, putting away summer clothes, one last trip to the beach)
Not really: the change in activity level at our church and getting involved at school is enough of a transition to manage. We've gone to the Minnesota State Fair the last few years (AKA Scott's End-of-Summer Gorge-a-thon-on-a-stick), but didn't make it this year; that's about as transition-y as we get.

5. I'll know that fall is really here when __________________________________.
we have a fire at night and I feel the need to put on a sweatshirt. That's the BEST time of the year. Also, when I can smell harvest in the air, when our walnut tree goes that cool, insanely red color before its leaves drop, and when Notre Dame loses to Michigan (sorry, Irish fans!).

Baby Ainsley 365: One Circle Closing

This was a picture I meant to post several weeks ago. Ainsley is posing with Megan, a counselor at Carol Joy Holling Camp in Ashland, NE, where we took our Confirmation kids in July. Megan was a camper at Tipi Village both of the summers I served as Tipi Site Manager - running into her at the pool one day and finding out she was back at Tipi was a great moment for me. Cute picture, too!

Confirmation Camp 2007, Part 2

Okay, so we've been away for the weekend and now we've got head colds, so I'm sorry this has taken so long to get online. But here is Confirmation Camp 2007, part II: The Arrival.

We began our week at Carol Joy Holling with a little Tri-Ball. Here, Marcus the Counselor shows great form.

Monday morning was our first "Co-Op" experience. Here our kids are playing "Captain"

Alayna and a few of her new friends had to "gobble" their food to stay in the game.

Ashley the counselor and Erin salute the Captain

Tess (second from right), Shelby and my Beloved "gobble" and stay in the game.

Temperature all week: 90s Farenheit. Pool? Yes, please!

"HEY! THERE'S A BABY IN THE POOL!"

Alayna enjoys a cool moment in the pool.

First time I saw this picture, I thought, "Hey, who's the bald guy playing with Ainsley?" Then I realized it was me. Ouch.

The happy family, swimming at camp. Does it get any better?

Confirmation Camp 2007, Part 1

So, now that I've finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I'm free to begin posting about our trip to Nebraska for Confirmation Camp. (I had to finish quickly or certain folks in Oregon were threatening to spoil the ending for me. You know who you are.)

Anyway, we pulled out of Barrett around 12:30 last Saturday afternoon, bound for my parents' farm in Wakefield, Nebraska, where we'd be staying the night. We arrived around 6:30 and promptly convinced my dad to start the fire and dig out the basketballs. We had some fun while we waited for the fire to get going so we could roast wieners.

After supper we adjourned to the yard, where we played with Adam's golf disc for quite a while.



After a while the disc got stuck in the mulberry tree. Rather than have one of our kids climb it (and risk falling out, liability, yadda yadda yadda) I climbed up & shook it free. Funny how mulberries fall out of the mulberry tree when they're ripe - most of our kids got a berry to the face. Even funnier was Erin's big toe: she looked as though she'd voted in some bizarre foot election:

Shelby, of course, didn't know what to make of any of this:

Later we moved inside for our first Nooma video of the week and a short discussion:

In the morning, our happy campers took a look around Wakefield before heading to worship at Salem Lutheran Church - here they are overlooking Eaton Field in Wakefield, which, of course, is "The Baseball Capital of Nebraska."
After worship we snapped a quick picture in the front of the church before heading home for pizza.

And, of course, Grandma & Grandpa Johnson thought they needed just a bit more Ainsley time:

But all good things must come to an end, so we packed up the kids & the car & headed south to Ashland, where Carol Joy Holling Camp awaited.