Where is my mission field? This was the question students and adults from across the state and Missouri explored last week at Camp Paron as part of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention’s (ABSC) annual student missions camp called Engage.
One hundred and thirty students and adults from 10 churches in Arkansas and Missouri participated in Engage Camp 2024. There were 15 ministry projects completed with more than 30 Gospel presentations with four students making professions of faith. At least three students expressed a call to full-time missions and ministry.
Engage Camp is designed to provide participants with the experience of a mission trip and summer camp all rolled into one. This unique camp combines biblical teaching, worship, evangelism, fun, and fellowship with hands-on ministry opportunities to help equip students to be engaged full-time in God’s mission.
The theme of Engage each year is taken from one of six basic questions (Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?) concerning our responsibility to live a missional lifestyle. This year, participants explored the where of missions as they discovered a wide variety of potential mission fields and identified specific places that God is calling each of them to be on mission every day.
University of Arkansas at Fort Smith Baptist Collegiate Ministry (BCM) Campus Minister Phillip Slaughter served as the camp pastor for the week. He challenged the students to live as disciple makers and to answer the question, “Are you where you are meant to be?”
Matthew Hall, BCM campus minister at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, teamed up with Shawn Covey and Whitney Caldwell from First Baptist Royal and Riley Bramlett from First Baptist Hope to lead participants in worship each night.
In addition to evening worship times, students were engaged in learning about missions through daily breakout sessions. During two sessions each afternoon, they were able to choose from a variety of topics including “Fishing Where the Fish Are,” “Stories from Following the Call: God’s Work in Central Asia,” “Exploring Your Call Internationally,” “Nine-month Prayer Journey on Your Campus” and “Simply Sharing Jesus.”
There were also sessions for adult leaders and an interactive refugee experience for all participants.
Each morning from Tuesday through Thursday, campers could take what they were learning and apply those lessons as they spread out around the area to serve in a variety of hands-on missions and ministry opportunities. Projects included a partnership with Owensville Baptist church that saw a large group of campers assist with the remodeling of the church’s parsonage into a mission house for missionaries on furlough. This group also helped organize the church’s clothing closet, cleaned a local cemetery, and provided yard work and clean up for several senior adults.
Another group spent the week working with Habitat for Humanity in Benton. They helped serve those who serve others by providing much-needed assistance in tearing out old carpet and doing prep work for painting and additional remodeling of the Habitat office space.
Other projects included staining bridges and lawn chairs at Camp Paron, yard work and clean-up at local residents’ homes and packing meals to be used for door-to-door evangelism/canvassing projects during the week as well as for the upcoming One Day missions event in October. Students also volunteered at Healing Waters in Mabelvale and the community center in Paron.
Engage Camp 2025 is scheduled for Camp Paron on June 16-20. Make plans now to join us next year. Check out the website www.absc.org/engagecamp for information when it becomes available or contact Travis McCormick at [email protected].