Does a name really matter? Would the new camp really be Sylvan Acres anyway? It would be easy to stick the old sign at the front of a new property, congratulate ourselves and say that Sylvan Acres is back. But it would also be dangerous.
The simple fact is that Sylvan Acres is gone. This new camp is not going to have the spirit that made Sylvan great unless we get in there and transfer that spirit from where it resides, in our memories and in our hearts. The name on the sign is not as important as the names that will be on the staff list.
Ramsay, Cooper, Jamieson, Boschma, Stewart, Duerkson, Patterson, Atkinson, Bingham, Urquhart, Callaghan, Deans, Pollock. The list could go on and on and on, and for you it would be a different list. But names like these are what made camp for me.
“Sylvan Acres” is a great name because of the memories it stirs in us, but the history of Sylvan Acres in the past few years has been different. The name hasn’t conjured up a beautiful quiet retreat where you could sit on the dock and watch the sunrise over the water. Those who have worked have worked incredibly hard, and it has been harder because they haven’t had a beautiful camp to start with.
Sadly, for many in the church today Sylvan Acres stirs up only images of struggle, and of trying to re-establish a great history in a half-built facility that wasn‘t designed as a camp and wasn‘t what we would have built if we had the choice. It would have been easier to bulldoze the whole thing and start fresh, but it would have cost too much, and perhaps we relied too much on the name “Sylvan Acres” to do the work for us.
We can’t make that mistake again.
Wherever our camp takes place in the future; whether we purchase an existing camp or buy raw land and send in the heavy machinery, or operate a summer program out of the back of a semi-trailer and a bus, we can’t expect people who weren’t at Sylvan Acres to reproduce what we had there. Indeed, merely reproducing a camp is not their goal, and for that I congratulate them. They want something better than Sylvan Acres, something fresh, new and exciting. And that makes me believe they will succeed.
There’s only way to contribute to this new camp a feeling of what Sylvan Acres used to be. Those of us who experienced Sylvan Acres have to show up, and pass on the culture of our camp to the new campers and staff so that when they talk about Camp Zao or Camp Sylvan or whatever it is twenty years from now, those kids will smile, and wish they could go back.
Check out the new website at www.zaoministries.org and see what we have planned for the future, and get involved anyway you can. Bring your new ideas, and your memories. Add your name to some future camper’s list.
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