CBS Special Saturday Evening: The Lord's Bootcamp

In 1981, during the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I went on a mission trip to Glasgow, Scotland with Teen Missions International, a Florida-based organization that trains young people for the mission field. It was a formative experience for me and, in many ways, contributed to my call as a pastor.

Saturday night on CBS--Channel 2 here in Utah-- (I think it's 8:00PM here in the Mountain Time Zone, but check local listings), 48 Hours will be showing a documentary about Teen Missions and its operation, taking viewers into the "jungle" of the two week missionary boot camp in Merritt Island, then off to Africa for the mission itself, all the while following three teens through their experience. I just checked out the 48 Hours web site, which has a video clip.

I'm a bit conflicted about this. On the one hand, here was an experience that was important for me at the time but, on the other hand, when I look back 27 years later (has it been that long?) I can see some of the cult-like creepiness of it. TMI teaches young people to share their faith in an aggressive "turn or burn" kind of way and the tent meetings each evening are kind of like Jesus pep rallies. We didn't hear a lot about God's Kingdom coming to earth in the midst of all that and our training to serve the poor looks, in retrospect, a little disingenuous--serve the poor, but do so while trying to get them to pray the prayer in the back of the tract so you could call them a Christian.  Theologically, I'm not there anymore and, truth be told, I never felt completely  convinced at the time that accosting people on the streets and in the park of Glasgow was really what Jesus meant when he said "Go and make disciples." That takes building a relationship, investing one's life, being part of a community of faith. I've always had a bit of a problem with selling Jesus as a commodity and faith as a "get out of hell free" card. We need to share our faith, for sure, but we do so by offering the hand of fellowship and love to strangers, not shoving a tract in their hand.

Still, there was much about the TMI experience that I have drawn on throughout my life. I first started to become a leader instead of a wallflower on that trip--even had the chance to give the message in a Scottish church one Sunday. I learned that I could overcome adversity, that I could function in a different culture, and gained some confidence in myself. The next summer I went to Army Basic Training which, come to think of it, was eerily similar in some ways (indoctrination, living in the mud, etc.) I wouldn't trade the experience for anything but, at the same time, I'd probably encourage my own kids to go somewhere else to learn about the real nature of missions--like serving the poor in their own area and focusing on learning not so much how to get people into heaven but how to get the life of heaven into the earth. Hopefully, these are messages that teens are getting from their home churches!

I encourage you to watch or TiVo this special and let me know what you think. At the very least, it'll give you a little window into part of this pastor's spiritual journey.