3 Camps, one theme

Summer Camp is a big deal for NMC Student Ministries. In fact, it's now a big deal for our Children's Ministry as well. This year we are offering a Summer Camp student for every student who will be in 1st-12th Grade for the 2007-08 School year.

Preteen, Junior High, and Senior High Summer Camp have been running for several years now. Every camp has a theme. We take that theme and seek to weave it throughout the entire camp.
Past themes include...

Some of the themes we've used come from 3DYC themes. Others have come from Youth Specialties National Youth Worker Convention themes. At the end of the convention, they put all their thematic elements online for you to use. Some we've just made up ourselves.

In 2006, we decided to try something... run all three camps with the same theme.







We did this for two reasons:

1. Resources. By running the same theme we were able to invest nearly 2X the thematic resources we did in running three separate themes. Let me explain. We purchased a large backdrop with the Jump logo on it that said "Summer Camp 2007". This banner was used in all three camps. We purchased 6 mini trampolines for props and to take pictures of kids jumping... again all three camps. T-shirts were cheaper because of the bulk purchases. We still had nearly the same mass production costs (copies of booklets, any handouts we did). We spent the same amount as past camps, but where able to step up our theming at all three camps.
2. Shared Stories. Many families had more than one student traveling to more than one camp. By sharing the theme, it provided a HUGE win for parents. In all three camps we took time to examine the moment in Peter's life where he "jumped" out of the boat. This allowed for a Sr. High student to share a similar experience with his/her Jr. High brother/sister in hopes for a better opportunity for lessons learned to "stick" upon the return home.

This year, we go at it again... three camps, one theme. I'm excited for what's in store...












*edit - I put these slides logos up so any youth leaders out there who would like can take these themes and make them their own. Feel free to click on the thumbnails to get the larger jpeg. Or e-mail/ leave a comment if your intrested in getting some more media to go with the above themes.