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MC Hosts 23rd Super Summer Camp


Campers from FBC Saltillo

More than 700 high school students spent quiet time in prayer groups, joined nightly worship services and played sports while honing their leadership skills at Mississippi College.

It was all part of the 23rd annual Super Summer Camp that also attracted 200 volunteers from dozens of churches from south of Memphis to the Gulf Coast.

“It’s a wonderful thing to be able to have a week completely devoted to something so divine, to learn to grow and become a leader in your youth group,” said Clancy Smith, 17, who will be a senior at Saltillo High this fall.

A third-year participant at Super Summer, Smith was among 26 kids and four adults from First Baptist Church Saltillo making the journey during a sweltering week in mid-July.

While temperatures hovered around the mid-90s, students from the Tupelo area, Coffeeville, Vicksburg, Bay St. Louis, metro Jackson and other communities stayed on fire for Jesus. Students as young as incoming 9th graders and as old as high school seniors made the trip.

“The worship experiences are great,” said Payton Pearce, 13, who made his first MC camp visit with friends from Saltillo in Lee County. “I’ve never felt God the way I have this week.”

The Super Summer Camp sponsored by the Mississippi Baptist Convention was first held at MC in 1987. The camp for Baptist youth grew out of a vision of what Mississippi youth ministers wanted to do after seeing what was taking place in Texas, said Ken Hall, a consultant to the student ministry at the Mississippi Baptist Convention. It’s been held at MC for every year except two years in the 1990s when the event convened at William Carey University in Hattiesburg.

Ken Gilliam, the MC director of continuing education who oversees camps at the Christian university, says this year’s turnout of close to 960 campers and parent leaders represents the biggest Super Summer on the Clinton campus.

“Everything has been just tremendous,” he said. “The number of people coming has seen a steady increase the last few years. This is the biggest camp by far.”

Overall, MC attracts nearly 10,000 campers from around the South from late May through late July.

Spending a week with student leaders was an awesome experience for Super Summer youth pastors and parents.

“You can think it can never get any better – but the worship is great,” says Fish Robinson, a student pastor at North Oxford Baptist Church. The students, he said, “continue to grow in their faith and share it with people who don’t know Christ.”

A former Delta State University student body president, Robinson was part of a 14-member delegation from his church in the hometown of the University of Mississippi.

Hundreds of students take part at worship services every night at First Baptist Church Clinton before returning to their MC dorms to gather for prayer groups. Lights are out at 11:30 p.m. and by 7:30 a.m. they’re up for breakfast again in the campus cafeteria.

The youth discipleship/evangelism/leadership conference with its theme of “Endurance” headlined on the students’ T-shirts comes to a close Friday July 16. It’s been well worth every minute, leaders say.

“We’ve challenged our kids to live out their faith in the real world,” says Bret McKee, youth minister at First Baptist Church Saltillo. “It’s been really good fun to watch them wrestle with the truth and what they feel about it.” Super Summer, he added, puts a great focus on building character. “It is for kids who are serious about their faith and want to go deeper.”

Attending her fifth year at Super Summer, Anna Kathryn Feather, 18, of Saltillo, says she wants to return in 2011 as a team leader. “It’s amazing to go through all the years,” said the incoming Itawamba Community College freshman. “You grow together.”

Others, like Courtney Childers, 17 and Joshua Atkins, 16, both students at East Central High in Hurley, came to the Mississippi College camp with their guitars to perform Christian music to glorify God.

For more information on Super Summer, contact Ken Hall, youth ministry consultant at the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board at 1-800-748-1651 or khall@mbcb.org or MC continuing education director Ken Gilliam at 601-925-3264.