Today, a large group of our kids return home from a week at Camp Barton. Camp Barton holds so many special memories for me. Memories of camper/counselor softball games. Memories of Bible classes. Memories of week-long romances. And the greatest memory of all -- being baptized on August 1, 1984 in the waters of Lake Greeson by my grandfather.

As I grew into adulthood and made the shift from camper to counselor, I was always amazed at how church camp had the power to become a place of positive peer pressure. Kids wanted to do the right thing all week because, at church camp, doing the right thing is the "in thing."

For some, that means being baptized. I can't tell you how many kids have been baptized at camp, only to return a few years later wanting to be "rebaptized" because they believed they "didn't understand" what they were doing the first time around.

As a result, I developed a day camp to help head off that trend. The day camp runs for three days a couple of weeks prior to camp to intensively teach the children going to camp what becoming a Christian is all about. They have homework each evening -- to be done in concert with their parents -- to help cement in young minds the change that takes place in becoming a Christian.

Since instituting our day camp at the Village, we've never had to rebaptize a child.

If you'd like to read and see more about our day camp, you can check out Jimmy Mitchell's blog.

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Incidentally, several years ago, one of my college prof's, Jimmy Allen, wrote a book on rebaptism in which he pointed out that 36 different things occur at baptism. How many of those 36 realities did you realize when you were baptized? Which reality demands greater understanding than the rest?