All youth leaders at some point try different things that will provide the opportunity for the kids of their youth group to get along well and really get to know each other. While you can easily still do those things at home, many youth leaders and groups are finding that taking the group to a camp, away from their normal life and distractions, really helps to bond the group and create a stronger support system for each other. If you are one of those youth leaders that wants to take their group to camp, then you get to start the process of finding the right camp to go to. The task of figuring out all these details before leaving is a lot to handle, but it can be much less stressful to take it step by step.
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When youth leaders figure out which camp they want their youth camp to be at, their concern is typically what they want the topic or theme of that year’s camp to be. This can be particularly stressful to find a good and relatable topic that your youth will be interested in. The first step in this process is to have a meeting with your fellow youth leaders and talk about what your goals are for this trip (Check out Readiness of Youth Leaders for more on helping to prepare your leaders). In other words, what are you planning on getting out of the camp.
After discussing with your fellow leaders, you still need to find a relatable topic for your youth. The best way to do this is to simply ask them! Ask your youth group what they want to hear more of or what they still have questions about. It is important, however, to make sure that these topics thrown out are ones that the youth group as a whole feels that they would benefit hearing about. This can help you narrow it down to a few choices, and then praying and asking God which would be the best for his glory.
Once you feel God leading you and your leaders to a specific topic, you can start to prepare for the campfire talks during your trip. You can begin by breaking the theme up into separate topics for the nights and begin working on them from there. This division of the theme into separate topics, helps you accomplish more by not having such a large and daunting task to overcome. Something to consider would be to have devotionals or passages of scripture at the beginning of the day that coincide with the topic for that night and ultimately the theme for the camp.
Part of the Preparing for Camp Series
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