Preparation, safety, teamwork and leadership are among the principles taught through U.M. ARMY.
By Mallory McCall Staff Writer
For more than 30 years, United Methodist youth have traded in a week of their relaxing summer for a week of roofing, building, mowing and painting in the hot summer sun, and this summer is no different.
More than 4,000 teenagers, college students and adults enlist each year in the U.M. ARMY (United Methodist Action Reach-out Mission by Youth), a nonprofit organization that divides youth into teams that provide a week’s worth of household repairs for elderly or disabled homeowners.
Fifty camps are at work throughout Texas, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Five are “growth camps”—planted in areas U.M. ARMY has not reached before. Besides adding a camp in Chicago, U.M. ARMY is taking their model to the Dakotas Conference, with hopes of adding a camp there.
“We’re really excited about helping U.M. ARMY grow all over the place,” said executive director Brian Smith. “The growth camps are not only a mission opportunity for us to go in and serve the community, but also an opportunity for us to try to find individuals who’d like to serve on an advisory committee and help the establishment of those new chapters.”
Although it would be easy for U.M. ARMY to staff camps across the country, Mr. Smith says it is more important to use volunteer leadership. “It’s all about us modeling the program for people in those areas, allowing them to catch the vision and carry it on,” he said. After all, the mission of U.M. ARMY is two-fold: to serve people in need and to provide young people a way to mature in their faith and life skills through Christian service.
A typical U.M. ARMY work camp has 60 to 120 people from several churches and youth groups. Work teams of typically four or more youth and one adult are assigned at the beginning of camp; though they come from different churches, they form one camp and one community.
“When you go to the first worship service on Sunday, everyone is spread out in the sanctuary, sitting with their own church,” said Kelly Cook, a high school freshman who recently attended her first U.M. ARMY camp in Livingston, Texas. “But by Saturday, the first four rows are filled with everyone sitting together. You’re one big family.”
Camp starts Sunday morning and ends Saturday afternoon. The days begin early with prayer and end late with worship. Throughout the day, participants are hard at work, building the kingdom of God—literally.
Lord’s work
By building wheelchair ramps, porches, steps and handrails, and painting homes, cleaning houses and mowing yards, this ARMY becomes missionaries serving God’s people.
“One of the most important things to us is the relationship we are building with the client and how we are modeling the servitude nature of Christ to them,” said Mr. Smith. “As we are working with them and showing them God’s love, we are also helping them understand we are building a connection between local churches and communities.”
The Southwest Texas division of U.M. ARMY recently finished a camp in Brownsville, Texas, a city just north of the Mexico border that is typically portrayed as unsafe. Regardless of the border tension and brewing hurricane season, U.M. ARMY participants continued to serve those in need, giving comfort and improved security to those who had been overlooked in the past two years.
“We’re a very organized mission program,” said Jenny Monahan, U.M. ARMY Southwest Texas executive director. “We want to show people that it is OK to go to our border towns and help the people who truly need help.
“We are asked to go help our neighbors, and those are our neighbors.”
Surrendering
Like any other summer camp, U.M. ARMY would not be complete without a theme. This year’s theme—“surrender”—is part of the quadrennial theme of “first love.” Two years ago, work camps across the nation focused on God’s call to be transformed and renewed by his love. Last year the focus was on loving others; this year campers say it’s because of that love, Christians are called to surrender their lives to God’s will.
To better understand the call to surrender, students are challenged to give up Facebook, cell phones, iPods and other technological conveniences while they are at camp for the week.
“This is an opportunity to surrender all that for a holy calling and a holy purpose so we can truly understand and know what God’s will is in our lives,” says Mr. Smith.
Next year’s theme is “servant,” building on the idea that after surrendering to God’s will, Christians are called to serve like Christ.
“We truly have the opportunity to go in, and like an army in full force, make an impact on the Kingdom in those communities,” said Mr. Smith.
COURTESY PHOTOS FROM U.M. ARMY
A typical U.M. ARMY work camp has 60 to 120 people from several churches and youth groups. Work teams of typically four or more youth and one adult are assigned at the beginning of camp; though they come from different churches, they form one camp and one community.
Surrendering
