Tag: Michael Perry

Summer Camp

4 Ways to Mentally Prepare Your Kids for the Best Week of Summer

Posted on | by Michael Perry

It’s May!  The best week of your child’s summer is just about here.  To help them prepare for an amazing week, consider having a conversation with them about the following four ways to prepare for, and maximize, their time at SpringHill this summer:

  1. Be open to adventure and new experiences. Campers will face challenges and adventures right alongside cabin mates and their leaders. After all, we don’t go through this life alone; we get to go on this adventure together! From the heart-pumping zipline, to kayaking, canoeing, and stand-up paddle boarding, where campers learn how to navigate their way through the summer camp waters, and from The Gusher, a new twist on the waterslide, to our fifty-foot climbing wall, SpringHill summer experiences spurs children to grow and mature, to gain independence. When kids come prepared to try new things and be open to adventures, they experience greater self-confidence and inner-strength.
  2. Be prepared to find God in unexpected ways. There are lots of different ways to learn something. At SpringHill, we want kids to learn about Jesus, but we also want them to experience the truth of the Gospel through doing something they will remember for the rest of their lives. Kids hear about Jesus throughout their week, they see Jesus through our leaders, and they experience Jesus by doing things that require courage, community, trust, and faith. Even after two decades at SpringHill, I still marvel at how the young people find Christ not only in quiet contemplation and Bible study but just as likely on the zipline, or talking quietly at the evening campfire about God’s presence in their day. We believe those are the things that kids will be able to refer back to time and time again on their spiritual journey, and we believe that’s what makes the difference. Experience is everything at SpringHill, and we know it’s what kids take back home with them after a week with us.
  3. Look to your leader as a source of support and friendship. Our leaders are the ones who make all the difference at SpringHill. Far more than anyone else in our ministry, they embody The SpringHill Way. They are specially trained to impart God-centered values without being preachy or judgmental or overly pious, for young children and teens are still forming their ideas about faith. We designed SpringHill to have fairly low ratios of leaders to kids, both for our day camps and our overnight camps. Even when we do retreats, we have that same kind of requirement. The beauty of this design is that throughout the week, when kids and counselors are doing things together, maybe on the zipline or riding horses or participating in water activities, they’re all doing these things together. Those shared experiences become a key part of community building.
  4. Unplug and connect with peers in the best way possible. SpringHill campers have the opportunity to hone their social skills. Perhaps more than at many less personable camps, SpringHill engages kids in conversation with leaders as well as fellow campers. They’re not having discussions about what’s on Instagram or TV. SpringHill offers children an environment where they are encouraged to interact and talk to other children and their counselors. This helps build interpersonal skills and takes children away from the computer screen and into real, face-to-face interaction with others. While at SpringHill, our campers will make friends and build relationships, many of them blossoming into lifelong friends. The young people build relationships on solid foundations of trust and camaraderie through small-group time, camp activities, quality time around campfires and meals, and in one-on-one chats with counselors or between campers.

We can’t wait to have your child with us this summer to encounter life-changing experiences.  Learn more about all the camps we offer by visiting, springhillcamps.com

Core Values

Core Values: How to Identify & Use them to Guide Your Actions

Posted on | by Michael Perry

In the quiet moments of the day, do you ever reflect on what’s important to you and why? Have you stopped to think about why your priorities are what they are?  Each of us is driven by different motivations based on what we value.  God created each one of us to be unique for a reason, which is what makes getting to know one another so interesting and fun.

Identity is one of the most important things we will ever discover. Have you really thought about who you are? What drives you? What motivates you? What makes you different from everyone else? We all have goals in life, yet do we know how to achieve them? Are you guided by just your desires, or do you have a set of core values steering you?

At SpringHill we needed to figure out who we were before we could help anyone find out who they are.  We made a priority early on to figure out what our core values were and to make sure our decisions reflected those values, always. After careful consideration and reflection, we discovered a unique set of four core values:

  1. Contagious joy: creating life-transforming experiences by combining faith and fun, innovation and the hope of the Gospel.
  2. Relational focus: working in the context of personal, loving, and caring relationships.
  3. Adventurous faith: leaving room for God to work, being open to taking risks, knowing that He can do immeasurably more than we can imagine.
  4. Holy discontent: always striving to grow in Christ through professional curiosity, continuous improvement, and professional and personal sanctification.

Interestingly, we don’t just apply these core values to our campers’ experiences but also to ourselves as well. These four values provide understanding around why we do things the way we do, what we call The SpringHill Way. And these values truly are our core. They aren’t something I brought to SpringHill personally; they’ve been with us since the very beginning.

When it comes to creating SpringHill experiences, we only align ourselves with people who can live those values, truly. What that measure does is allow us to end up with a team of people, not only our team of staff and the people we hire in the summer but also donors and board members and volunteers who line up with those four core values. So that’s our secret sauce. And it really is the tangible expression of those values that we hold dear, and those beliefs that we hold in our hearts to be true.

Take the time to figure out your core values and what you want to accomplish in life.  When you do, the ability to achieve those goals will only improve and you will find success!

Mantra

You’ve Made Your Resolutions. Now, What’s Your Personal Mantra This Year?

Posted on | by Michael Perry

The gifts are unwrapped and decorations are being put away.  The radio station that was once playing Christmas music all day, every day, is back to the soft rock playlist.  Holiday dinners are over and lights on homes are slowly disappearing.  Just like that, we find ourselves in a New Year.

The new year welcomes the tradition of setting new goals and identifying new priorities for the upcoming months.  Many of us sit down and contemplate resolutions to improve and be better in a number of areas.  Some of these resolutions are likely the same as those that have been committed to before; others may be different.

Consider your resolutions for a moment and what they say about you and what you are prioritizing in your life right now.  Based on that reflection you can determine what your personal mantra is for the year. Not sure where to start?  Ask yourself the following questions:

  • Why do I exist? What purpose do I fulfill, and what difference do I want to make in the world? This is a question we at Spring Hill ask ourselves frequently and feel that is just as applicable as individuals. For us, searching for these answers has led to the recognition and dedication to our purpose – or mission statement.  So, our answer to these questions is ultimately, “To glorify God by creating life-impacting experiences where young people can come to know Jesus Christ and grow in their relationship with Him.”

 

  • What’s most important to me? What am I most deeply passionate about and willing to sacrifice and suffer for?

At SpringHill we answer this question with an acronym we have for our core values: ARCH, which stands for adventurous faith, relationally focused, contagious joy, and holy discontent. These core values define the kind of organization we are, how we accomplish it, and why it is important to us.

Ponder these questions for yourself and how they align with the resolutions you hope to accomplish.  Try identifying what your core values are and as a result, discover your mission statement or personal mantra for 2019.  When you do, your goals will be a manifestation of these values – helping you be intentional and specific about how you approach those resolutions and experiences.

For our organization, our goals and objectives span the entire year but are most actionable during the summer months.  At the end of those months, after a summer of executing against those goals, there’s a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.  You too can experience this satisfaction with yourself next year as you take stock of how you achieved objectives that supported your personal mission statement.  What does God have in store for you this year?

Unplugging

The Great Outdoors: How Unplugging and Descreening Can Change Your Life

Posted on | by Michael Perry

For many, the holidays are a time of joy, family time, and festivities; but for others, the holidays can be a source of anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses due to certain holiday stressors. As the holiday season approaches, we can take this opportunity to shed light on my favorite way to relieve stress and be truly present for the holiday season by unplugging and experiencing the great outdoors.

Mental illness ends up affecting up to 80% of the population at some point in our lifetime according to the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. That’s a pretty staggering number when you consider each of these people as individuals. No doubt every one of us has either experienced or know someone close to us who has suffered from some form of mental illness. With the pressures and expectations many of us and our young people are experiencing, mental health awareness is more important than ever.

Adding to the normal stressors of the holidays, today’s prevalence of technology and social media hasn’t helped.  Don’t get me wrong, technology can be a good thing – it allows us to connect to others more easily than ever before, it provides access to more information than we could have ever dreamed and helps different areas of our lives progress and develop in positive ways.  However, as with anything – what can offer blessings, can present some curses as well.

With each of us becoming more and more reliant on technological devices and the applications on them, it’s no wonder behaviors have changed…not all of them for the good.  Any amount of research on social media and the impact on one’s mental health will uncover countless studies that all point to similar findings: too much social media negatively impacts our self-esteem human connection, memory, sleep, attention span, and mental health.

What’s an Antidote?   

Everyone’s health and circumstances are uniquely theirs.  However, there is one common antidote that can help: unplugging and spending time in the outdoors.  For over 20 years, I’ve witnessed the transformation of many lives, as people from all kinds of backgrounds and circumstances spend time in God’s creation at SpringHill.  Granted, there are a number of critical factors involved in these transformations – the presence and recognition of God’s love being the most significant.  However, the location and environment of SpringHill Experiences are not an accident.  Being outside, amongst nature and the beauty of the outdoors, is a healing component to our souls.

In fact, the previously mentioned consequences due to social media can be reversed and improved by increased time spent outside!  Time outdoors connects us with something greater than ourselves.  An A Huffington Post article written several years back cited multiple findings that proved the following seven things about spending time in the outdoors:

  • Getting outside makes exercise easier
  • It can spur weight loss
  • Nature increases brain function
  • It increases our vitamin D intake
  • Helps the aging process
  • Wonderful for stress-reduction
  • Makes us happy

The health benefits are apparent, and we also know that this is no accident. We were meant for connection with God, and what better way than to spend time in his creation?

Decreased Screen Time + Increased Outdoor Time = A Healthier, More Joyful You

The facts are out there: getting out from behind our screens and into nature does wonders for both our physical and spiritual selves.  It’s why cell phones are off limits during our campers’ time at SpringHill. There’s no constant checking of social media to distract them from Christ’s message. Instead, kids find faith in having fun in the outdoors and building friendships. And, it works – they wouldn’t have it any other way.

By enjoying the beautiful environment around them, without technological distractions, they are encouraged to interact and talk to other kids and their counselors. This helps build interpersonal skills and takes them away from the computer screen and into real, face-to-face interaction with others – not to mention increasing their ability to appreciate God’s creations that are all around them.

I’ve seen it for myself. The power of unplugging and, instead, exploring, racing, tumbling, connecting with real people, and taking in the beauty all around us.  It is our hope that disconnecting with technology and connecting with nature and loved ones will not only help manage the stress of the holidays—but manage the stress of everyday life.

Further reading

To me, there are few more important topics than this, and so I wanted to make a few recommendations for those of you interested in deeper insights regarding technology, its effects, and our innate need to connect with nature.

  • Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, by Sherry Turkle
  • Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, by Richard Lou
  • The Nature Principle: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age, by Richard Lou

Happy Holidays! I know the weather often presents a challenge connecting with nature this time of year, but it’s never too early to start looking ahead to the summer at SpringHill. I’d love to talk to your group about how we create the SpringHill Experience.