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Two months out Bugs & boogie-woogie


I


n any other camp environment the “Let’s Buggy-Wuggy” theme might have remained secular all week long. “But in this house, full of grace and love, God was everywhere,”


said Michelle Dokka, music director of Redeemer Lutheran Church, Bangor, Maine. She was one of several adults and teenagers who staffed the church’s arts camp last year. This June will be its 14th year, drawing some 50 campers, most from the community. Dokka’s examples of grace and love included children in


the youngest and older age groups. The first morning of camp a child in the youngest group—


reportedly shy and reserved at school—“found her true self before the morning was over,” Dokka said. “The rest of the week she sang and danced and created as if she had been center stage for years. God was there singing, dancing and creating.” A first-timer in the older


For more information contact elaine.hewes@gmail.com.


group was surrounded by kids who had grown up over the years in the program. But she, too, quickly found her place. She had to say goodbye on the fourth day because of a vaca- tion with her foster care family, but she cried and hugged those campers and staff who had touched her life, Dokka said.


Then there was the teen helper who was mentored by an


adult staff member. “[The teen] was smitten with arts camp by the end of the first break of the day,” Dokka recalled. “She loved the kids, the atmosphere, the art and the people”—so much so she expressed an interest in a community theater camp Dokka was working with. The mentor paid the teen’s fees after finding out there wasn’t enough scholarship money for her to attend. “God was there singing, dancing and creat- ing,” Dokka repeated. The campers move through four “classes” each day,


including music, dance, visual arts and “assemblage,” which Elaine Hewes, a pastor of Redeemer, describes as kids using junk to create a scene that reflects the arts camp theme. It’s a favorite of the campers, she said. Each child begins with a piece of plywood and paint,


and spends the rest of the week combing through piles of junk (from bottle caps to buttons) to create artwork reflect- ing such themes as “Going Green,” “Building Bridges” and “Imagination.”


Send congregational stories—those for a specifi c month/holiday or your best timeless idea—to julie.sevig@thelutheran.org.


42 www.thelutheran.org


An “assemblage” project from 2013, when the theme was “Somethin’s Fishy.”


They use saws, glue guns, hammers, paint and junk “to


create something amazing,” Hewes said. “When else in this world of ours are children given such freedom to use their creativity and imaginations?” The community of faith, she said, should be a place where


both children and adults use their creative spirits to express their deepest joys and sorrows and their relationship with God and one another. Hewes called art camp an expression of love without the


“language of church,” adding, “It is deeply incarnational, and expands our church walls out into the community in ways we could not do otherwise.” 


‘Sing songs of wonder, sing of life begun.


Of fireflies and full moons over meadows green. Sing songs of children growing towards the sun. Like the wild new lilies of the spring, the spring.’


Amy Felman Bermon’s “Come in From the Firefl y Darkness,” sung by the older arts camp group.


Good one! Five minutes with the Divine


Ascension Lutheran Church, Louisville, Ky., has an average worship attendance of 150 but reaches three times that many people (500 to 1,500 shares) with its five-minute video mes- sages. “We often make videos which we show as part of the sermon, place those videos on our Facebook page during worship, and urge worshipers to like and share them,” said Paul Hegele, pastor. Go to www.take5withGod.org and “enjoy the multisensory experience of the Divine,” he added.


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