camp_beautiful_lake

This week we’re going to spend some significant time debriefing our summer camp from a few weeks ago. It was by far our biggest and best event of the year – we took a ton of teenagers to another state for a week, managed to keep them all alive and bring all of them back. Win!

So here’s our reality: 99% of camp was awesome. 1% was rough.

But during the debrief time after any youth event- you focus on the bad stuff. You spend hours talking about the 1%. You pick it apart, obsess over the abscesses. And if you’re not careful, you’ll forget the awesomeness of what happened. You’ll be so frustrated by the 1% that it’ll rob you of the joy and celebration of the life change of the 99%. You’ll forget the stories, the baptisms, the late night conversations and faith conversions.

So by the end of the meeting you might mistakenly thing camp actually totally sucked. You could be frustrated at people who dropped the ball. Irritated because your team is better than that. But it is just 1%. 99% was incredible. God’s Spirit moved.

I guess what I’m trying to say it don’t get lost in the 1%. Yes, make camp better. Let debriefing and evaluation help make your next overnighter the best thing in your county.But don’t fall into the trap of thinking you failed. You’re just evaluating!

JG