Camps Farthest Out messages on the subject of Christian Living.
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At the 1991 Florida Family CFO, Betty Malz warns campers against judging others, using the image of checking a car’s oil before finding fault with someone else’s. She also tells of a Vietnam veteran turned pastor who nicknamed his growing congregation “the sheep shed.”
Betty Malz calls herself a survivor, recounting near-fatal illnesses, a 28 minute death experience, and the loss of her first husband. She keeps a rock marked “Giant Killer” in her purse as a reminder that all she needs is God. She gave the talk at the Florida Family CFO in 1991.
Bert Kerley tells campers of a woodcutter who climbs a distant mountain seeking God, only to find his own troubled home waiting at the summit. He also retells how the imprisoned Star Daily broke free of hatred by asking, “What if I had loved instead of hating.” He ties both stories to his counseling lesson that happiness rests on attitude, not circumstance, in a talk to the 1990 Southern California CFO.
Bert Kerley recounts a lunch appointment canceled during the Northern California CFO in 1982. It led him, through what he calls “no such things as chance,” to a chance meeting with Hope Peale, a relative of Norman Vincent Peale. He then turns to teach that Christ dwells within every believer.
Barbara Ann Chase resumes her testimony for the Arkansas CFO in 2000. She starts with the vision of praying in the world’s languages that came with her baptism in the Holy Spirit as a Dominican nun, then moves to the chance meeting in a Seattle department store that opened thirty years of ministry in Scotland. She closes with the Glasgow street boy who later phoned just to say “cheerio.”
Barbara Ann Chase teaches on communion as a sign of Christ’s presence in a message to the Arkansas CFO in 2000. She weaves in the history of hymnals and the widow in 2 Kings 4, who fills borrowed jars with oil until it stops.
Alex McCullough closes the servant themed week at the Arkansas CFO in 1999 by telling campers that they cannot take the camp home with them, only what it made of them. Following God, he says, is a matter of obedience, not convenience. He then plays a wordless “Testimony Musical” on saxophone and clarinet, the same instruments he set aside, unplayed, for ten years after becoming a Christian.
Alex McCullough asks campers “who is they?” and answers with two encounters from before he was even a Christian: comforting a homeless man in Manhattan and a trembling kitchen worker newly arrived from the Caribbean. Fear sees “they” while love sees “us,” he insists, and a true congregation, unlike a mere aggregation, becomes one. He preached it at the 1988 Southern California Healing CFO.
Alex McCullough opens the week’s servant themed talks with Jesus washing the disciples’ feet in John 13, at the Arkansas CFO in 1999. He ties it back to Matthew 20’s charge that “whoever would be first among you must be your slave.” He admits that his own upbringing with a live-in butler made real service hard to receive. He would rather his wife “slam it to me,” he says, than ever catch him acting like a pastor.
At the 1999 Arkansas CFO, Alex McCullough contrasts the Sea of Galilee, which receives and gives, with the Dead Sea, which only takes. His lesson for campers is that a giving life is a living life. He then tells how he and his wife gave up his salary as a school band director and musician to enter the ministry on trust.