In what Christianity Today called “the strangest and most complicated summer of Christian camps,” David and Colleen Burroughs faced challenging decisions related to their own camp program, PASSPORT Inc., involving 5,000 young people from around 350 churches in their programs.
In April, PASSPORT announced that it would go into a virtual format for this summer, interrupting a series of 27-year face-to-face camps that took up 56 cities in 17 states and six countries.
PASSPORT partners come with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Presthroughterian Church (United States), the Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church, all the most progressive Christian organizations that value equivalent attractiveness and service through women and men and ecumenical theology, two of passport’s key prices.
David and Colleen spoke to Baptist News Global about the demanding coVID-19 situations this summer and how they have adapted.
You took the decision not to organize user camps this year early enough, in April. What was going on on the scene to make that resolution and why were you able to advance what we now know to be an inevitable resolution?
Colleen: Deciding not to organize user camps came to the same question that our country continues to struggle with: do we threaten lives or livelihoods? Behind the scenes, our working group began tracking down the knowledge of coronavirus in February, prompting early caution, even when other people think it might decrease during the summer months. But our inability to wait for hot spots in the South meant too wonderful a threat for someone to take the virus to our summer groups or take it to an immunocompromised relative.
We made the call to cancel early for two reasons. First, we seek to give the more than 60 impressive young adults we hire for the summer the opportunity to place a new position or schedule to enroll in summer school. Second, our workplace needed all the time it took to rotate and pay to supply virtual resources to our registered churches. Student pastors’ summer calendars were about to be radically replaced, and not just because their camp week had been canceled.
Some giant evangelical camps and camps connected to mega churches have tried to continue this summer with wonderful care and disastrous results, even cancelling camps midweek. How do these reports verify the difficult resolution you made in April?
David: Some of those larger camps are connected to a church or local community, so it might be justified to set up a camp if infection rates had fallen for two weeks in your community. But because PASSEPORT is a national ministry, with several states providing camp consultations, there was a greater geographical footprint, which we seemed to increase the threat to our campers and their families.
This superior threat is due to the fact that states had other deadlines for peak infections, as there was no national policy related to shelter or the use of masks. I do not blame these camps for little to accommodate campers; Many of these camps get their entire source of income in just two short summer months. So there was a lot of tension to stay open if possible. We also felt that tension, however, it was better to be on the right side.
What kind of rejection or confirmation have you gained from churches, families, or donors because of your decision?
David: Once we announced our resolution, we won some emails from frustrated parents with our resolution because they felt the virus would disappear once the summer months were warmer. But through the overwhelming majority, our youth and child pastors presented words of confirmation and understanding. Although disappointed that they could only bring in students, they agreed that we had made the safest decision.
The first step toward a future for PASSPORT was asking our partner churches to allow us to keep the deposits they had paid, even as we had to cancel camp. We sent an email explaining that we had spent those deposits on the research and development for camp, recruiting and hiring our summer staffers, and the general expenses of our ministry in the winter months. We did offer a path for churches to apply for their deposits back, but less than 5% did so. We see this as a strong affirmation that our partner churches believe in the long-term ministry of PASSPORT. We remain really grateful for their continued support.
You have a virtual camp format this summer. What did that mean and how did you make it happen?
Colleen: Because the camp’s depots had already been invested this summer, we sought to withdraw to provide as many resources as possible for our churches. With a variety of group-combining skills, there was no one-time approach for everyone. Our design team has chosen to offer a menu of resources through what is usually an intense week of programming and distribute it for six weeks.
This “PASSPORT Season” featured things like 3 weekly videos, Bible studies, dance challenges, pastor messages, webinars and daily devotions on our free online page d365 and phone app. We’ve generated downloadable resources for tired Zoom families and printable resources and T-shirts. The youth edition presented the option to interact a little more widely on social media, while the children’s edition was more digitally secure.
We also produced a six-week variety show, with numbers sent through campers, inviting our network to gather around their screens every Thursday night. Some youth teams piled up in the parking lot to observe.
What have been some of the demanding situations or successes of this other format? What’s your own assessment?
Colleen: Challenges: Learn about paintings practically as a team. Create an unimaginable program for an ever-changing landscape that includes a pandemic and national unrest. A short period of time. Oh, and everyone had to be informed of new writing, production, filming and editing skills. Sometimes you just had to laugh!
My non-public assessment is that I am very proud of our national team and what we have been looking for. We’ve probably outdone it. We doubt that all our churches have chosen to use everything we put there. But based on what it looks like and what we hear, the “PASSPORT Season” has been well received.
How were you able to carry on with PASSPORT’s core values such as student leadership and camper involvement in this different format?
David: Our amazing student leaders are the heart of PASSPORT each summer. We tried to include as many of our summer staff as possible, and everyone who was asked showed up in wonderful ways. More than half our 2020 staffers were able to jump in for some portion of our virtual summer. Our preachers offered video messages, our musicians sang together to bring worship songs to life, and a team of staffers hosted students in Zoom conversations across the summer.
Campers participated individually and as groups participating in live webinars, answering our questions of the week via video, sharing stories about volunteering locally and sending in acts for the variety shows. Teenage students participated in dance challenges on social media platforms and children sent in weekly memorized Bible verses to our Scripture mascot “Lampy.”
PASSPORT normally employs a large number of young adults as camp leaders and counselors. What happened to all those would-be summer workers this year?
David: It was hard telling our 64 summer staffers that we would not have jobs for them this summer. There are so many great things that happen on these summer teams — leadership development, vocational discernment and focused ministry with students.
Part of the reason we canceled early was to allow our summer staffers time to sign up for summer classes or apply for internships or jobs. We partnered with CBF’s Student.go and Student.church, and several of our students filled openings in those programs serving CBF field personnel remotely, and serving churches as youth and children’s interns. We also hired several interns who helped us make the virtual “Season of PASSPORT” a success.
Of course, PASSEPORT is the type of trade that gets the most out of your annual earnings in the summer. How did the loss of so much summer benefit the organization’s bottom line and long-term viability?
David: PASSPORT takes about 75% of our source of income in both June and June. Much of that goes to our host campuses for housing and housing, however, we have a full administrative workplace throughout the year to produce the schedule for the summer. At the end of the day, we’ll have to raise $400,000 until the end of this year to survive.
Already this summer, several churches have given gifts to support PASSPORT. The youth of Second Baptist Church in Memphis donated all the money from their annual camp and mission trip fundraiser, $12,500. A group of staff alumni and church leaders have created the (BE)cause campaign to help us raise some of that deficit. CBF state organizations have been challenged by South Carolina coordinator Jay Kieve, to make a gift of support to PASSPORT. At the request of our board of directors, I will be calling on all our donors this fall. We are prayerfully trusting that the support we need will be found.
How was PASSPORT perhaps better prepared for a contingency plan than other Christian camps might have been?
Colleen: I’m not sure we were better prepared. I will say that PASSPORT is a relatively small organization which, we like to think, makes us a bit more nimble. We have responded to multiple disasters, mobilizing campers after hurricanes in New Orleans, Louisiana and Beaumont, Texas. We have crawled through a week in Boston where students brought the swine flu to camp, crippling an entire summer team and canceling a week of mission work. When the Twin Towers fell, PASSPORT created d365.org, an ad-free devotional site for spiritual reflection and pastoral care to our students. It now hosts 2.8 million visits annually. During each of those dark moments in our history, it was hard to imagine anything more devastating, but with God’s help we got through it.
Although no one would have wanted camps to be cancelled the way COVID-19 demanded this year, what lessons might you have learned through this year’s experience? How might this change the way you operate in the future?
David: With much of the country, we’ve learned to paint remotely well by fortune. We have learned that our spouses’ churches must involve their youth and youth and paint with us, looking for new things along the way to serve their scholars and families. We learned about good fortune and failure, seeing some well-painted things and some flat this virtual summer.
You promote dates and camps for the summer of 2021. How long do you expect to return to a “normal” scenario next summer and what would “normal” mean now?
Colleen: Very optimistic. You have to have hope! In August, our team is halfway through planning next summer’s schedule. The good news is that, unlike spring, we have nine months to be informed of schools, churches and sports systems as they try to reopen safely. We have a little more time to reconsider our schedules, schedules and meeting spaces to adapt to the new standards of protection.
David: By 2021, we’re creating several paths in the appearance of the camp, from the full opening to a hybrid intermediate track, to the virtual summer. We need to do everything we can to reorganize systems in person by 2021.
Colleen: And while we expect a vaccine to open up the world again, we’re also thinking about how to offer scalable models of student ministry for use in contexts. This is not the first time Passport has had to replace gears to face a challenge.