My hope for the students who spent a week at Passport was that they would experience a microcosm of the Kingdom of God. We prayed all summer long for holy moments to happen. Those moments when everything comes together and everyone is on the same team; those moments when our worship and play together clarifies our direction as a community of Christians, and the way forward is somehow more obvious than it was previously.

Those moments become little slices of what abundant living can feel like. This Wild Life was about the abundant life Jesus talks about in John’s Gospel. Our theme verse was, “I came so that everyone would have life, and have it in its fullest,” John 10:10b (CEV).

Jesus came to offer us full, abundant lives, and our goal for our staff and our campers this summer was for them to experience this abundance at Passport. This summer, our job was to offer every opportunity for that Kingdom microcosm to happen, as unencumbered as possible.

We invited them to trade in their cell phones and led them through silly songs and rec games. We invited campers to lay down the anxiety of everyday life for a little while and dip their toes into the abundant life that Jesus offers! For many campers, Passport is an important marker in their personal timeline. It’s where they make a life-altering decision or where they first identify the power of their personal faith independent of their parents. It is where they discover gifts or have their gifts affirmed by others. It is where they feel fully welcomed by a group of strangers and are offered the opportunity to reciprocate that kindness in the surrounding community. It’s where their eyes are opened to what Jesus is doing around the world and how they can participate in that global offering of God’s love. The goal was that PASSPORT would be a week of holy moments that would add up to an abundant life experience!

Hopefully this abundant life won’t end at camp. As 26 sessions of This Wild Life comes to a close, I am praying that the abundant life thousands of campers have identified together will be carried home. I am praying that each camper now possesses a stronger compass to guide them to live freely and abundantly and that they will offer God’s wild and precious love to the world around them. Goodness knows the world is searching for it too.

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David Burroughs

David Burroughs is the president & founder of Passport, Inc.