“Community” by Coulter Pierce
Posted by sam
Most of my closest friends come from Camp Ridgecrest. Some of these guys I met way back in Apache and others I’ve met this last summer while I was Mohican Tribal Leader. Needless to say, since I was 8 years old, camp would bring a flood of people into my life that I will always look up to and want to be. The problem with this was when each summer would come to an end, I would head back to Asheville and my friends would go back to Florida, to Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, etc.
As a camper this was very difficult for me. I would spend 2 weeks with these brothers of mine going on adventures, hanging out, and experiencing this beautiful world God has created for us, and suddenly that time would come to a close and I would sink into that “post-camp slump”. Now, this slump would be different for me each year; sometimes it would last a couple days others a few weeks and in some cases a month or two. I would always replay the camp video and try to relive my time there but it would just never be the same. For a while I could never put a finger on what I missed most: was it the blob? Chicken tender Tuesday? Four square with Ron? I could never figure it out. It took me until after my second year in Sioux for me to realize what I would really miss the most: the dudes.
As a young kid I never had a cell phone. I didn’t have email or anything to keep up with the friends I would make that summer and months after camp had ended I found myself growing further apart from them again. For me, the main problem with this was that back home I didn’t have friends like these. I could never find guys I looked up to, who would want to go on great adventures with me and who would want to talk about our relationship with Jesus together. Don’t get me wrong, I had friends for sure, but there was one thing holding us back from having a deep friendship like the ones I found at camp and that was our faith was different. Many times those friends back home did not share the same faith with me, they didn’t want to maintain a relationship with Jesus so they would never want to talk about real life things.
Each summer my relationship with the Lord would grow so much deeper and I would leave camp a changed man but would sadly have to return to those same friends back home that I couldn’t grow with. A mentor of mine showed me a verse in Hebrews that says, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” For the longest time, I never really had this type of community, one which pushes each other and encourages each other to be real men of God. I knew I wanted it so badly but sometimes felt trapped where I was and who I was with, until my sophomore year of high school when my youth pastor took me and three other guys from my church out to eat for the first time.
What started as an occasional meeting turned into a weekly thing, every Wednesday night, no matter what, we would meet up and hang out. These Wednesday meetings were times for us to live out the verse in Hebrews where we could “spur one another on toward love and good deeds” and grow together in our relationship with the Lord. Suddenly, after we started meeting on a regular bases I found the same bond in these new friends that I had with my camp friends. I had these friends back home with me now and one of them (Tate Wynne) even came back to camp with me. I cannot explain how great of an impact these guys have had on me and my walk with the Lord ever since we started meeting back sophomore year of high school and will forever be thankful for them.
Here’s my question to you though: do you have this type of community back home? Do you have other guys in your life that who you can talk to and “spur on towards love and good deeds” and who can do the same to you? God created us to live in community, and not just live together and hang out together, but to really push each other like the verse in Hebrews talks about. I would encourage you as you continue to grow in your walk with the Lord, and as your time at camp comes and goes, to go back home and search hard for this type of friendship. The ones that don’t make bad decisions, the ones that are usually doing the right thing, the ones who are looking to grow in their relationship with God.
Psalm 133:1 says, “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!”. God created community like this so that we might grow and glorify him. It is such an awesome thing when we find these type of friends. Like I said earlier, it took me a long time to finally find those guys who could “spur me on…” but when I did, I held on tight to them, and will forever be grateful I did.
Coulter Pierce
LC Comical Colt
Posted in Echoes From Final Fire | Tagged Accountability, Camp Ridgecrest, Community, Coulter, Going Home, Missing Camp, Post-Camp Slump, ridgecrest, Slump, summer camp