“Serve Day” may be a new name, but the idea and culture of service has been with Tejas since 1981. During my first summer serving on the Summer Ministry Team in 1999, we served outside the camp walls every other weekend, helping in a soup kitchen, painting a church building and hosting back yard bible clubs in town. Volunteers have also been coming to Tejas from the beginning to help with building and renovation projects, helping in the kitchen and even volunteering all summer long to help with camp. Serve Day is becoming our way of reaching out to the Tejas community and providing another avenue with which to partner with us in ministry.
There are several facets of Serve Day. The first is that three days a year we will shut down the camp to all guests and open it to volunteers. These days are in May and August (helping with setup and tear down of summer camp) and the day after Thanksgiving (our opening night of Lights of Tejas). The second facet is our Summer Ministry Team. Each team member will be given the opportunity to serve away from Tejas for a day. This will tie into our discipleship program and give them a hands-on opportunity to partner with another Christian ministry. Our hope is to broaden their horizons of how they can get involved in ministry during the school year. Finally, our staff will have two serve days a year where we minister to other camps and organizations in our area. This will help to give us more training in how to serve and how to invest even more into our guests.
We are very excited about Serve Day and have already seen a great response in 2013. Families and groups are not limited to serving only our set Serve Days – we still encourage all to come and help whenever they can. Projects are ongoing and having volunteers come alongside us is always a great encouragement. We thank everyone who has already come to serve with us and we ask that you would consider joining us again in service to God’s kingdom.