The Porch: Morning Watch Mondays
In many ways, the Dining Hall Porch at Falling Creek is sacred ground. When you find yourself standing there you can be sure that you are on the precipice of greatness. Each summer thousands of kids scramble onto its well-worn lumber floor, standing in the footsteps of 54 years of young men before them. Every morning you will find boys peering through the enormous glass windows into the Dining Hall toward their tables, trying to get a sneak peek at what the freshly cooked meal is going to be as their counselors are setting the tables.
After breakfast, kids with bellies full of food (and counselors with cups full of coffee) scramble back out onto the same porch and cram themselves in for Morning Assembly, a sort of organized chaos to get the blood “Pumpin’, Baby, Pumpin’!” Counselors and Directors lead the way in singing at the top of their lungs, acting out messy skits, and giving sports updates from a world that (unknown to us) is still happening outside of camp’s boundaries. Animated announcements reveal and remind the boys of their options for the day, all finished off with Frank delivering a knee-slapping corny joke and leading us in push-up club. It is loud, it is fun, and after Zach exhorts, “Let’s have a great day at Falling Creek!”… they are off.
From this quiet porch once teeming with anticipation and wafting with a few missed deodorant swipes, you can look out over camp and watch kids and leaders heading toward their activities, together. Some of the guys are excited to get to it, others are hesitant and afraid of what might happen to them as they try an activity they’ve never done before. As we tell them often, “Falling Creek is a safe place to fail, so you might as well try something new!”
When the boys return to this porch, they will not be the same. Their shirts will most likely be tie-dyed with a mixture of coal from Blacksmithing and wood chip confetti from Woodworking. Their hair will still be damp from learning to roll a kayak in the lower lake. Their forearms and foreheads reveal remnants from Pottery, Arts and Crafts, or time spent working the soil at F.A.R.M. If you look beyond the few that are eyeballing the current culinary selections through the giant windows you will see groups of kids telling stories of their day, trying to one-up each other’s triumphs and celebrating the times they dared to try something new. These boys tell stories about their days like two old men talk about the size of the fish they’ve caught. The campers are talking about the new things they want to try later in the day and about conquering fears. On this porch they are engaged with each other. Their appetites and hopes are for more than just chicken tender Tuesday, but wet with a hunger to fully experience Life.
We at Falling Creek believe that the boys are hungry to experience the fullness of Life. The entire camp is set up for discovering and rediscovering that we are made for love and adventure. When we look at Jesus’ life we can see that these are the very things that marked His character. He spent years of His life living with a “cabin” of disciples, sharing meals together and listening to each other’s stories, having conversations about real life while hiking mountain trails and boating across lakes, taking risks and being brave in the face of dangerous situations.
John 10:10 says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy, but I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
Knowing that the One who made us desires us to be fully alive, we are free to get after it with no fear! Falling Creek is a place to discover more about who you are, what you are made for, and the heart of the One who made you. As the boys spend their last ounces of energy at the end of the day battling each other across the porch and into the Dining Hall to be first in line for milk and cookies, there is a sense that things are not the same as they were when they sat there a few hours before.
In fact they are not the same as they were, and what could tomorrow hold?
Want a sneak peak at what this porch looks like in action? This is a look at one of our daily Morning Assemblies, the high-energy way we start every day here at camp. The secret to a great day is getting started with a great morning! Goooooooood Morning Falling Creek!
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