The Wrap-UP : M-Fuge 2007 - Belmont University June 11th - 16th

June 18, 2007 @ 9:41 am by Pressed

We’re back home… finally. What should have taken 6 hours ended up taking us 10 hours once our trailer tire blew. Fortunately we found a Wal-Mart that was next door to a big mall in Marion, IL. The group went over to hang out at the mall while me and one of my adults sat over at Wal-Mart with the ailing trailer.

Now that I’m back home, I’m ready to reflect on the week. Overall it was a good trip except for the administrative stuff that I dealt with behind the scenes and wrote about here. This was the third year that I’ve taken my group to Nashville for M-Fuge. We’ve gone other places, but I’ve always enjoyed coming back to Nashville. It is familiar, it is a nice campus, and the people are friendly. We arrived on Saturday June 11th, had dinner about an hour later, and then jumped right in to worship. From that point on we were going non-stop! Bible study, mission sites, worship, planning times, night life, these are just some of the many things that go on everyday.

The Plus Side:

Belmont University makes the Nashville Fuge camp one of the best. Their campus is beautiful and their staff is amazing. The people that work in the cafeteria at Belmont are some of the nicest people I’ve met. The food was ok, but if you didn’t like the main course they also had burgers and fries, pizza, ice cream and other snacks that you could grab.

The worship was excellent as well. The Blue Water Band led the worship this week. Being a drummer myself, I enjoyed watching the drummer and the dude playing the bongos. The band sounded good together and had a very inviting and uplifting stage presence.  We sang several songs made popular by Chris Tomlin, some Charlie Hall songs, and a few songs that I never heard before, but really enjoyed by the end of the week.

Most of the ministry tracks were excellent as well. We had a large portion of our group in the Games and Rec track. Others were in childrens, social, pcy, and creative. My site was at Preston Taylor Ministries where we put on a day camp to tutor kids in reading, math, and other skills. They pray, they learn to respect one another, they learn the basic skills needed to get where they need to be in school and best of all they even learn the Bible during the Bible stories reading time. Later they have snacks that relate to the Bible story. This is a consistent thing for these kids who come week after week. After getting to know them, I hated to leave them behind.  The cool thing about my site is that normally it is an after school program that is closed during the year.  The only reason it is open in the summer months is because of M-Fuge.  With the M-Fuge kids helping week after week, Preston Taylor Ministires is able to offer this summer camp for its kids to come in and learn.

The Bible study was good this year too. I was not impressed with last years material, but this year the material looks better, it was well done, and the messages all related very well with what we were doing and where we were going.  It really spoke to the heart of many of our teens.  We had several rededications and a couple of people who feel like they are called to missions or to further ministry.  Our church intern that went on the trip actually came forward in church yesterday to publicly accept a call to missions.

I also think that the group picture we get at the beginning of the week is nice.  They started this last year and after doing it again this year I’ve decided that it is an excellent idea.  We always have such a hard time remembering to get to gether for a good group picture.  Sometimes we just don’t have one.  The other good thing about it is the price.  The cost of the pictures is relativily cheap compared to some.  This makes it nice, especially if the teenagers want to purchase pictures as well.

The Negative Side:

The number one complaint by both adults and teens at M-Fuge this year was the new schedule.  Nobody from my group liked it.  Some didn’t really care, but the majority of my group strongly disliked it.  The main issue is the free time.  They took away the majority of the free time that we all used to rest, shower, and take care of other buisness.  This year we got home from site at 4:00 p.m. and had 30 minutes to run up to the dorms, shower, get dressed, and run down to dinner which started at 4:30 p.m.  There was very little time for students to hang out, socialize, nap, shower, rest, or even go to the bathroom.  By the end of the day we were all just worn out.  If this type of schedule is hard on young teenagers, how do you think the adults felt?  This trip was hard on my adults and on myself, and that is the first time in 7 years that I can remember it being this way.  I had to skip my track planning time in the mornings and sometimes I had to skip the adult Bible study in the mornings just to take care of other buisness that had to be done for my group.  It was not only frustrating, it made me so worn out and tired that I had a hard time hanging out and relating to my students.  I don’t know how accurate the info is, but I heard they changed the schedule mainly to give the staffers and extra day off before the next group comes.  Maybe that is a good thing for them, but it isn’t a good trade off for us.  The schedule change was not a good idea, and it is something that needs to be fixed before I ever consider going back to M-Fuge.

My other problem with the schedule change is the days we go to camp.  I have taken my group all over the U.S. to many different M-Fuge camps, but with the new schedule I am forced to go to only those camps close to us.  Any camp that requires two days of travel to arrive means we will miss two Sundays in a row.  That is an impossible schedule for us.  I’m the youth pastor, but I do have other duties and there is no way that church staff can miss two Sundays in a row every summer.  So, because of this we are forced to go to St. Louis or Nashville if we want to attend M-Fuge.  If the people who organize this camp actually believe that most church groups will just stay with the camps closest to them, I think they are mistaken.  I’m already starting the process of looking for a different place to go and a different camp or trip to attend.  The main reason I’m considering something other than M-Fuge next year is this horrible schedule.  If their hope with schedule changes was to weed out some churches that attend their camps, they have certainly accomplished that goal.

The track planning time in the mornings was just as big of a waste of time as the training time we always had on Sundays in years past.  Everyday the majority of my students and the people who were in my track group would just lay in the floor and sleep.  They had nothing to plan for.  My site was the same thing every single day.  There were no plans that needed to be made, so we just sat around being bored.  Many of the groups had to just go outside and play games because there was nothing else to do.  It wasn’t a very good choice to take away free time for an hour or more of wasted time for the majority of the track groups.

The other stuff that I thought was on the negative side of things can be found here and here and here.

All in all the trip was ok.  It’s not what it used to be and I think the changes made things worse not better.  My students enjoyed it.  They loved the worship, the Bible study, the mission sites, the games, and the staff.  The normal stuff they enjoy at camp was all still there and I truly believe there were some lives that were changed this week.  As always that must be attributed to God and not anything else.  No matter where we would have gone, it is God who is about the buisness of changing the lives and hearts of peopel all around us.  That is why I don’t have a problem looking for another place to go next summer.  It’s not M-Fuge itself that gets the glory for what has happened this week, it’s God.  Regardless of what camp we choose next year, we will be serving the same God.  So why put up with all the legistical junk and all the shcedule mess that M-Fuge has adopted when we can just find a different place that fits our group better?  Maybe God has other things in store for us next year.

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