Wilderness adventure camping experiences are powerful and effective tools for becoming people that live and love God in the ways and patterns of Jesus.
A Christian-based wilderness experience is a highly successful arena for sharing the Gospel of Jesus the Christ with campers. Research into why these trips are predictably successful (conducted in Camp Director, Marcus Andrusko’s Masters Thesis) indicated that there are many active elements in these trips that aid in creating an appropriate atmosphere for discussion of the Gospel. The five overriding elements are, the Holy Spirit, the environment, trust, cohesion, and introspection.
The Holy Spirit is the inviting and instructing voice of God. The environment also actively plays a role in challenging campers, with wonder, humbleness, and triumph. The unpredictable environment also encourages campers to look toward members of their group for predictability.
The three remaining elements are ordered for effectiveness. The first is the creation of trust. Trust is created initially through the physical challenges of the adventure expedition. The trust can be developed through running rapids, long portages, wild animal encounters, community interdependence, or any other sort of stretching activities. Next, the established trust is called on again for the sharing of group members’ Life Stories. The trust that was created in the physical activities is mentally transferred into interpersonal self-disclosure sharing, which allows participants to engage in introspection about themselves and verbalizing these truths. The stories also allow participants to understand the behaviors, experiences, and influences of other participants and leaders.
Trust in turn creates a comfortable environment to discuss the Gospel and the things of God openly. This is possible because participants have created cohesion, which is the ability of a group or community to stick together even in difficult times or disagreement. Cohesion equates to security within the group. The Gospel of Christ can for some be intimidating to discuss, because of its significant nature, and the call of a radically obedient lifestyle. Often, people do not have sufficient amounts of knowledge concerning Jesus and His ways, which causes embarrassment or silence during discussion. Cohesion in a community allows members to speak candidly about ideas, feelings, concerns, or information gathering in an arena that does not expel people with views that differ from other members of the group.
The understanding of the Gospel that is gained through hearing people’s Life Stories, as well as through open discussions about the things of God in a trusting group environment, then utilizes daily solitude times (quiet times and Solo’s). These periods of introspection allow the participants a rare opportunity to process intrapersonally the information and experience that they are having. The time used for intraspection allows ideas to solidify in people’s minds and consequently their lives, because they consider how the information and experience can affect how the participate in the Kingdom of God.