2 of 4

On an average day at a Teen Missions camp, attendees rise before dawn. For Simmons's team, the day begins with what's either lovingly or loathingly nicknamed "the OC," an obstacle course meant to build teamwork and mental and physical stamina. At running speed, the campers complete obstacles inspired by biblical stories. There is Mount Sinai, a pile of tires, and Jacob's Ladder, a rope ladder. They swing over a retention pond, wiggle through small plastic tubes, and climb wooden walls painted with words like "anxiety." Standing at least 10 feet high, the walls require an entire team working together to overcome.

At meals, campers must eat everything on their plates as training for the hospitality they'll receive in third-world countries, where some meals are prepared with the labors of entire villages in which many are starving. In their free time, campers rest and write friends and family back home. Some remove their shoes to give their feet air. One camper on Simmons's team suffers from jungle rot. Her skin is peeling from her feet. Campers quickly realize what they used to take for granted. Air conditioning is a big one here.

Simmons points to a water bottle, an old Dasani one I filled up before heading to the camp.

"That is a luxury," he said, eyeing it with longing.

A plumber-turned-pastor, Bob Bland began organizing Teen Missions in 1970. He got the idea from a 14-year-old who told him at a religious conference that she wanted to be a missionary but complained that everyone told her she was too young.

"I want to do something for the Lord now," she told him.

In an early year of developing Teen Missions, Bland took a group of teens to Peru, and it went badly—one teen was bit by a poisonous snake and two others nearly drowned in a river. Bland believed the teens needed training and discipline, so he set up a missionary training camp in Greenfield, Ohio, at a campground operated by the Christian Union, a small evangelical denomination active primarily in the Midwest in which Bland is ordained. He and his wife began looking for property in Miami because of its proximity to Latin America, but in 1975 settled on 265 acres of much more affordable swampland in Merritt Island, near Kennedy Space Center on Florida's east coast.

Teen Missions has trained some 40,000 young missionaries, some of whom have gone on to become career missionaries. The rigorous training and discipline are for their benefit, Bland said. Campers are taught to follow rules no matter what, because when they are abroad, a simple misunderstanding due to cultural differences could endanger not only their mission work, but the lives of themselves and those around them.

"We tell kids this is a missionary training camp. This isn't pamper camp. That's down the road," he said dryly. "We can't teach all those [cultural] differences here, but we can teach discipline. You may not understand, but there is a reason."

Not long ago, young missionaries like Simmons didn't exist, and short-term missions were rare. In a phenomenon that many have noted, today young missionaries are everywhere. Short-term mission trips are a summer tradition for many North American congregations and a rite of passage for many young evangelicals. Organizations like Youth With a Mission (YWAM), Café 1040, and Young Life are deploying young missionaries by the thousands. Of the 16,000 Southern Baptist volunteers who since early 2006 have helped in the restoration of New Orleans, some 75 percent have been high school and college students affiliated with youth groups and college ministries, estimates Jim Burton, a senior director of the North American Mission Board, the Southern Baptist domestic missions agency.

next page... |  2 of 4

share this page

February 2008, Vol. 52, No. 2