FCA Camps: Fabric of year-round ministry

Tommy Draffen knows firsthand the impact of an FCA Camp. A longtime donor to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in Los Angeles, Draffen had been managing a successful business career and a volunteer position as an assistant football coach at his son’s high school.

Recently, he joined his son’s team at an FCA Camp in Southern California, commuting to and from the camp every day while juggling his full-time job, when something happened. Draffen caught a vision of the impact that FCA has on athletes and how God’s Kingdom is growing because of it.

Today, Draffen is FCA’s area director in Los Angeles.

If one camp experience can have that kind of impact on a grown man enjoying the fruits of a successful career, just imagine what is happening in the lives of the young men and women attending camps throughout the world.

In 2012, more than 52,000 athletes attended one of 363 FCA Camps across 37 states and 20 nations. Overall, 5,060 campers made first-time commitments to Christ, and another 7,351 recommitted their lives to the Savior this past summer alone.

Brian Schroeder, FCA’s regional camp director in California, has seen demand for camps in his area outgrow supply.

“We went from having 75 spots open the week before camp started at UCLA three years ago to being at the point now where we are getting calls in October and November from parents wondering when the web site will be available to take registration,” Schroeder said. “Parents whose children didn’t get to come to camp last year because the camp was sold out are trying to sign them up as soon as possible so they don’t miss it again.”

That demand has led Schroeder and his staff to introduce a camp in Northern California, on the UC Davis campus just outside of the state’s capital, Sacramento.

“With our multi-sport camp at UCLA, we’ve outgrown it, so we are launching another camp at UC Davis this year,” Schroeder said. “In one year, we are going from planning for 700 campers to planning for almost 900. In our region, will be on two NCAA Division I campuses having camps.”

And, as the example of Tommy Draffen proves, what happens at an FCA Camp definitely does not stay there. From growing FCA staff numbers to their impact on school campuses, camps are creating results throughout the year.

“Our campus numbers have really increased as we’ve been more intentional in bringing in coaches from different schools,” Schroeder said. “We have 415 campuses in our region with an FCA Huddle right now, with 70 staff members. That number is up 80 huddles from last year. I think about 20 of those Huddles have been started because of a coach or an athlete that came to camp and they brought it back on their campus.

“Camp has made a huge impact on our campus, and now campuses that we’ve never been able to get to are now having campus Huddles because of the impact of camp; and not necessarily because the athlete had a salvation experience at camp, but because he got so fired up about FCA that he couldn’t wait to take it back and share it with his campus.”

Still, everyone at camp has a story, it seems. Schroeder tells this one:

“We had a speaker come in the first day of camp and challenge all the athletes to live a life of purity, because that’s what God wants for them; that’s the way He designed them,” Schroeder said. “The speaker challenged the athletes to take that stance.

“That night, a camper got on his phone and posted an update on Facebook, saying he decided to live a life of purity. He got hammered by his friends back home on Facebook. They said, ‘You’ll never be able to do this.’ ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘This is a joke; just wait until you get home.’

“The next morning he talked to his Huddle leader about it, and before practice, his whole huddle, which were also now friends with him on Facebook, too, told him, ‘You’re not doing this alone. We’re here with you. We’re going to walk through this.’

“In 24 hours, he had a community of people behind him who were going to help him walk through life the way God had designed him to do.

“Where else can that happen but at a camp setting like FCA provides?”

The direction of FCA Camps has shifted some in the past few years, but there’s no question that the impact has been great.

“It’s really been a huge transformation for us,” Schroeder said. “The last year we had camp at UC Santa Barbara was 2008. I don’t want to say camp then was an abbreviation, but we pulled a week out of what we did with FCA to go have camp, and then we went back to our normal ministry.

“Since that time, (FCA executive director and chief operating officer) Donnie Dee really sold us on his vision for camp, which was for camp to be a celebration of what we do year-round, but it’s also a springboard into the next year. It’s become a fabric of our year-round ministry, rather than a one-week break from what we normally do as FCA staff.”

Originally appeared on FCA.org in 2013