Well, I am friends with a lot of people in Southern California, and I genuinely love everyone doing the work of the gospel across our needy state. It feels like a mission field here, so I am going to link arms with anyone who is standing for Bible truth. But there are distinctions about our church that make us unique, and they show up when you start coordinating with other churches on things like summer camp. Those distinctions are sometimes referred to as culture. Not everything is a Bible difference; some of it is the culture of our church and the culture of our church camp. We just got back from church camp last Friday, and this morning was our big wrap-up meeting with our staff, so I have been thinking about our church camp, for better or worse. We are what we are. Not everyone likes what we are, and I am okay with that. I am genuinely just trying to provide a camp that reflects some of the values of the churches involved in it. Sometimes those values come from biblical lines, book, chapter, and verse. But sometimes the decisions we make are just about the culture of the camp. For the rest of the video, I want to talk about some of the specifics of those values.
The Culture of Our Camp
If you are new here, my name is Ryan Rench, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California. I run our California Baptist Youth Camp at Ironwood, and I love it. My wife and I have coordinated this camp almost every year since about 2014. Over the years it has naturally reflected our church and, by extension, our alma mater, Heartland Baptist Bible College. There has never been an intentional push for the college; I never wanted to make it about that. That part is more incidental, because of the churches that are connected and the preachers who are chosen. Many of the preachers we select are graduates of Heartland or are connected to Heartland somehow. Our church’s entire staff are Heartland graduates, and several of this year’s counselors were current Heartland students. But we just do not say anything about it from the pulpit. The camp is more about the values that make us unique in our area. Again, it is the culture of the camp that I am working to build, and that includes some doctrinal things but also things like how we handle music and dress.
Doctrine
On the doctrinal side, there are some hot-button topics of our day that churches naturally might split fellowship over; that is just the nature of doing ministry. We are not Calvinistic, and for our churches the Bible version discussion is very clear-cut: we exclusively use the King James Version. The campground we use is not exactly like that, but that is why we run a custom camp, so we can fellowship with other churches that are not going to make that a battleground issue. For us it is settled; we have our people. The other topics feed more into the culture, though they are perhaps less doctrinal: what kind of music and what kind of dress do you have at your camp?
Dress
Our dress is conservative for California, perhaps not as much so for the Bible Belt. I spent the whole last video talking about our knee-length coverings and explaining our church’s stance on that. To our church and the other churches, we made this very clear in the preparation, and this year was wonderful. It just was not an issue at all. We simply said, “God has given us a nice, clear line built into the leg at the knee, so we will just go with that.” When you deal with dress standards, enforcing any line can be difficult, because everyone says they have lines, but really the actual line is whatever you enforce. So we worked hard at that this year, trying to do it with the right kind of spirit. There has been a distinction in dress, not just in the dress code but in elevated service dress. It is not a Bible command, but we have our guys wear pants and collared shirts in the evening services and the girls wear skirts and dresses for those services. I like the culture of dressing up a little for chapel. It is just one of those little things that add to the culture of the camp.
Music: Different Does Not Mean Better
So there are doctrinal distinctions and distinctions in dress, and last, there is a unique style of music we sing at camp. I grew up singing what I called camp songs, and we would sing them in our youth group and Sunday school throughout the year. It was not as if we were subverting the church or trying to get a new style into the church by starting with the youth. It was just a different style. Sometimes music styles in churches change first with the teens, and eventually the church follows. I believe that happens because that music is sometimes presented as better than what they sing in big church, and it creates an appetite in the youth, as though it were youth music versus main-service music. If there is an attitude that this is better and that what they are doing in the main church needs to be fixed, I think that undercuts church unity, and I think it is wrong. However, different does not have to mean better. I grew up with camp music that felt a little different but was never pitched as better. Our camp music fits within the broader philosophy of our church music, and even though in our main services we sing from a hymnal and at camp we do not, that does not mean one is subverting the other. So the first principle is that different does not mean better. It is fine to have a different style at camp. It feels unique to go away for a week and sing some special songs for that week, and I like that. We do many of our camp songs at church throughout the year too, but not to the same extent as the rest of our music.
Music: Nothing from Hillsong or Bethel
The second principle is that we are just not going to touch anything remotely connected to Hillsong, Bethel, and the like. That is not even a question for us, and nothing accidentally slips by. The question has been settled so thoroughly that we do not even get into the realm of “Well, maybe we can do this one.” We do not go there. I admit I might go overboard in my protectiveness in that area, but not because I do not want to learn new music or sing modern songs. We sang several songs at camp this year that were written fairly recently. I just love that there are many great songs out there that are old and rich and not, we could say, tainted by all that comes with some of these modern songs and songwriters, so I have chosen to lean toward the older songs instead. In all of this I am saying there is a culture of music: richly worded, doctrinally sound music, with a preference for the old songs. And I never want to make it seem as though the old songs we sing are just quaint, as in, “Oh, that is cute. We sang a hymn in church on Sunday. Is that not so sweet? I feel so old-fashioned singing those words.” No, for us that is the bulk of our weekly music, and I absolutely love it.
This Year’s Songs
This year our song list included “Before the Throne,” “I Will Say Yes,” “Complete in Thee,” “Sanctuary,” “‘Tis All of Grace,” “Here Is Love,” “May the Mind of Christ My Saviour,” “His Robes for Mine,” “You Are Always Good,” and “Lord, I Need You.” We also sang a lot of Scripture songs, memory verses put to music: “The Steps of a Good Man,” “Some Trust in Chariots,” “Victory Song,” “Only Fear the Lord,” “Let the Words of My Mouth,” Micah 6:8, Jeremiah 33:3, “Therefore the Redeemed,” “The Lord Liveth,” and “Be Thou Exalted, O God.” We have done some of those in years past.
“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”
“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”
Some other songs we have done in previous years that we did not happen to sing this year include “Precious Bible, What a Treasure,” “Change My Heart, O God,” “All That the Lord Commands,” “How Deep the Father’s Love,” “As the Deer,” “Come, My Soul, with Every Care,” “You Are My All in All,” “I Love You, Lord,” “The Power of the Cross,” and “He Will Hold Me Fast.” So you can see a decent variety of songs, not our usual church set of hymns, but those songs still fit within the overall music philosophy of our camp and our church, and I believe they reflect the philosophies of many of the churches we associate with. Some like it, some hate it, and that is okay. You should have heard the teens singing last week at camp, though. It was incredible: basically one hundred percent involvement, beautiful singing, beautiful harmonies, and moving truths in the songs. I love it.
In a Nutshell
So in a nutshell, that is our camp. We are fairly intentional about who we are, and I am not scared to say which decisions are doctrinal and which ones are just about building the culture of camp we are after. I was just so happy after this year. If you are in the area and want to join us, we are not trying to steal people away from other camps, because there are several good camps nearby, and if you are already locked in with one, stick with it. But if we can serve you in any way, please let me know; we would love to help you through our camp if that is a possibility. God bless you, folks. I love you. Thank you for listening, and thanks for letting me ramble on about this. See you in the next video. God bless you.
