Honestly, I am not much of an alarmist. It seems wise to avoid over-reacting. We sometimes can create false impressions of trends, based on dramatic isolated incidents. It’s tempting, therefore, to conclude that youth attacking other youth or adults are utterly rare occurrences–nothing more than deeply unfortunate oddities. We hear about shootings at schools, from Arkansas to Oregon, and about youth killing or injuring youth in other settings. It seems implausible that this is actually a growing pattern. Most youth we know don’t cause this kind of harm. Objective data, however, reveal a very real trend toward more extreme violence among young people. According to one statistic I read, 12,000 children and youth were killed last year alone. Mary Logan, General Council on Finance and Administration’s legal staff, recently called me to say, “It’s important that Camp/Retreat/Conference Center Directors realize that this kind of situation can happen at our United Methodist sites. We need to prepare our staff to intervene and lessen the potential harm.” We need to heed her advice and discuss this with our staff. Share the following with your staff and volunteers. We must understand that, even though our ministry involves providing an atmosphere of love, mutual respect, and support, some youth may bring feelings of rage with them from other situations. The causes of this rage vary from frustrated hope, to feeling unloved, to fears of all sorts. In our current social environment, violence is unwittingly presented as a viable–and perhaps even glorified–response to problems or disappointment. An entire sector of the video game industry focuses on engaging youth in scenario after scenario where they must overcome obstacles by killing ‘villains’. TV shows and movies continue to emphasize violence, apparently because people want to view it and will pay for it. We are naive to think that these images don’t penetrate hearts and minds, and carry over into real life. Fist-fighting is being replaced by guns and knives. Four important things to remember: 1. Treat threats of physical harm seriously, much as we take seriously every threat of suicide. Often, youth tell someone before they commit an act of violence. Unfortunately, if they’ve never done anything like that before, people don’t take it seriously until it’s too late. 2. Investigate reports of weapons onsite or in a vehicle, and immediately confiscate all items appearing to be weapons. Weapons are much more readily accessible than they used to be, so it is possible that they are present even when we can’t imagine why someone would bring them to a Christian camp or retreat experience. 3. State clearly in initial orientations that weapons and violence aren’t permitted and won’t be tolerated. Violence is a spiritual matter that should be handled lovingly with both the individual and community in mind. Reacting to anger with anger fuels the fire. Our faith formation and Christian teaching encourage us to include lessons on nonviolence as a way of life. 4. Since serious incidents often require follow-up with professional support, be sure to contact parents whenever a situation like this arises. Kevin Witt, National Director of Camp/Retreat Ministry General Board of Discipleship

Continue on pages ....1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Camping Home | Articles | Links | Staff | | Comments | Directory | Events | Employment Opportunities |