Ideas for promoting camp in your local congregation

• The Erie United Methodist Church holds a spring lunch served after Sunday School, featuring grilled cheese sandwiches and homemade soups that are donated by members of the congregation. We accept donations for the lunch and all money raised goes to our Jessica Palmer Camping Scholarship Fund. The kids that have camped in the past or are interested in going to camp, are our waiters and bus the tables and help with clean up, this way they feel involved in our project.
  The Church is decorated that day with tents, back packs, fishing gear, bikes, cowboy hats, ( for the horse camps) we even had a canoe one year. The kids that camped in previous years wear there camp t- shirts and bring photos that were taken at camp. We ask them to share with the church some of their adventures. Since we started doing this we have went from no camping interest to sent an average of 12 campers a year to various camps through out the conference.
   

• The kids that went to camps can spread the word at their churches.  We ended up with 8 people from our area going to Lake Louise Junior High Camp this year.  We just talked to individuals, and it worked! - Katy

   

• Ypsilanti First UMC hosted a beef stew dinner and a sweets auction to benefit their congregation's camp scholarships. One cake sold for $90!
   

• Ypsilanti First also announced to the congregation that the camp video "What Are You Doing This Summer?" was available in the church office for loan. Members could take the video to view with their friends to show them what our camps look like and encourage them to go.
   

• Wyandotte First UMC held a sale of Little Ceaser Pizza Kits to fund their congregation's camp scholarship fund.
   

• One church said they buy disposable cameras for their campers, and when the campers come back they give presentations to the church using their photos!