The fall of my freshmen year of college, I was your typical new college student. I had never lived away from home, I was outside of my comfort zone, and I didn’t know anyone at my new school.
I had gone to a Christian high school, where I had become very comfortable. I wanted to find that same comfort, specifically with people that I felt believed the same things I did, in my new environment.
The summer before my freshmen year, I went to orientation for my new university.
That’s when I first was introduced to a particular Christian organization on campus; I don’t wish to disclose the name of this group here.
The people I met were very friendly; they honestly didn’t seem much different from the people I had gone to school with.
The organization had a program where I could sign up and move-in early in the fall. I’d get to campus three days before everyone else, around the same time as some of the sports team members, and members of this group were going to help me unpack and then they’d have a Christian retreat for a few days before the rest of the campus moved in.
I wound up going. I drove down by myself and got to the university about midway through the week.
In those days of the retreat, I met the group leader, an older man by the name of Phil* (I’ve changed his name).
Phil was an odd individual. He was not unlike the Jesus Camp’s Becky Fisher.
Throughout the semester, I went to the weekly worship services on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings with the group. We had bible studies and took a trip to a local city to “share God’s word” with other people at a festival.
The whole point of me talking about all of this, for the record this is rather personal so there is a reason for me to discuss it, is that the people I came to be affiliated with were not much different and their “worship services” were not much different than what we see in the video Abby posted about Jesus Camp. I’ve reposted that video due to the number of times I reference it here. (Thanks Abby, for the post, by the way!)
The more I became involved with this group on my former campus, the more I lost the idea of myself and gained the idea of “all of us.” In January of my freshmen year, I went to a national event, not unlike the Jesus Camp, which was a three-day meeting of other groups like ours from across the country.
There were thousands of people there. We had workshops, mass worship services, the whole nine yards.
I experienced people praying in tongues, as we see in Abby’s video, and I heard from people who said that there are those there who weren’t giving enough and doing enough for God. I wasn’t doing enough for God, I was told.
Before college, I was (and still am) a deeply religious person. I’ve never liked the word “religious,” however. I’d say spiritual. I have had a deep faith in God most of my life.
Andrea mentioned the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod Youth Gathering back in 2007; I was there too, with my own church. I would like to point out that this youth gathering has absolutely NOTHING to do with Jesus Camp or the other event I went to with members from my campus group my Freshmen year.
The type of group I became involved in, and the type of group that the Jesus Camp is (was) appears radically crazy. And they are, but there’s more to it than “they’re extreme.” This doesn’t even begin to cover it, really.
Seeing the faces of those children in that video as the woman is telling them they need to reach up to heaven and let the Holy Spirit fill them, that they need to open their mouths and let the Holy Spirit speak. This deeply moves me, because I was one of those people. Granted, I wasn’t 8…I was 18…but the effects were the same. I was surrounded by people I thought I trusted. I knew I loved God, and they said they did too, so in my mind it made sense that if I did what they told me to do, I would love God more. Everyone I met in that group seemed to be so in love with God. I wanted to be like them.
Then things started to change for me. It began with an e-mail I sent to my Pastor from high school. I asked him about speaking in tongues, why I hadn’t heard about it before, and if he knew more about the organization I had become involved in.
The group is a nation-wide, radical “Christian” organization that identifies itself as a denomination of Christianity.
Groups such as the one on my campus invite new freshmen to their activities and emphasize making them feel that they belong and are accepted there.
I gradually began to shift from the group. I made friends outside of it and started doing normal college stuff, like watching my favorite television show with some friends on Thursday nights. I still believed in God, and still do to this day. But I had begun to see that what I had been involved in was not Christianity. It was something else.
Christianity is the belief in the triune Godhead, God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. It is recognizing that humanity is sinful and in need of salvation. It is recognizing that there is absolutely nothing that human beings can to do redeem themselves; it is wholly the power of God.
This is where groups such as the one I was involved in and the Jesus Camp stray from Christianity, in my opinion. They may call themselves Christians, but all they’re doing is turning people away. They tell people they’re not good enough, that they need to admit to an earthly leader that they need to repent in front of an assembly. Groups like these usually follow a leader, mine did and so did the Jesus Camp, and that leader usually sees themselves as very holy and spiritual. The established members of the group view that leader as such and advise other members to seek his counsel and his opinion on their lives and how they live.
The message of God is love. It is not self-righteousness. It is not legalism. It’s not that we have to be better.
Since transferring to Maryville, I’ve gotten reconnected with the church I went to for most of my life. This is the same church that I went to the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod National Youth Gathering back in 2007 and I’m planning on going again in 2010. I’ve put my experiences from my freshmen year behind me.
I worry about the children affected by that Jesus Camp, and the people who are still in the group I left.
The take home message about all of this is to be very careful with the organizations you become affiliated with. College students and children are the two most impressionable ages for the sorts of groups mentioned here. It is also to realize that just because a group claims to be one thing, as the Jesus Camp claims to be Christian and the group I was in claimed to be Christian, that doesn’t mean they are what they say they are.
"Watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name, claiming 'I am he,' and will deceive many." Mark 13:5
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