Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.
Well, apparently, camp isn't just for kids anymore. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, there's a growing market for adult sleepaway camps. These camps offer all the nostalgia of bunk beds, hayrides, campfires, cabin competitions with warpaint, the whole package. only with more bartenders than camp counselors and less lights out. For example, and I quote from the article here, at Camp Social, creating chemistry is everything.
Campers are divided by age, which range from the twenties to the sixties into bunks of eight to ten. Each is staffed with a trained counselor who serves as a camp concierge, a bonding facilitator. They are even tasked with coming up with a bunk cheer. ⁇ Now what inspired the creator of this camp for grown-ups? Here's what he said, quote, I created what I wished existed.
We're expected to figure out friendships without a blueprint, end quote. For the many who have happy memories of going to summer camp or maybe just watching the parent trap too many times, the appeal of this is understandable. The 1998 film Indian Summer portrayed groups of adults hoping to relive the childhood joy of summer camp. What's driving today's real-life adults back to camp, however, is not just nostalgia, it's loneliness. As the Wall Street Journal article described, quote, when you're in your 20s and 30s, you don't make tons of friends unless you're doing something that bonds you, end quote.
Well, interestingly, most of the people in the photos that accompanied the article are women. But this new industry is only one indication among several that points to a profound lack of connection that affects both men and women. Even more, it reveals an incredible opportunity for the people of God. Responding to this Wall Street Journal article on X, author and scholar Dr. Anthony Bradley tweeted this: My goodness, how sad is this?
Just go to church. In other words, what people are looking for from adult summer camps, they should be able to find. in the body of Christ. Specifically, they should be able to learn from the church what the epidemic of loneliness reveals about who they truly are. After repeatedly pronouncing his creation good throughout the whole first week the universe existed, God said something was not good.
That was even before the fall made everything not good. It's not good, he said, that man should be alone. It's important that he did not say it's not good for man to be lonely, but rather alone. That's significant, because being lonely is a subjective matter. You can be lonely in a crowd and you can feel content all by yourself.
God here was making a statement about man's existence. more than he was about man's feelings. See, God had given humans a purpose in the way that He created them. With that purpose came a command, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. The same command was repeated to Noah after the flood.
Obviously, the command involves having kids, but it's also a call to bring human community across the face of the earth. Throughout the biblical story, that theme continues to be fleshed out. God is creating a people. himself. And also important is that along the way, God reveals to his world who he is.
He is Trinity. In other words, God does not merely do relationships, He is a relationship, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It's an irony of the modern world that despite all the ways for us to be connected, we are the loneliest generation to date on record. The very same technologies, in fact, that can connect us with people that in another time and place we'd never know can also interfere with the very closest relationships we have. It's ironic that despite telling people for decades now to love themselves, to be authentic to who they really are, and you be you, things like that.
People are still longing for connection and community. Like God, his image-bearers don't merely do relationships. We are inherently relational beings. and collectively we have a purpose given to us by God in creation. Entrusted with the profound truth about who we are, Christians have way more to offer the lonely, isolated victims of the modern world than Summer Camp does.
We are the church, the body and bride of Christ, an eternal community brought together by the love of our Creator. We have the beautiful and robust notion that humans are made in the image of God. an idea that is central to Holy Scripture and crucial to the history of the world. We have God's brilliant and beautiful design for marriage and family, something an increasing number of young people have never seen in real life, but find themselves looking for. We have sacred space, a place of worship in which the mundane finds ultimate meaning.
And above all, we have the good news. Not that there's a campfire tonight. But that God loves his image-bearers so much, he died so that they would not ultimately have to live without him. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review where you download your podcast.
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