I was asked to write a bit about Contagious, the Christian summer camp I go on, for the prayer meeting at Mack next week, where they’ll be praying for different summer camps and activities that are going on. I’m heading back to Dolgellau on Saturday, and so won’t be around, but penned the following explanation of what Contagious is all about:

Contagious is a Christian youth conference for 14 to 19 year olds, run by the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches. The dates this year are Monday 21st to Sunday 26th August. It’s not a holiday with a Christian epilogue tacked on to the end of each day – at the start of the week, the campers are warned that “This is not a holiday, this is a Bible boot camp!”After breakfast each morning there are Scripture Under Scrutiny (SUS) groups, which are small group Bible studies. This is then followed by two seminar sessions. These go in to the subject in more depth, including discussion of the practical implications of what we’re looking at. In the afternoon, various activities take place – sports, games, crafts and the like, as well as being able to just sit around and chat. Later in the afternoon there’s the optional Question and Answers session, in which some of the leaders try to answer people’s questions that have been written on the question board. After dinner comes the main meeting, which includes “the Big Teach”, which are the talks/sermons, and the speakers are usually excellent. After this, there are more activities, and then the leaders try to get everyone to bed in good time so that they’ll be fresh and bright for the next day! Also, one day of the week is the day out, where we head off to somewhere interesting to have some fun. Contagious is pretty intense, and grapples with big, often controversial, subjects. Previous years’ topics have included the Sovereignty of God, the book of Revelation, and the Holy Spirit, and this year the week will be looking at the Cross of Christ. But it’s very good at going into intellectual depth whilst also really trying to work out the practical implications. Some people thought that you’d never be able to do this kind of teaching with teenagers, but seven years of Contagious has proved them wrong! Last year, Contagious introduced a new scheme called Taskforce for those who have been coming on the conference but are now officially too old to come as campers. Taskforce is “a two year Christian service opportunity”, where former Contagious campers join the Taskforce team, which helps with many of the practical tasks of running Contagious, such as setting up and clearing up, running the tuckshop and bookshop, and generally freeing up the leaders to be doing things with the campers. The other side of Taskforce is leadership training, through seminars in service,
training in leading Bible studies and other things to equip young people to be
the next generation of leaders both on Contagious and also making them better
equipped for participating in the life of their home churches. Contagious has been a tremendous blessing to me down the years; the teaching has helped me grow in my Christian life and relationship with God, and I have formed many lasting friendships with people from there, including some who became Christians through it (even though the focus is more on building up young Christians – not many non-Christians would want to spend a week doing intensive Bible study!) Please pray that Contagious would continue to build up the young people who attend (and the older people, too – the teaching is just as challenging for the leaders as or the campers!) Pray that the teaching would be true and Biblical, and that it would really fire up those who go on it to live the Christian life in all its revolutionary and transforming fullness. Pray that practically all would run smoothly, and that there wouldn’t be any problems such as any issues regarding child protection or anything that would cause any harm to those on Contagious or to the work that Contagious does.

I’ll also be going on beach mission at Nefyn for the first two weeks of August with Scripture Union, and to the UCCF Forum conference from the 4th to 8th September at Quinta. Your prayers would be very much appreciated that these would go well!