I am just back from another brilliant week at the Lee Abbey Youth Camp.
The camp is all about building a community with 150 others bonded by God’s love. We sleep in tents in a field by the sea, eat food cooked over open fires and (largely) leave the world of phones behind. In amongst the fun, games, crafts and inordinate amounts of silliness, there is also time for stillness and reflection.
Lee Abbey is a ‘thin place’ where the distance between us and God seems less; a place where people for decades have become more aware of divine love.
Social justice
This year our theme was Represent: how we represent God’s love to a hurting world. The evening sessions focused on knowing, accepting and going deeper into God’s love for ourselves. To represent something you have to know it for yourself.
And then each morning we focused on social justice issues: climate change, liberation from oppression and economic justice. We looked at Jesus’ anger at corruption and greed and asked ‘What tables should we be turning over today?’ And how can the church be more a community of generosity and compassion?
The beautiful banner (pictured above) was made by Sabryanne of illustrations from the biblical passages we looked at: creation, the exodus from slavery, loaves and fishes, the love of money, serving others, breaking chains of injustice and the peace that God wants in His world. The theme was a constant reminder that a biblical faith is inescapably personal and social.
Burdens and challenges
As ever, both campers and leaders come to the field each year with many burdens and challenges. And of course, not everything runs smoothly; there are always difficulties which emerge from 150 diverse people living together for a week. Its an important reminder that representing God’s love in our broken world is complex and challenging. Situations arise which need careful handling and a wise balance of grace and truth.
But Lee Abbey is a place which has given me, and my whole family, hope and joy every summer over the last 16 years. To put it simply, there is nowhere else where I have learnt more about what it means to follow Jesus.
The hope we seek to represent is summed up in another brilliant piece of creativity, a ‘spoken word’ written by my fellow leader, Clara Jevons, and performed on the first night of the camp:
Represent – by Clara Jevons
Have you ever felt the world shift beneath your feet, like sand crumbling under your weight?
Have you ever looked upon shattered glass, at the crushed, fractured parts thinking its too late?
Have you ever cried out in an anguished voice, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’
Have you ever longed for a freedom you haven’t yet tasted, or prayed for an opportunity not to be wasted?
Have you ever felt unheard, unseen, ignored and pushed aside?
Mocked, judged and hated for the things seen from the outside and not the inside?
Have you ever felt everything happen all at once like a humungous tide – an injustice disguised by lies?
Have you ever felt society glare at you and say ‘pick a side’?
But who is this. whose robes are righteous and full of light?
Who is He that comes with stars in his hand to expel the night?
For He that stepped down from heaven and placed Himself upon a cross, is the Man of Sorrows who carries our burdens and loss.
And He has come to make all things new, to destroy chains and lies and replace it with truth.
Praise be to Jesus, the everlasting King; though this world is broken, we know His justice shall win.
He that goes to the unheard, unseen and pushed aside.
He that kneels to the broken-hearted and wipes the tears that they have cried.
He that carries the unloved and brings the sinner home, saying softly ‘You shall never be alone’.
This is the man God has sent, and this is the God that we must represent.
Next year Lee Abbey Youth Camp runs 9th-16th August 2025
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