Just curious if there is a magic price point for summer camp – I realize it will vary among us as far as how long camp is, etc. But I think just knowing the price of camp across the spectrum will be helpful. Vote in today’s poll!
JG
5-
Josh Griffin has been in youth ministry for 16+ years in a small church and a big church. He currently serves as the High School Pastor at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA. [read more]
-
-
-
-
Geoff Stewart serves the Jr / Sr High School Pastor at Peace Portal Alliance Church in Surrey B.C.
-
Chris Wesley serves as the Director of Student Ministry at Church of the Nativity in Timonium, Maryland.
-
Colton Harker serves with Josh at Saddleback Church. He is currently in his second year in youth ministry.
-
Featured Posts
Jobs
-
-
Latest Tweet
The camp we attend is $210. But next year we’re trying something new, next year the church has offered to pay for 75% of every student’s cost for camp. So camp will only cost about $50. We take a group of 15 students so we’re able to do this and it not destroy the budget. The goal for next year is to help encourage students to invite their friends.
We go to Hume Lake in California.
Costs $450 per student. Pricey, but the camp is well worth it.
We are having to scholarship more kids this year then we have ever done in the past. Economy is putting a hurting on our camp registrations. PLUS even though we let parents know we will get there kids to camp if they don’t have the $ parents still don’t register because they either have a pride issue or they feel someone else could use it more.
In the past we always told kids not to let money ever be the issue, if they wanted to go, they would. Over the past 18 years we’ve seen God really bless those kids who prayed like crazy and saved every penny…they often even ended up paying for others to go too. Then we also saw the kids with new shoes, cell phones and once even a new tongue piercing, claim they needed a scholarship…some families priorities make you laugh…but it always seemed like the ones who saw God work getting them to camp, also seemed to connect with him more at camp.
For the past few years we’ve really changed things up. Instead of the old head to the hills week of camp, we’ve stayed in town. The first two times we had a full week of camp. Everyone met up at 8am and got picked up at 8pm. This really cut the cost AND gave the opportunity for more kids to come…especially when our kids realized it wasn’t lame at all and were able to invite more friends the next day. On the last night we heard many kids refer to it as the best camp ever AND we had more kids at the end then we started with.
Then last year we got crazy again and decided to do what we called THE SUMMER OF CAMP. instead of going anywhere or even setting aside a whole week for leaders to have to take off, we just made every youth group night a day of camp. We extended our hours from 6:30 to 9:30, had crazy messy camp games, had on going team events, and through in some weekend events like broomball and team spirt beach day. We did this all for probably under 50 bucks a person. We sold a camp shirt for 20, a wrist band for 5, and charged small amounts for the special events. It made it totally affordable for big families. We made the shirts and stuff worth team points so kids were motivated to buy them. It was such a success that we are doing it again this year. When many churches tone stuff down for the summer, we ramp up and have seen real growth. The kids loved it cause they said there wasn’t the usual camp high followed by the low…it just kept building. Then as an added bonus, most of our kids then served at our week long VBS. It’s like they got all fired up and then went and served for a week. I’m pretty excited for what God’s gonna do this year…and now I should probably go work on something…cause it starts in two weeks and I’m so NOT ready
$45 that is what it costs for our students to do a camping trip from Monday-Friday.
Includes teeshirt, activities, and food for all week!