By Shannon Baker
BCM/D National Correspondent
Sam Downs assists a young girl who visited during the spring outreach at the Frederick Rescue Mission.
The team at Amped Ministry, the student ministry of the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware, is serious about teaching teenagers to evangelize. They decided to take this year’s summer camp theme, “Taking it to the Streets,” literally.
Doug DuBois, BCM/D missionary for student evangelism, believes “the best way to teach students about sharing the gospel is to literally take them to the streets.”
So they took a hard look at how they do summer camp. And they decided to change some things.
Most notably, they have built intentional times of evangelism—actual mission projects and prayer—into the week of programming for their two summer camps, reCHARGE and Missions Camp. These camps, for youth who have completed grades 6-12, are held for three weeks in late June and early July.
During each week, church groups of students can opt to spend an afternoon biking along a Prayer Path through Frederick, with scheduled stops with specific prayer requests and activities to perform along the way. By the end of the day, students will have prayed for city schools, homeless shelters, local city services and more.
The students will be given specific ways to pray as found in the Bible.
Alternatively, students may choose to help impact a community with the love of Christ by assisting a local church with an outreach block party either at a park near South End Baptist Church, at Waverly Elementary School, which is near First Baptist Church, Frederick, or at the Frederick Rescue Mission, working alongside Strong Tower Church.
Amped Ministry will provide the block party essentials—moon bounce, cotton candy and the like—to the church or park, where the teens will help host a fun day for kids in the surrounding neighborhoods. The students will be able to display the love of Christ while they play with children and tell them about Jesus.
At all three sites, teams will run a block party Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for three weeks, reaching the community and connecting them to the churches, DuBois stresses. Other student groups will participate in a video scavenger hunt. This teen group will navigate their way through the city of Frederick where they have to complete tasks and collect items in a timed race. At each task, they will have the opportunity to meet and pray for plenty of new people as they travel as a group to complete the hunt. All the tasks will be based on outreach.
“Every day, that means a third of our students are going to do ministry in Frederick—every day we are bombarding the city of Frederick with at least 100 students!” says DuBois.
In addition to the reCHARGE camps, other church youth groups will stay at Skycroft’s Kamp Kaylor and do missions work in Frederick for the whole week. They will assist churches with the block parties, construction projects and tutoring at the Frederick Rescue Mission, and tutoring at Lincoln Elementary School.
Please pray for the students who will take the gospel to the streets and for the lives changed by the love of Christ. Learn more at http://ampedministry.org.