Research indicates that more students leave the faith in Middle and High school than in college. These are the years that shape their destiny. The fact is, middle school students have fragile hearts that can be set ablaze by sin in only a moment of compromise. Now, more than ever, middle school students need an ENCOUNTER with God.

The camp is called Encounter. It is based upon the passage about Jacob wresting with God. He says “I have seen God face to face and lived to tell the story.” The overarching goal of Encounter is twofold:

1. That students will come face to face with God in a way that they have not experienced. As Christian school students most students have spiritually “been there, done that.” We want children to be removed from the trappings of peer pressure, technology, and inhibitions, and yield to God experientially.
2. That they will live to tell the tale, not like Jacob, but rather that the tale of their Encounter with God will be evident in their lives. For Encounter we try to approach these students from a different assumption. Rather than assuming they need salvation, we assume that they have experienced that long ago and need to begin to experience God as a daily, and hourly reality; but also to learn to continually yield to His divine sovereignty and providence. For us, this is the basis of true leadership: me leading myself upon the road of righteousness.