What I Taught at Summer Camp 2003

Tom Shrader walks through the format and content of seven summer camp teaching sessions, each built around a question the disciples asked Jesus and anchored to a memory verse. The centerpiece is John 14:6, where Jesus declares Himself the way, the truth, and the life, and Tom explains why this exclusive claim must be the foundation before any other lesson on obedience, forgiveness, pride, or suffering can take hold. He closes by urging the congregation to take student ministry seriously, arguing that young people are an integral part of the body of Christ and not a separate concern.

“Jesus is the way to God because He's the truth of God and the life from God.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Summer Camp

Recorded: 2003 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 37 min

Themes: truth, obedience, forgiveness, suffering, fear, anxiety, youth ministry, exclusivity of christ, teenager, youth worker, parent of teenager, new believer, struggling with fear, questioning faith, young adult, camp counselor

Scripture: John 14:1, John 14:2, John 14:3, John 14:5, John 14:6, John 15, John 16, John 17, Matthew 7, Romans 3:23, Acts 4:12, 1 Thessalonians 4, 1 John 2:15, 2 Timothy 2:4

Theological Themes: christology, jesus as the way the truth and the life, soteriology, exclusive salvation, discipleship, biblical authority, sanctification, incarnation

Full Transcript

Introduction: The Format and Setting

Open your Bibles to John chapter 14, and let me show you what we did at summer camp. The format I used for all of the sessions was this: I went through the Gospels in preparation and selected a question that the disciples asked Jesus. Each session started with that question, then the background that led up to it, then Jesus' answer, and then a memory verse. Let me take you through one session. We are going to cover in about 20 minutes what we did there in 45, but you will get the flow of what we did across those seven sessions.

The Disciples' Question

Here was the disciples' question. John chapter 14, verse 5: "Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going. How do we know the way?"

Now, here is the background. If you have a red-letter Bible, turn through chapters 14, 15, 16, and 17. You will notice they are essentially all in red letters. That is Jesus speaking to the disciples on the night He was betrayed. He is preparing them for His death, which is going to come the next day. They have been warned about it, told He must die, and they have some sense of it, but Jesus clearly understands what is about to take place.

When you are looking for something to study and you need a devotional to work through, look at John 14, 15, 16, and 17. It is a great study. He is speaking and preparing the disciples for life, and we have the opportunity to stand back and have Him use that to prepare us as well.

"Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled"

Jesus says in verse 1, "Let not your heart be troubled." That word, troubled, is an important word. It is a strong term with the idea of intense anxiety, agitation, horror, and fear. It is similar to what Jesus says frequently throughout the Gospels — in fact, it is the number one prohibition He gives us in the New Testament: do not be afraid.

Jesus does not say "do not be afraid" because life is not scary. Life does have scary things in it. He is not telling these disciples to not be anxious because nothing difficult is coming. Difficult things are coming. What He is going to tell them is that there is something they know, something they can hold onto in the midst of that fear and anxiety.

If you are anxious, here is the point. Unless there is some physical problem — and if there is, go to the doctor — if there is no physical problem, what you typically need is perspective. The disciples are coming into some difficult times, and Jesus says, "Let me give you perspective."

The Perspective Jesus Offers

Right there in verse 2: "My Father's house has many dwelling places, and if it were not so, I would not have told you, for I am going to prepare a place for you." He repeats it in verse 3: "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again."

Jesus understands that these men are going to face enormous difficulty. Of the eleven that remain, Jesus knows that ten of them will be martyred. Tradition tells us that the one who escapes martyrdom was boiled in oil in an attempt to kill him. Jesus is not pretending this suffering does not exist or that it will not be hard. He is simply saying, "You have got to keep your eye on the big picture."

I was reading a Randy Alcorn novel this morning — I believe it is called *Safely Home* — and in it a Chinese national mentions an old proverb: "The beginning of wisdom is calling everything by its right name." The Bible would say the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. Those two ideas are actually quite similar. When I have the fear of the Lord, the reverence and understanding of the Lord, I begin to see things as they really are. Jesus is saying the same thing: tough things are coming, but do not be troubled, because I am going to prepare a place for you and I am going to come back and get you.

The Imagery of the Bridegroom

That beautiful imagery is played out in 1 Thessalonians 4, where Paul speaks to the church at Thessalonica. He says he wants them to understand what happens in resurrection and death. Those who are dead in Christ will rise when Jesus comes back, and those who are alive will be caught up with Him. The bride and the Bridegroom will be united.

That imagery was particularly rich to a Jewish audience. When a Jewish young man and woman were engaged, the fathers would typically arrange it, and the groom would go away — most often to his father's house — to either prepare a specific room or add on a new section of the house as a dwelling place for his bride. Does that not add to the richness of what Jesus is saying here? "I am going to go and prepare a place for you."

A Place Prepared for You

Jesus says, "I am the bridegroom, and I will come back for the bride." He also speaks of going to prepare a place for you. That phrase is worth pausing on, because it is not merely a place for us to reside. There is something in that language that suggests a customized place — a place designed just for you.

Then Thomas asks the question. What is interesting, and what became clear only at the eight o'clock service that morning — this is why you can go into God's Word again and again and see new things — is that Thomas does not use the singular personal pronoun but the plural. He does not say, "Lord, I don't know." He says, "Lord, we don't know." Whether he is acting as a spokesman for the other disciples, or whether he simply does not want to be the only one admitting confusion, he puts them all in the same boat. "Lord, we don't know where You are going, and we don't know the way." And Jesus gives him the answer: "I am the way, the truth, the life, and no one comes to the Father but through Me."

The One You Have to Get

When this session began — it was a Saturday morning session at camp — the students were told that this is the one they had to get. If they got this, the rest of the material would fall into place. If they missed this, the rest would not matter much, because obedience would not matter, suffering would not matter. None of the other things matter much if this is not in place first.

So the focus was on the exclusiveness of that statement — the definite article. Not "a way," but "the way." To illustrate it, a film clip was selected from the movie *Oh, God?* — the one about twenty-five years old, with George Burns playing God and John Denver as the man who has seen Him. Of course, a room full of high school and junior high students had no idea who George Burns or John Denver was, so it took about forty minutes just to set up the clip.

In the scene, John Denver is in a hotel room asking God a series of questions submitted by various theological minds. One of the questions was whether Jesus is God's Son. The answer given in the film was: "Jesus is my son, Buddha is my son, Mohammed is my son, Confucius is my son, you are my son."

After playing the clip, the students were asked what they saw in it that was not right. Young people can never break your heart in moments like that — they got a boatload of the problems right. That night, the tech team was asked to re-cue the clip, and the students were told they were going to watch it again. It was framed like a game of Where's Waldo: spot all the heresies. When it played the second time, they were calling them out one after another — just bam, bam, bam, bam. The point made to them was that every movie, every newspaper article, every television show operates the same way. They need to look at the world around them and understand it. The way is narrow and tight. There are not many ways — there is one way.

The Truth of God, the Life from God

The sentence given to the students to hold onto was this: Jesus is the way to God because He is the truth of God and the life from God. He is not simply a road to travel. He is the way precisely because He embodies truth and because life itself comes from Him.

From there, the teaching moved to Matthew 7 and the image of the broad way and the narrow way. The students understood that. But it was also important to bring them to Romans 3:23 — that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. This passage is critical because students live in a culture that constantly tells them they are not sinners. The message the world sends is that they are basically good people, that they may make some mistakes or poor judgments, but they are fundamentally okay. The culture draws a distinction between someone who sins occasionally and someone who is a sinner. But Scripture does not draw that line. If you break the law, you break the law.

Students need to come face to face with the reality that they are not basically good people but are essentially sinful people in need of forgiveness. And that forgiveness must come from God. A student's sin may involve a teacher, a classmate, or a parent, but Scripture makes clear that sin is ultimately against God, and only God can forgive it. If God is the only one who can forgive, then God is the one who prescribes the remedy.

The Wage and the Way

The wage of sin is death. For anyone who says, "I just want what I've earned — I'm not asking for anything special, just give me what I deserve" — the answer is that the wage for sin is death. Death means separation. It means separation from God in this life, separation at the moment of physical death, and eternal separation from God beyond that.

But Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but through Him. The memory verse given to the students that night was Acts 4:12: "There is salvation in no one else. There is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved."

That is the format. If you are working with a student, or simply looking for a way to study, going through the Gospels and searching for the questions people asked Jesus is a tremendous approach. It opens up all sorts of possibilities.

The Seven Memory Verses

We started on Friday night with this verse: "Examine me, O Lord. Try me. Test my mind. Test my heart." The heart is deceitfully wicked. We can absolutely, for certain, fool others, and God can see the heart when we cannot.

When we go to camp, we understand that there are three or four different types of kids. There is the kid that knows Christ, loves Christ, and is doing well. There is the kid who would say they are a Christian but is struggling. There is the kid who was simply invited — perhaps from another church or with no spiritual background at all, whose buddy said, "This will be fun," and who may be there because someone hoped they would come to Christ. Those kids are usually pretty easy to reach, because when you start talking about church, they have no background and are very open.

The hardest ones are the church kids, especially those who have been around a long time. They learn what to say, how to act, how to respond. They learn the lingo and the whole verbiage — "Yes, Mr. Schrader. No, Mr. Schrader. Mrs. Schrader looks lovely today."

Here is what I have observed: parents fall for that, and they will typically say, "That kid is converted." My instinct is to say, that kid is compliant. We do not know if they are converted or not — they may be — but as a parent, do not move too fast on that assumption. If they say they are converted, you have to treat them as such, but do not confuse a compliant kid with a converted kid.

There are a lot of compliant kids. There are a lot of great kids, but they are not Christians. They have learned the language, and that reality will become evident as they get older. The last statistics I saw showed that ninety percent of students in high school ministry around the country — nine out of ten — will not continue attending church when they go to college. They played the game and learned it well, but they were never converted.

Jesus as the Only Way

So we tell them: you have to come clean. This is a great place to declare you are a pagan, because then we can get at it. On Saturday morning, the verse we looked at was that Jesus is the only way.

Obedience Is Not Baby Steps

Once that is in place, we have to start talking about how to act. So on Saturday night, we talked about obedience: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments."

I used a film clip from *What About Bob?* for this, because of the concept of baby-stepping. Baby-stepping works in a lot of areas of life. Jim Scorza had a heart attack about two months ago, and on his first day of rehab they had him working with a one-pound weight — baby-stepping his way back. Or if you want to start eating correctly, you cut down portions gradually rather than stopping cold turkey. Not everyone can walk into a gym and immediately bench-press a couple hundred pounds. You work up to it, and that applies to most areas of life.

It does not apply here. You cannot baby-step your way to obedience. You do not go to God and say, "I've been stealing for so long — here is my plan: I will not steal eighty percent of the time." You cannot tell God you will be faithful to your spouse ninety-five percent of the time. You cannot baby-step your way toward that.

"If you love me, keep my commandments." So if you are not keeping His commandments, what can we conclude? You do not love Him. You are not His. Does that mean you will never sin? No. But it means that when you sin, you will come in repentance and faith to Him.

Pride at the Sunday Morning Service

The Sunday morning service is extraordinary. I cry every single time, and I do not entirely know why, except that I love that service. Instead of a slope like this, the seating goes upward like a bowl, and beyond the structure is just ocean and sailboats. It is a magnificent time.

We talked about pride. Here is what I have learned from working with students over the past six years: they will admit to pride very quickly. When you press them on it, they are remarkably vulnerable, and I think the reason is that pride is the universal sin of man. That is your number one besetting sin. As people get a little older, they get more sophisticated and learn how to hide it. But at that age, they have not yet learned to hide it, and they will own it very readily.

Diving Into Dog Food

I remember standing there one year watching two junior high girls before the dog food dive. One girl said to the other, "Do I look okay?" I said, "Sweetheart, you are about to go face first in wet dog food. It does not matter how you look." She said, "Yeah, but is my makeup on right?" I said, okay, I give up. Just dive in there and find a tootsie roll with your mouth in the midst of that dog food.

My favorite story is one girl who said, "I don't know — what kind of dog food is it?" Apparently she was an Alpo girl, or something.

Pride: A Complete Anti-God State of Mind

They cop to the pride thing, and then you just tell them God is opposed — that means He is actively engaged in opposition to the proud. So you need a definition. The definition of pride is this: it is a complete anti-God state of mind. That is C.S. Lewis. Pride is a complete anti-God state of mind. In other words, I am not thinking like God thinks.

So when John says, "Do not love the world nor the things of the world, because if the love of the world is in you, the love of the Father is not in you," now we are face to face with the same thing. If the things of the world are your priority, something is wrong with you. Pride is an awful, evil, hideous thing.

Sunday Night: Forgiveness

Then Sunday night we talk about forgiveness. One of the great mistakes you can make in working with and being around students is looking at these young people and thinking, "These are the best years of your life. You are going to grow out of this, get married, have kids." That is essentially what you are saying to them, and they are going, "Oh, thanks, dad. That means a lot to me that you love me that way."

For some of these kids, it is not the best years of their life. You have to sit and listen to them when they say, "When I was one, my dad left, and for twelve years my mom could not care less about me." Or they say, "My dad is here, but he is never around, and he tries to give us stuff, but he does not really love us." If love equates to time, there is a lot of hurting in these kids, and there is a lot of legitimate, worldly reason to be angry and bitter.

But you have to tell them to forgive, and they are going to say, "How can I forgive? Don't you think he dealt me dirty?" Sure he did. How do you forgive? "Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ forgave you." You did not deserve forgiveness. God gives it to you through Christ. Now you forgive. This has eaten you alive — let it go.

Do you see how it all comes back to the relationship with Christ? The relationship with Christ becomes both the motivation and the ability to forgive.

Monday Morning: Suffering and Pain

Then Monday morning we talk about suffering and pain, and the reality that life promises them both. They hear things like, "This is the first day of the rest of your life," which is true — but the first day of the rest of your life is also one of which you will suffer. So I have them get out their pads and write down each word as I say it. Then I ask them to read it back to me. Here is what they write: *No matter how bad it gets, it can only last a lifetime.*

So that is the upbeat message for Monday morning — you have all this suffering, plus persecution on top of it. But how can that be okay? We are thinking big picture. Remember, He went to prepare a place for you, and He is going to come back again. Are you going to hurt? Yes. Are you going to suffer? Yes. Are people going to do you dirty? Sure they are. But we are not living based on this world system. We are living based on the next world.

Is it going to be hard and difficult? Yes, but only for about another seventy years. If I said to you, "You have to go one day without a candy bar — could you do it, if you could eat them for all eternity?" Sure you could. Well, you are going to go a specific, limited period of time with intense suffering, and then it is going to be gone.

Active Duty: No Entanglements

And then the last session — and I had no idea, because I did not know what next year's theme would be, but what a great launching point this turns out to be. "No soldier in active duty entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he can please the one who enlisted him." I tried to say to them, listen, you are going to have entanglements. If you are a soldier in active duty — and you are — then you do not place yourself in areas of entanglement. The applications are huge.

This is one of my favorite verses, in one of my favorite books, Second Timothy, because Paul is writing at the end of his life. You can apply it directly to your own life. You are on active duty. You are not in the reserves. No soldier in active duty gets entangled in the affairs of everyday life. They do not take a soldier in active duty and say, "Figure it out for yourself." You do not see a soldier go to the closet in the morning and say, "I wonder what I should wear today." No — you will be wearing those fatigues right there. They are going to tell you what to wear.

Don't Let Anything Entangle You

Don't go to the mess hall with a menu — you'll be hungry by lunch. That is how we live. We don't say, just walk any way you want. We move left, right, left, right. So what are the things that are going to entangle you? That is a great exercise. If you are here as a couple, that is a great exercise for the drive home — talk about the things that could entangle you.

Let me help you out. Materialism will do it. Sexual immorality will do it. Lying will do it. Misplaced priorities will do it. If you are here and you are single, I will give you a big one: the fastest way to tie yourself up and be absolutely useless for the Lord is to marry the wrong person. I meet all kinds of people who I think could be used by God in mighty ways, but they are married to someone who is not on the same page. That is really important.

Why Student Ministries Matters to This Church

So that is what we did at summer camp. I want to close with something important, and I think your being here says something about it already — summer camp is a significant time for us, and I do not want you to miss what it means.

We do not do student ministries just because we have to. We do student ministries because students are a key part of the church. I want them to feel that way, I want them to be treated that way, and I want you to see them that way.

You go to a lot of churches and you see an eight o'clock traditional service, a nine-thirty contemporary service, an eleven o'clock charismatic service. What are we doing? I understand someone might say, I would like a service where we sing more hymns, or I would like something more upbeat. If that is what you need, you are at the wrong place — we can help you find somewhere else, because we are not going to do that. I am not going to put in place a service that by its very nature caters to a specific group, so that at eight o'clock you have one kind of crowd and at nine-thirty you have another. You are a body of Christ.

You need those students in here, and you need them badly — and they need you. Unless they share a chain of DNA with you, they desperately want to hear from you. They love it. I will tell you, I was walking onto that campus on the first day and one of the students said, "What are you going to be teaching at summer camp, Mr. Schrader?" I said I would be covering material that would be very beneficial — I had just spent six months in the Gospel of Matthew. The student said, "Really? Wow, I should have studied harder then. You are going to beat me up." These are serious kids. Understand that. Understand the value of this ministry.

Honoring Those Who Lead Student Ministries

There is no better symbol of that value than Tim Mon. It sets me off like a rocket when I hear people say, "Tim, how long do you think you will do student ministries? You are getting up there — 42, 43. Getting a little old for this, aren't you?" All that does is reveal an entire lack of understanding of what is going on, and it explains a weakness in the culture of the church.

In the church, people treat student ministry as though it is a stepping stone, and then they ask the man leading it when he is going to move on to something serious. I believe Tim could ultimately be the oldest student ministry leader in the history of the planet, because God has gifted him for that and God has put it in his heart. Why would you move a man like that out? Don't ever ask me that, and don't ever ask him that. He is going to be there until God moves him somewhere else, and it has nothing to do with age. These students are human beings, just like you.

The Fruit of Faithful Ministry

Right before I left for camp, I received a card at my desk from a student. He looked back at summer camps from 1999 through 2002 and the lessons I had taught. He wrote: "I think back to the first year, 1999, when you were at summer camp, and you spoke about Daniel, and you spoke about it being our privilege to be a display case for God and about Daniel's resume. And I was still in the process of deciding whether or not to go to public high school. However, the messages on Daniel's consistent boldness convinced me that I needed to be a display case. And that next year, I became that witness and started consistently to go to discipleship while sharing with my lost friends at school."

God used that kid in a public school in a remarkable way to touch many lives. That came out of summer camp. Justin Marshall, who just joined our staff full-time, was saved six years ago at a summer camp. This is very important.

That is why I take the time. That is why I go and represent you over there, and that is why I come back and ask you to listen and understand. Student ministries is a key part of what we do at East Valley Bible Church. I could not be more pleased with what God is doing there. It is so exciting. It is a great way to watch God work.

A Personal Note

Let me remind you about that CD. Susan and I will not be here next week. We had the privilege, while we were at summer camp, of celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. We are leaving tomorrow morning and will be gone a week. Chris Mueller is going to teach.

Opening Prayer

Father, thank you for this truth. Thank you for student ministries, for Tim and his staff, all the people that You've brought to us. Make us a church that understands that they are an integral part of the body. We are all part of the body, and we love them, we care for them. Thank you for blessing us with extraordinary people who You use in an extraordinary way. God, thank you. We praise You. We worship You. In Jesus' name, amen.