“I actually had confidence that I could take what I learned from Mark Camp and move it beyond Mark Camp,” Tim Sung, a soon-to-be sophomore at the University of Washington, said.
Mark Camp has been a transformative experience for countless InterVarsity students over the years. At the end of the semester, they gather for a week of Bible study, worship, being in nature, sharing meals, and enjoying community. This time of retreat has been many things to many people. For Tim, Mark Camp changed his understanding of Christian retreats.
Tim’s parents found Christ in 2007 when he was still very young. He grew up in church, where he regularly attended retreats with his youth group. At those retreats, Tim always experienced what he calls a spiritual high— a temporary feeling of excitement about his faith. Unfortunately, "that feeling faded soon after,” he said. “As if the lessons I learned from those retreats didn’t matter.”
When Tim decided to go to Mark Camp as a freshman, he expected the same kind of experience: a spiritual high followed by the lulls and lows of everyday life. What he got instead was a week of learning that shaped his faith for the long haul.
“Mark Camp was the first retreat I could think of where I wasn’t directly taught any specific message or lesson,” Tim said. “There were no central themes. I was simply learning to study the Bible.”
At first, the idea of studying the Bible for eight hours a day didn’t sound appealing to Tim. But as the days at Mark Camp progressed, each Bible study session felt like it went by too quickly, and Tim discovered that he actually enjoyed approaching Scripture with curiosity. Mark Camp gave him the space and the tools to find biblical answers to his questions.
“I think how retreats affected me was that they gave me answers,” Tim reflected. “But receiving answers without knowing how to get [them] or apply them can only get you so far.”
More than that, Mark Camp gave Tim the freedom to have questions at all. He learned to accept that not everything was going to make sense at first, and that was okay. The process of being curious and seeking God, even through confusion and doubt, was still worthwhile.
One passage that stayed with Tim was Mark 4:2-8.
He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said: “Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.”
At Mark Camp, Tim confronted the soil that his faith was rooted in. Weaker soil looked like relying on spiritual highs and weekend retreats to experience God. Good soil was more sustainable. It looked like studying Scripture with honesty and experiencing God through the exciting times of communal retreats and the monotony of daily life.
Emily Baez is a writer on InterVarsity’s Communications Team in Madison, Wisconsin. She enjoys long hikes, watching movies, and overly competitive game nights with friends. You can support her ministry at donate.intervarsity.org/donate#22836.
We've bought into misguided cultural narratives about faith. Rather than being the light of the world, reflecting God's perfect radiance, our light is filtered through our cultural lenses.
