Gateway Church Australia
Singe Gill - CNF Vision Day 2024
Hi, today I'm going to share with you a message from our camp, No Fear, Vision Day. And the reason we talk about a youth camp, our annual youth camp to the whole church, I hope it's going to become apparent through this message. I hope that you'll feel inspired in hearing about our camp and just know as well that today's message on the camp, Vision Day, is actually intended to be kind of the first session that you get to sit in to hear a little bit about what camp is like. But just in case you've never seen one of the clips of what camp looks like, let's have a look. So camp is a great time for young people. We strive to create the best experience we can and an experience where people get to meet Jesus maybe for the first time, maybe for the hundredth, but then it might be a place where they get to meet Jesus. And so I am the youth pastor here as well as one of the camp directors and it's not groundbreaking to say that teenagers are generally struggling with three questions. In fact, it's not groundbreaking to say that people are generally struggling with three main questions. The question of identity, who am I? What makes me tick? What am I like? What do I laugh at? What's my sense of humor? What makes me different to other people? What makes me like other people? What am I capable of? What can I do? What can I not do? What am I scared of? What am I confident of doing? What if anything makes me unique? Am I special or am I just nothing? And of course, do I matter? The second question teenagers in particular are struggling with, I think, is where do I fit in? Which is the question of belonging. One of my pet peeves, which I've said in private before, but I will share with you, is having to make merch for youth events. Our youth love a hoodie. They want to be able to show where they fit in. I think this has always been true. I think this is why brands matter, why people wear certain shoes. They want to show the type of people that they fit in with. And merch is just the bane of my life, but I love that our young people want to show where they fit in. They found belonging. They want to say, I belong to this place and the way they do that is through clothes. So the question is people are asking about where do I fit in? Where are my places? Where do I go where I feel comfortable? Who are my people? Who are the people who make me feel comfortable? Who like me for who I am? Who helped me figure out who I am? Where can I be myself? And the question that keeps coming up, do I matter in this place? In question three, what difference can I make? And this speaks to purpose. And I think this is the question that people struggle with the most throughout their lives. This is the question that drives midlife crisises, which I am due for soon, is what is my purpose? What is the point of all of this? What is the point of having the same conversation with my two and a half year old every single day? Just, you know, casual questions that have nothing to do with me like that. Will I be remembered? What will I be remembered for? And of course, the classic question, do I matter? At camp, we want to create an environment where teenagers can explore these questions. And if you're going to be one of the team members at camp, we need your help to create this environment. Because we want people to be able to explore these questions in a faith context. Let me read to you a little reminder sent to an ancient church. For it's by grace that you have been saved through faith. And this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by work so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Let's skip ahead a little bit. Through him, we all have access to the Father by one spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household. This passage is written in a letter to remind an ancient church what it means to be a church. And I believe it kind of answers these three questions. A little section that can help guide us, what does it mean to answer these three questions in a faith context? Now, when it comes to camp, who am I is a pretty confronting question? So we're probably not going to start there with the young people who walk in through the door. Maybe we can start with, where do I fit in? Our job is to welcome them. Our job is to say, you fit here, no matter what you're trying to figure out, no matter what you look like, no matter what you believe right now, you have a place here, you have value, you'll be encouraging. You know, for some young people who come to camp, this might be where the camp experience stops. And that's fine with me. If a young person can come to camp, spend four days with some other young people and some adults who care about them and go, wow, I actually fit in here. That is groundbreaking stuff for some young people. And it ties into this reminder that we see in that previous passage, you're no longer strangers, but fellow citizens. And so camp team, that's up to us. How do we ensure that the young people who walk in through the door at camp have that feeling that they're no longer strangers by the end of camp, but they're fellow citizens who can keep coming back and keep finding their place at gateway or at their church or at a church that they find. And then of course, I think there is a spot where, you know, we build up a bit of like social currency with young people and we get to start talking to them about who they are. But of course, the question we're more interested in is who does Jesus say that they are? We've welcomed them. Now, we want to show them what it means like to find their value in who Jesus says they are. And of course, from that passage we just read, it's we are God's handiwork. You don't have to make yourself amazing. You get to be yourself because God has made you to be who you're meant to be. And then of course, finally, we get to bring them along on a journey, welcome them in, show them how much Jesus loves them, and then bring them along on a journey. Because following Jesus means that you can make a difference in this life. It brings purpose to your life. Again, from that passage we just read, people are created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for them to do. And so that's it. That's a taster of what camp is all about. Why we do it. What mission we're asking you to be on board with. It's what camps all about, but actually it's what this family is about all year round. So I guess the key questions for you are probably, why am I telling you about it? And why do we need to put all this effort into camp if this stuff happens all year round anyway? Well, firstly, we're including you in this conversation because we need your help. I'm sure you're getting sick of me saying this, but I'm not going to stop saying it. From the leadership of this church, this is a church project. This is not just a youth group project. This is a camp that has been taken hold of by God and reaches wider than this church. It reaches to people who don't know Jesus yet. It reaches and strengthens other church and other youth groups. That's what we're a part of. That's what we need your help with. And this is a project that takes sacrifice to put young people first. Our team that come along don't get to come on holiday. Unfortunately, for some of them, they find that out the hard way. But the truth is being a camp for the vast majority of us is a sacrifice, a blessing, yes, but a sacrifice of time, of finances, maybe of sanity, maybe a little bit of dignity. But it is a sacrifice because we put young people first. And so we need people to help out on the day. If you're already signed up on the team, thank you so much. Thank you for being part of the camp vision day. And we do need more team members, almost always. But we also need you to make sure that everyone who needs to be there is. I can't have the conversations that you're positioned to have with other family members, parents or encouraging your kids to invite their friends. The conversation is that your position to have a conversations that you need to have. Who do you know in your sphere who would benefit from coming to camp and being exposed to a faith answer to those three questions of identity, belonging and purpose? Whether it's nephews and nieces, your kids, friends, your kids, neighbors, kids, who is there that you will maybe sacrifice a little bit of dignity, a little bit of social currency to try and make sure that that young person can be at camp. So why do we put all this effort into camp? If this stuff is happening all the time, well, firstly, why do we put effort into anything? But maybe that's not a very satisfying answer. Let me answer a different way. I had this thought the other day. I am a long-term iPhone person. I know that some of you have just clicked off of this video on YouTube and that is okay. But I'm a long-term iPhone person. And if you're a long-term iPhone person, you probably know that recently Apple got rid of the silent, loud switch on the side of the phone. Did you care about that? Because I realized the other day, I didn't care that they got rid of that switch. And this sounds banal, just stick with me. That's interesting because I love that switch when I first got an iPhone. I thought it was such a good idea because I worked in events, so I often walked into a room, I wanted to just double-check my phone was on silent, and I could figure it out without looking at my phone. Some of you have no idea what I'm talking about. You just have to look at your phone, press buttons, go into menus. How do you set this phone to silent? And so I loved being able to know whether my phone was on silent or loud. Because I used to switch my phone between silent and loud. Now, I know I'm not appealing to all generations here, but I know I'm appealing to pretty much my generation and below and maybe a little bit older than me. Who here actually switches their phone off silent? I mean, I used to labor over what my ringtone was. Who here remembers playing 295, texting some service to send you back a ringtone? The ringtone was important. That was about who you are. It was how you customized your phone. I've even noticed that the one ubiquitous, please set your phone to silent messages, started to go missing. We used to make that announcement at the start of theater shows here. We didn't do that to start a booklet. Who has their phone on loud? My phone's been on sciences before I had kids, before COVID, before I was married. I realized that I didn't use this switch anymore the other day because I was expecting a call I didn't want to miss. So I turned my phone off silent by going through the menu trying to figure out where to do. And when it rang, I thought, ah, that's what my ringtone is because I had no idea what it was. We don't put our phone on silent now. We put it on loud when there's someone that we want to hear from. I know the majority of people here would say they're following Jesus. So let me ask you a tricky question. When in your faith journey, did you flip the Holy Spirit switch to silent and forget about it? I think for many of us, when we first come to Jesus, the Holy Spirit is on loud. But somewhere along the line, we flip that switch. Now maybe we forget that switch exists and we never switch it back. What would be different in this place if you flipped the Holy Spirit over to loud in your life? How would your week this week look different? How would it change your conversations? If you said, I want to hear from the Holy Spirit, I'm going to make sure I don't miss a call. How might it change your mindset about the part that you can play in getting someone to camp? How might it change your attention when you look at young people around you and go, this young person has to be there? You know, for people who don't know much about Jesus, they're living like the Holy Spirit is on silent too. They don't even know there's an option to switch. This all comes back to why do we run camp? Camp is an opportunity for young people to be in a place where the Holy Spirit is on loud. Maybe this message is also reminded of you to flip that switch back as well. Amazing things happen when the Holy Spirit is given space and attention. What's actually loud in your life right now and what should be loud? Camp is an opportunity for young people to discover more about their identity where they belong and what their purpose is because of what Jesus has done for them. And they get to do that in this environment where we flip that switch for them. We put the Holy Spirit on loud for a few days so they can have that experience of being away from their day to day life and knowing what it's like to live in that environment. If you're on the team or if you're planning to be on the team, will you remember that as we go through this camp process? That's what this is actually all about that you're a part of making that happen. And if you're not on the camp team, can you think about that in your encounters with people in the next month or so? Who do you know around you who needs to be a camp? Because the Holy Spirit can do amazing things when we put him on loud. And the proof is in the pudding. So let's see some of the pudding from Camp No Fear right now.