Our Pilgrimage to Camp
Our Pilgrimage to Camp
During this past October, my wife Amanda and our four-month-old daughter, Abigail Hope, had the privilege of attending the Fall Couples Camp. Amanda and I had learned of Saint Peter Presbyterian Church and the Highlands Study Center through many of their publications. So much so, that we felt as if we were going to visit close friends whom we hadn't actually met. Our desire to attend the Fall Couples Camp was primarily centered in seeing how the families of Saint Peter actually lived out their convictions. A covenantal community was the very thing that my wife and I had longed for but had yet to see.
We arrived at Camp, meeting couples attending from very different perspectives—newlyweds, parents and grandparents— yet all in pursuit of reforming their application and convictions for building the Kingdom of God. It was held in a cozy, comfortable atmosphere (the Sprouls' living room) with a schedule saturated with intense conversation, fellowship, laughing and sometimes even crying. The most profitable part of our journey was the time spent with the church family of Saint Peter—how they thought, taught, and lived together as a community of believers with the same vision for building Christ's Kingdom.
It was extremely strengthening for us to see how they were faithfully applying an optimistic Reformed theology to every sphere of their lives—it is their culture, a Christian paideia. Both my wife and I were raised in Central Iowa, an agrarian culture with a rich Reformed heritage. A culture and heritage that are now largely lost. Our families, who settled the area from Germany, were richly blessed much like the Puritans of New England. But like the Puritans, the families who came to settle the Midwest were poorly prepared for such a Christian culture. They had no awareness of God's covenant, the very framework that holds the Christian faith together. The Bible is a covenant book; the doctrine of the covenant is essential and basic to all of its teachings. With a lack of covenantal thinking, Christianity eroded down to an individualistic faith. Fathers did not keep the greatest commandment and teach their children diligently (Deut. 6) so the worldviews of subsequent generations centered more on man than on Christ. God's covenant, law and grace are inseparable. When separated through covenantal disobedience a culture is left in a state of confusion and rampant sin reigns with unrighteousness and lawlessness (Deut. 28).
Today the family farm is vacant and plowed under. Children go to government schools, receive humanistic instruction and worldviews, and leave their communities never to return. Our culture has embraced a shortsighted, self-centered vision focusing on instant gratification and personal prosperity. Education is inherently religious in the fact that it teaches the basic values and vision of a culture. Children should be ashamed of their pagan schools, but are instead ashamed of their parents. The culture is becoming morally corrupt while the church remains silent for it too has embraced an eschatology of death and defeat.
The situation is analogous in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress where Christian, who is greatly burdened, lives in the City of Destruction. Evangelist prompts Christian to seek salvation in God through a journey to the Celestial City despite discouragement from family, neighbors, and the surrounding culture. The encompassing theme is that the cost of salvation is great—it is not fast, easy, or convenient but a lifelong journey.
As Francis Schaeffer might ask, "How Shall We Then Live?" We are to live a Christ-centered life. We are to "Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man's all." (Eccl. 12:14) In addition we cannot truly love the Lord without loving His law—the law is Who He is. Compartmentalizing Christianity by being "Christian" on Sunday mornings isn't enough. God requires much more than this; the Faith is—our culture, encompassing every area of life, a paideia of God.
The central theme of the Fall Couples Camp was the building of the Kingdom of God through the family. Godly dominion begins in the family and this was not only the focus of Couples Camp, but was apparent in the lives of the Saint Peter church family as well. When you meet them you will see them as living apparently different from the social norm. First of all, the children outnumber the parents (something not prevalent in the modern church). Most families drive full-size vans; not because it is trendy, but because of their need for high-volume transportation. The children are taught in the home and the husbands are the head of the family. The children are seen, not as a cursed obligation, but a blessing and are trained and admonished of the Lord (Eph. 6).
The solution is to tackle our cultural problem, not individually, but together as the corporate bride of Christ—a community of Christian families in unity of spirit. The Church will not awaken until it stops pretending to be worldly. Pilgrim's Progress was written during the corruptness of the Church of England and the Puritans were a people of dissent. Their desire was to return to a way of life in agreement with the Holy Scriptures. Likewise the church of Saint Peter lives life in a simple, separate and deliberate manner. They do not pretend to be Christians in conformity to the world, but boldly bear the mark of Christ unconditionally and corporately.
As we departed Abingdon, my wife and I felt as though we were leaving home. When we returned to Iowa, some mistakenly interpreted our enthusiasm as the type of spiritual high you have after returning home from Bible camp. What they didn't know was that for a short time we lived as part of a covenantal community and it was real. One day my wife and I, Lord willing, would like to return there on a more permanent basis. Not as an end to ourselves but as the beginning of a journey—a generational pilgrimage to the Celestial City, Mt. Zion.