“Behold, I am making all things new.”
Revelation 21:5
Many years ago, I had the experience of being a camp counselor at a Lutheran camp in the Pocono Mountains. Just off the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the camp was only accessible via a three-mile red shale road that left dust all over your car. It was three thousand acres of woods, fields, streams, trails and lakes that were surrounded by another ten thousand acres of Pennsylvania State Game Lands; you were truly off the beaten path when you were at camp! I had been a camper for many years at this camp, and so I was tremendously excited to be chosen as a camp counselor.
The camp was different from many others at the time in that it did not have a lot of bells and whistles, and it was not “Sunday school under a tree,” to quote the founding director. Rather, it was intentionally focused on small group and community development through outdoor activities that gave campers a chance to grow their faith, try new things, and learn how to live in Christian community. To do that, it was important that the staff model that kind of community so campers could see it lived out in real time. In order to build that community, the staff came early for two weeks of training and community building before the first camper set foot on the property. Our director was very intentional about this. Each year, he asked us to rebuild and renegotiate how we would treat each other every year, and put it down on paper. We wrote a staff covenant every year that laid out how we would deal with each other in good times and in difficult moments, and it was critical to the director that it was new each year. In fact, he would make the following dramatic statement at the beginning of the training each summer:
“Last year’s staff is dead. This year’s staff is being born.”
You can imagine that made quite an impression on me and my fellow staff members! But I think the idea he was trying to put across to us was that our community is renewed each time we come together. And while many staff members came back every year for many years, each year there were a number of new people to the community, some of whom had never been to the camp before. For the returning staff, it was also a way of honoring your time away from camp: you had experiences and growth while away from camp, and came to the summer as a new person. His statement, while perhaps a bit dramatic, gave space for both old and new people to enter into the new camp season with a fresh start. You had the chance to begin again, to bring back a fuller, wiser version of yourself.
That idea of renewal and growth has stayed with me as I moved into a career as a teacher and administrator. I believe creating space for renewal and growth is integral to what we do in Episcopal schools. Each school year calls us to renew both our work and our communities. While academics will always be a vital part of school, so too is the opportunity to nurture the full human potential of each person in our care. While much of our school calendars is full of familiar and cherished traditions and rituals, how we experience them as a community can and should be different. Each of us has had time away in the summer to reflect and grow, and each year, we welcome new students, teachers, and families to our communities, and giving them space to enter in and enrich our communities is vital. Indeed, throughout Scripture we hear God calling people into renewed life and renewed community. From the prophets to the ministry of Jesus to the vision of Revelation, God calls us into a way of life shaped by love, justice, and the dignity of every human being, even—maybe especially—when that way differs from the surrounding culture. God calls us into community, to know and love and serve each other.
May it be so for each of us in this new school year.
Thor Kvande is Head of School at St. George Episcopal School in San Antonio, TX.