Safari is coming up!
Have your youth registered!?! If not, make sure to do it soon as it’s an opportunity too good to miss! The youth team are chasing registrations by Sunday, June 30th.
What makes SCPC’s week-long youth camp (Safari) so excellent? 18 months ago I read a biography of the prominent 20th century Christian leader, John Stott. It was an excellent read. It was super great to hear about his journey to faith. Significant in it was a camp run by Scripture Union in Britain. They seemed quite persuaded that a five-day camp was a brilliant forum to allow teenagers room to consider and think through the claims of Christ. I couldn’t believe it as I read it! I straight away thought of our five-day youth camp, Safari! So excited was I, that I took photos of the pages and sent it to two of our past MTS apprentices who had co-led the camp with me in the past with the caption “The special ingredients to Safari”!
So, I can’t wait to hear reports back from Safari 2024 and the way those special ingredients work like magic, fuelled by the word of God and the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit.
I understand that not everyone at SCPC is impacted by Safari and a good twenty percent may not really understand what all the fuss is about. But Cam and the youth team put in a huge amount of effort to make Safari happen.
So, can I encourage all of us to consider who from your Gospel Community is due to attend? Ask them how they are feeling about it? You might like to enquire with the family and see if they need financial support to get all their kids there.
Also, you might think about who in your street might be able to go… A few years ago, I tentatively door- knocked two families on our street about whether their teenagers would be interested. I had no idea what they would say and I expected the door to slam! But, it was much better than I expected. In fact, one of the teenagers in our street came. Similarly, have a listen to the shock John Stott experienced when he invited a friend. John, like me, expected a NO! But this was the response from his friend: I said straight away I would like to come. He told me later that he (John Stott) was quite overwhelmed by the response. I was the normal hard swearing school boy, I suppose, no faith at all… my parents occasionally taking me to church. John had prayed about this approach to me and had been fairly certain he would be rebuffed. [1]
This teenager went along to the camp, and there found Christ for himself. How cool is that!?!
Safari is coming up really soon, on July 13-17, with Safari Sunday on July 21. Please pray that even teenagers with messy lives would come and meet the faithful God.
Let me finish with the powerful conversion story of Zacchaeus from Luke 19:
1 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he
was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I
must stay at your house today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”
8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my
possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the
amount.”
9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of
Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
SP
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[1] Dudley-Smith, John Stott: The making of a leader. (London: IVP, 1999), p102.
