If you’ve been around Eagle for any amount of time, odds are you’ve heard about Ignite. The incredible, roof-shaking worship was probably mentioned along with God being present and answering prayers left and right. There was probably some talk of paint balling and tubing (but if your student was REALLY lucky, you know about the water slide and the BLOB). And how can you have not heard about Ian Black doing the splits twice?
If you’ve heard about Ignite Camp, the words “Spiritual High” have probably fallen very closely behind. A “Spiritual High” is experiencing God in an incredible way, and then after this encounter, being so fired up and wanting more of God for a few months before slowly losing this passion. This pattern seems to run rampant through the students who attend camp. The part that isn’t normally talked about is when the high sticks. When the passion for Christ lasts longer than the month or so after camp and that fire inside is no longer attached to camp emotions, but more and more the character of God and how you see Him move in mundane, everyday life.
Of my six times going to Ignite Camp, I have felt the “Spiritual High” every year. With each year it took less and less time to return to my old lifestyle of being a “Lukewarm Christian.” However, my Junior year is when it stuck. I went to camp and came back with that same Spiritual High, but that year something different happened. It hit me (with a Holy smack in the face, let me tell you) that living a life for Christ lasts a lot longer than 3 months after a high-intensity spiritual moment. I still screwed up, I wasn’t the most devout Christian you would ever meet, but I wanted more of God day to day.
This is not to say that I wouldn’t have wanted to truly follow Christ without camp, because I don’t believe that’s true. However, I do think that the experiences that you have at camp provides an incredible base for knowing Christ and building community to make the passion for God last longer than a couple months. I’m not sure I could say that I truly believed that the name of Jesus brings people to their knees in surrender until I became a witness and experienced it myself at camp. Ignite also provides you with the resources for it to stick. The girls I came to know in my cabin along with my cabin leader met in a small group after camp every Sunday night up until the weekend before we all left for college. Without camp, I’m not sure that these bonds would have formed the way they did. People that I met through camp have been fundamental in my walk with Christ.
Camp is fun, the worship rocks, the people you come to know are incredible, and the Spiritual High is very real. BUT, who’s to say that this won’t be the year where it sticks?