Mtr Kelli Joyce

Dear friends,

I write to you this morning from Chapel Rock, as we are preparing for the second full day of the last week of children’s camp. As a member of the planning team for our diocesan children’s camp, I’ve been helping to develop our theme and curriculum for about six months now - it’s a joy to see the things we planned taking shape in real life!

Our theme this year is “Horton Hears Who? Listening with the Prophets.” We are talking with the campers about what it means to be a prophet - using your unique gifts for the benefit of others, listening to and amplifying the voices of those whom others can’t or won’t hear, and staying firm in purpose even in the face of active hostility from others. (If you haven’t read “Horton Hears a Who,” I highly recommend it!

My role as one of the camp chaplains for the week is to help lead the portion of the day known as “Praxis of the Spirit” - the campers receive, from a clover like Horton’s, a “prophetic mission” for the day, and then we do a fun activity that embodies that mission. The “missions” for each of the five days of camp are the five vows that we make in our baptismal covenant.

In our baptism, we promise to follow Christ and to resist evil. We promise to proclaim by both word and action the good news of God in Christ. We promise to continue in the teaching of the Apostles, handed down to us across the ages. To pray and eat together. To honor the dignity of every single person.

We chose the baptismal covenant to be the prophetic missions for our campers because we wanted them to understand something important. Something I think we all need to be reminded of from time to time. The mission of the prophets is not something reserved for a select few, specially chosen - in our baptism, we are all called to listen to the least of these, and to resist sin and evil in ourselves and in the world with all our might.

In peace,
Mtr. Kelli