As a first time Senior Pastor I've been trying to tap into every resource I can think of to come along side our church. Our church is in a small rural town in central Pennsylvania. About a year ago we partnered with the CLB North American Mission department and had a seminar presented by Greg Anderson from Inspiration Point Bible Camp. When we booked the seminar we weren't thinking about the summer of 2009, we were just thinking about training our teachers for ministry.

Sometime after we settled on the date for the seminar, I got a big surprise in the mail. It was an anonymous check for a large sum of money. I brought it to the trustee's attention and from them learned that 15% of all our congregational giving is designated to missions and youth; this large check would also be split that way, meaning that our youth account had its own large balance.

As the time for Greg's arrival came closer, our elders started talking about the ministry of IPBC's "Camp on the Road" through which the camp sends ministry teams to congregations to assist them in their outreach. We were hoping to meet with Greg about this while he was with us for the seminar. We did just that and shortly after recommended that the congregation approve spending significant monies towards a summer partnership with IPBC for a week of Camp on the Road. We told the church family that we would shoot for an attendance goal of 40 children which is 3 times more than what we have at our church.

The motion passed unanimously but I know a lot of people thought, "Where are we going to find 40 kids?" Well, we formed a COTR leadership team to handle all the details of preparation for our week of day camps. We made 2000 flyers, 30 posters for every mom and pop shop, a large sign for the road, we had tables at local fairs with information, we gave out invitations and information at the local Christian school, and we had public service announcements on every radio station in the area.

By the day of our registration deadline we had over 50 students registered. On that day, I-Point looked into getting more staff but by then the one additional airplane ticket was going to cost more then the four we had already purchased, so we continued with the present staff and our supplemental staff.

On the 1st day of camp we had 67 kids and in total 78 kids came through our doors. It's fun to have problems like too many kids especially when you know God has things under control. We had a great week and now that camp is over, our job hasn't ended. Our goal was to reach out and minister to these kids and we want to keep doing just that. That by the way seems to be the hardest thing to do. Pray for us as we hope to do this again and that, most importantly, we can continue to reach out to these children and their families with the hope of Jesus.

Pastor Mark Johannesen serves at Good News LBC in McAlisterville, Pennsylvania.