1 Chapter 1: A Conversation with Gary Fawver
Conversation with Gary Fawver
Emeritus Professor of Outdoor Ministries, George Fox University
November 12, 2003
Dr. Fawver taught at George Fox University for 13 years, and directed the program called Tilikum, which served the University and community with programs designed to foster Christian spiritual growth in an outdoor setting and included a retreat center. He was also on the board of Christian Camping International from 1985-1990 and president from 1988-89. His experiences explore how we can find a synthesis of ecological and Christian thought in outdoor experiences. Fawver focuses mainly on residential and day camp or retreat experiences, but also discusses wilderness settings. Since Jesus’ model of teaching was so intimately tied to the outdoors, there are a wealth of sources for Christian outdoor educators to draw from. Ultimately, the outdoors are a prime site for spiritual growth. In Tilikum and his other work, Fawver draws rich connections between nature and spiritual life, “re-discovering the truths” that are in metaphors of gardening, the four seasons, and other experiences in nature.
I think that the central part of my journey has been the 20 years that I spent at Tilikum Retreat Center. It’s just seven miles out of town [Newberg, Oregon] and is now operated by George Fox University, but I was the founding director there. And during that period of time I became very much aware of the history of the outdoors used in the Christian classic literature of people like Augustine and Francis De Sales and a whole lot of other people who utilized the outdoor environment and the objects of the outdoors as a way to help them grow spiritually and to assist other people in their spiritual growth. That then drove me to do an extended sabbatical back at Bethel Seminary under the tutelage of a fellow who was an expert in the Christian classics and got me turned on. And then that motivated me to do my doctoral work, which then motivated me to go into the Scriptures to see what the Scriptures said about the outdoors.
And I found that most of us had read a lot of these things for years but had never done anything to synthesize them, and that is what I tried to do in my doctoral work. So, I did a biblical study, a historical study, and then my teaching at the university, and creating Tilikum provided an opportunity to actually try out some of these things in a retreat setting, in a camp setting, and all of a sudden I found myself having lots of opportunities to talk to people and to teach about this because it intrigued people, and nobody had done it.
My doctoral work was to take a group of 18 university students and take them out to Tilikum for a week and try to do some pre-testing, give them an experience, a legitimate outdoor experience, and have them do some journaling and do a little post-testing and to try to see what the effect of this outdoor experience was on them during this very limited period of time.
And then, preparing for my dissertation, I did a lot of study in the secular literature of what impact the outdoors has on people’s lives. And I found out that one of the ways the National Forest Service, for instance, defines wilderness in one of their three or four tracks is to enhance spirituality. Now I am not sure they know what they mean by that, but for me that was significant, to be able to say, “Ah, what is there about the wilderness that causes the National Forest Service to think of it in terms of spirituality?”
I’ve continued to study the biblical aspects of the outdoors to the point where I am doing volunteer work now with Christian camps in Russia, the former Soviet Union, and one of the things that is intriguing the leaders there is that for the first time they are focusing on the outdoors. And, as I share with them some of the metaphors that are in Scripture on trees and water and things that they have at all of their campsites, whether the camp is in Siberia or Ukraine or Latvia, they are seeing that they can help their campers understand what spirituality, what Christian growth, is by understanding the object of creation and then understanding what the Scripture says about it. And so constantly, as I’m working on this project and training leaders, every time a workshop comes up I am asked, “Will you teach a workshop on God and the outdoors?”
In fact, I wrote a book, a series of lessons that was translated and published, that they are using in some of their Bible lessons with the kids. It includes this whole concept of the outdoors and a biblical understanding of how creation and the outdoors is used in both the Old and New Testaments, as well as in historical writings all the way back to people like Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux. There are just dozens of these people, all the way up to CS Lewis and right up to the present day. Many of them, in one way or another, saw the outdoors as a way to help people understand what spiritual growth is— often by using the metaphors, or by actually using the place, the outdoors itself, as a way for them to grow.
How did you get started in outdoor ministry work?
Well, I was adjunct professor the whole time I was at Tilikum. I taught one or two courses at the university and basically ran the retreat center that was owned by the university. When I left Tilikum to go full time, they asked me what title I wanted, and I said, “Well, how about Professor of Outdoor Ministries?” And they said sure, sounds good to us. So that is what I have been and still am. Now I am emeritus and still Professor of Outdoor Ministries. And that really says where I have been for all of the years that I have taught. Even a lot of the courses I have taught have been outdoor courses. Professors of Outdoor Ministries, well, I’m not sure there are any others, but it has helped define who I am and what I do. And so I really do appreciate the fact that they allowed me to kind of create my own title.
So, when I came to the university it was to help them to create an emphasis in outdoor ministry, which included camping. I didn’t want to limit it to camping. I had been doing work in the wilderness and there’s a club at the university where the students go backpacking and climbing mountains and stuff like that— snow shoeing and snow caving— and I do a little of that, but not a lot. And then there are students who are wanting to go into youth ministry who know that they’re going to run summer camps, and that they’re going to want to run retreats with young people during the year and they want some experience and/or training. And then there are other people who really do see that camping is a viable vocational option now. And it’s increasingly so, and so the university said, “Would you create an emphasis so that a student who is interested could take the appropriate courses, and with some summer field experience, at least have a beginning of an idea that that’s something that’s viable for them?” So, that’s pretty much what I did in my role.
But the years I was at Tilikum, I didn’t want to just go and rent the facilities on weekends, I wanted to be involved in creating some programs, and so I had total freedom to do basically what I wanted. And Tilikum is a beautiful place with a large stand of Douglas fir, about a 15-acre meadow and a pond, and grape arbors up on the hillside, vineyards— and it’s a beautiful, quiet, pastoral setting.
Tilikum is a northwest Indian name. There was a Chinook jargon that was created when the settlers and the trappers and the Indians came together in the northwest— the Hudson Bay traders and the people that were coming down the Columbia River all the way from Lewis and Clark on— because they ended their journey here in Oregon. And they created a language called the Chinook jargon. It was about 300-400 words that anybody could know and speak and communicate. Tilikum was the word for friend. And so, since George Fox is an evangelical Quaker school, a Friends’ school, the founders of Tilikum called it that because it means friend, or friendly place.
There’s a big building out there that looks an awful lot like a northwestern Indian long house, our recreation building, and for a few years we kind of followed that theme, and then after a while we just kind of left it, but there were a few names that stuck.
And so I created programs over the years for different types of groups, and the teaching always focused on the natural features at Tilikum, helping them understand how the scriptures teach spiritual lessons through using nature. And so rather than talking about grape vines and fruit and pruning and that, I’d take the people out and we’d sit down around the grape arbor. And whether it was summer, fall, winter or spring, you could always learn something by seeing that there, and then going for instance into John 15 where the talk is about fruit bearing and production pruning, and those sorts of things, the vine and the branches. The lake is water, and the scriptures teach a lot about water, and the trees are wonderful and the spring wildflowers, and there are lots of birds. And so any time of the year you can take children, or youth, or adults, or families out and sit them down or walk and reflect on what they are seeing.
I had a strong emphasis on the senses, and I believe that Psalm 139, when it talks about “we are fearfully and wonderfully made,” that some of things that are wonderful are the five senses we have— that allows us to appreciate creation. If we didn’t have them, what good would any of the beauty of creation be? So, I tie us into God’s creation, and there are just lessons galore on helping people understand their spiritual relationship with God and their relationship to each other and their relationship to creation. So, I’ve done that – that’s been my life for probably the last 30 years.
When did you first get involved in camping?
I was a town kid back in the Midwest in Illinois flat fields, but my mom says she’d have to drag me in at night. I loved to play outdoors, climb trees, but I was born and raised in town. I went to camps. My dad and mom felt it was important, so I went to Boy Scout camps, and church camps, and stuff like that. And that certainly influenced me.
And when I went to college, I chose my practicum in my major to go to Honey Rock, which is a camp that Wheaton College ran, in the summer, in training and as a counselor in northern Wisconsin— being a counselor the summer between my junior and senior year. That’s what really then convinced me that camping was something that I needed to consider even though I was thinking of youth work in a broader sense. That summer was incredible and really did have a deep impact on me. So, I guess, you know, I grew up in town but my folks had gardens, and my dad did a lot of fishing, and we went hunting with him— he’d use me as the dog when we’d go pheasant and rabbit hunting. So I did a lot of stuff out there— he did a lot of stuff outdoors and I just tagged along. So, I am sure all of this influenced me as I look back. And, we took vacations as family to the Grand Canyon, and they tried to give us these experiences, and I’m just sure that all of that somehow got into my psyche to probably make me the person I am today.
After Honey Rock, I had one more year in college, and then I went to seminary. I got my Master of Divinity at Gordon Conwell and spent four years in Boston. And during the summers, I worked at camps in New England with the church where I worked as a youth pastor. I didn’t really do a lot of special camp work or thinking about it, and then when I graduated, I went to serve a church, and that’s when I began to run the programs in the church, in our denominational camp. And began to really think that this was something I’d like to do more than just during the summer. So probably it was when I was employed as a youth pastor— that was back in Chicago, and our camp was up on the shores of Lake Michigan, and it was a beautiful spot— that I began to wish I could do this full time.
That’s also how I got involved in Christian Camping International (CCI). CCI had its headquarters back in the Chicago area, and I got to know some of the leaders. CCI has been very helpful to me all of these years. I was president of the national organization at one point and wrote numerous articles for their journal and did workshops at the conventions. I have been in the American Camping Association for the same number of years. It is the counterpart— it’s the secular counterpart— and I’ve been very excited and involved in that organization as well, but not from the spiritual standpoint. CCI has really, I mean, it’s given me an outlet in a very specific spiritual sense. But both those organizations are very good, and I’ve learned from and contributed to both.
In 1963, I was a youth pastor in a church in Chicago and worked with our denominational camps up in Michigan. And I just was enamored at how effective the summer camp ministries were. I really enjoyed the camp work more than the run-of-the-mill youth stuff— it was like I was really alive there. And when I left the church, I was asked to move to Oregon to work with the delinquent kids. And we took kids out of a state institution out into a six-day backpack trip and camped each night for three nights, and then camped three nights in an Indian teepee village that we had established. And so the kids had to work by hiking and carrying their own pack. They had to help put up the tents. They had to help build the fires, cook the meals…They learned to depend on us because they knew we knew what we were doing, and the setting was so different for them, which we found wonderfully enabling— we were very much able to communicate with them and establish rapport with them a lot easier than if we just went to visit them while they were sittin’ in lockup at a state or county institution.
I just saw the changes that took place in these kids’ lives, even when they went back to the institution and we’d be down to visit them— we were on a whole different wavelength with them than the people who were paid, and that worked there to take care of them. And that caused me to say, what is there about the wilderness? That then allowed me an opportunity to go to Outward Bound School, and I went to a leadership program in Colorado in 1971. It was half wilderness in Colorado and half river time on the Yampa and the Green River near Dinosaur National Monument. And so I had those two wilderness experiences and really then understood what the philosophy of wilderness camping was. I had done it for 5 years but didn’t know a lot about it— I just knew it worked. So the Outward Bound experience helped me to see it and appreciate it. Then, following that, I worked for two more summers with church kids, still in Colorado, and found that those wilderness experiences were just as life changing for church kids as they were for the delinquent kids. And there was an openness— they learned so much about themselves, in doing rock climbing and crossing glaciers and those sorts of wilderness things, that it was a very significant seven years that I did that.
Then it just all cut off when I went to Tilikum, because I went to a brand-new camp, which was a retreat center; there was not an established “camp” because there were no buildings. So in the summer time, to create programs I began to go to the churches in the Portland area and suggest to them that they might want to bring their elementary age children out to Tilikum for day camps. So in 1971 or ’72, the first group from Portland area churches came out to Tilikum and they are still now running an incredibly large and incredibly successful day camp program for children, but the whole focus is on introducing them to the outdoors.
The whole thrust of that day camp program is helping them understand how they are created to be able to appreciate what God has created and what God wants to tell them in the utilization of the outdoors. So, what I created at first was kind of a day camp program, because we didn’t have any cabins yet to develop a camp— we ultimately developed some retreat facilities, but it still is not a traditional camp. It has several thousand children going out there every summer for day camp. And I have had students at the university who were children when they went to a Tilikum day camp and said, “Didn’t you run Tilikum?” and I said, “Yeah,” and they said, “That was a wonderful program, we enjoyed going out on the lake, and hiking in the woods and all of those sorts of things.” So everything that Tilikum has done with the children has tried to turn their attention to the outdoors and how the outdoors is good for them and what they can learn.
Also at Tilikum, when we had family retreats or mother/daughter retreats, or father/son retreats, or men’s retreats, or youth retreats, whatever— I tried to create a weekend experience, whether it was summer, fall, winter or spring, that got them outdoors and somehow let them understand what God wanted to say to them as they found themselves in this outdoor environment. What could they learn about themselves, or what could they learn about God through the scripture and through the outdoor experience?
And so, I had lots of opportunities. For several years during April and May, I said, “Wednesday is a day that the Portland area community (anybody that was on our mailing list) can come out to Tilikum. Get there by 10 o’clock, I’ll have a short teaching on something about nature, and then for the rest of the day you can walk, sit, go out in the canoes. It is not a day to play, but it’s a day for contemplation, it’s a day for thoughtfulness, a day for discussion. Then come back to the retreat center for a lunch of bread and soup if you want to, if you don’t, fine. And stay until 3 or 4 o’clock.” And I did this for, oh, I don’t know how many years, and we would have anywhere from 5 to 30 people who took advantage of those Wednesdays during April and May, when the weather was getting nice and when the wildflowers were out. And I picked different themes and just gave them a handout and sent them on their way. So, it was not a directed day; it was kind of a non-directed day. It started with some sort of a focus. That is just an example of a few of the things that I did.
When I started teaching at the university, I was asked to teach a course in the Christian Classics and I realized that a lot of the writers, from Francis of Assisi to Augustine to Francis De Sales, a number of women writers, CS Lewis— just on and on and on— a lot of these people wrote about the outdoors. And so as I started teaching the students, I’d take them out to Tilikum on a Tuesday afternoon, Tuesday evening, and I’d give them an outdoor experience and give them some of the writings of these classical writers who talked about the outdoors, and found that to be very well received by the students. It got them off campus; it focused them on that subject matter, and it was just a little different way to teach a course.
So, then when I went fulltime at the university they said, “We really would like you to have your doctorate.” And I said, “I’m 52 years old— is that reasonable?” And they said, “Well, a doctor of ministry is not as rigorous as an EdD or a PhD, and it’s certainly not as prestigious, but it certainly would fit and if you felt you could accomplish your goals in a doctor of ministry, go for it.” And I did, and that is what I have, a Doctorate of Ministry. And I created the whole program. It focused on the outdoors, and I got a faculty sponsor where I got the degree, and my whole dissertation came out of my experiment that I did with the students that I was teaching at the university. I gave them an opportunity to get 2 credit hours by staying on an extra week after school in May, and I set them up ahead of time for what they were going to do, and did a little pre-testing, and out of that pool of students I got 18 that did the experience, that basically was the basis of my thesis.
When I considered doing some doctoral work, I knew that camping had impacted me as a kid, and I knew what I was able to do as a camp director was impacting other people, but it was all anecdotal, and that’s a form of evaluation but not the most valid. And so I said, “Well, has somebody else done some studies in this area, to really validate what happens?” Well, I began to read the literature, and I started with the president’s council under Ronald Reagan, who did a study on the outdoors in America. And they had volumes that all of these very famous outdoor specialists wrote, and so I used that as a foundation, and I contacted these people and told them what I was going to do. And they sent me all kinds of studies that they had done, and so I found that there had been, in fact, lots of studies done by people, but mostly the secular field, about what the impact of— and in most cases it was wilderness, not camps, or not retreats— what the wilderness does to somebody. And these studies generated a long list of 18-20 impacts. Always something was mentioned about the spiritual, or tranquility, or lowering of stress. There was a learning of skills and relationships with other people and those things. And I’d say, “Well, they’re not as specific as I would like them to be, but they’re finding that yes, the wilderness or the outdoors does have some kind of a positive impact.”
So then, I started to study some of the medical literature and found that people heal faster in hospitals when they can look at clouds and trees as opposed to looking at brick walls. And people who are in prison who can see out have less need for pain medication and stomach pills, and people who— I mean, there are just tons of these sorts of studies, and when I started to talk about it, then people said, “Have you seen this?” I’ve got two filing drawers full of the research that people have done, basically saying the outdoors changes and impacts people. And they did it in some very technical and well-defined studies.
Well, I am not a statistician, but I said, I want to do something that is a little more controlled than just to say “yeah, camping is good because a kid said he either became a Christian or he learned to love God better or he learned to appreciate the outdoors better.” You know, I wanted a little more than that. So that is when I began to try to look at what other people had done and said, “What can I draw from them?” And I talked to a few graduate students in psychology and a couple of professors at the university and got a few ideas of some controlled things that I could do. And so I had a few questionnaires that I gave everybody so I could have a control. And then I determined that during the week I wanted to put all the students through the same sorts of activities: have an opportunity to do some walking, some bird studies, some quiet reflection, some study, some discussion, but all of them do the same. And I brought somebody else in with me that helped to observe and took notes as well. And basically gave each student an opportunity to do journaling each day, but answering the same question so that I got common responses from the individuals who’d all gone through the same experience.
And basically what it did is confirmed what I had anecdotally felt and what I was finding the secular literature said. An outdoor experience, even if it is rigorous, is different enough that it changes the stress level that the person has experienced prior to that. There is an interrelationship that enters when you do it with other people. There is a sense of being drawn closer to God, and they gave lots of examples of that. And so I basically felt, even though it wasn’t the most scientific study, it did in fact confirm what I had always felt and it certainly didn’t conflict with anything at all that I had read that was in the literature.
So that whole area of study for my doctorate was just very helpful because I have been able then to go on to share with the camping community. And it wasn’t a study that was limited to camping, though it certainly included it; there were a lot of spin-offs. One of those was the whole concept of, “What is the role of the place?” Which raises the whole concept of place. And there have been some very interesting books written about how people respond to trees and closed woods and open woods and veldt areas. And, what about people who are raised in the city and find themselves in the wilderness? Or people who are raised in the woods and find themselves in town? What about people who go back to the same lake all the time? Or, it is my sense, the kids who like to go back to the same camp. Why do they go back to the same camp? Well, there’s a sense of place. What did the Native Americans know when they would send somebody out on a vision quest, and that place became key to that person the rest of his life in the vision that the gods had given him or something like that.
And so, as a spin-off of my study— I’ve thought a lot about what is this whole concept of place. Why do we speak warmly about our summer cabin or the Christian camp that we’ve gone to? And how can we capitalize on it to even use it more in helping people understand why they go to certain places? Or why the mountain top experiences open us up so often, and that sort of thing. So, the spin-offs have been really fun for me, and I’ve continued now that the doctoral work is done, and basically even as I’m retired, but I’m still thinking, writing, talking, considering…what are some of those meaning-making things? So the dean who said, ‘You need to’ — I needed to do my doctoral work, I’m glad for {laughing}— and even at the time, it was hard doing the doctoral work while I was teaching full time. That was a horrible five years, but it was well worth it.
What was it like for the participants in your thesis study? What was their experience?
Well, all of them had varying levels of outdoor experience. There were several who had not ever done anything outdoors. And there was one person who worked at a Christian camp who wasn’t even a student who took the course. And I have still maintained contact with about half of them because they’re living in this area, and it’s interesting to talk to them about what that experience did. And what I think it did is it sensitized them to what I call a rediscovery of the out-of-doors. And that’s one of the things that I think has to be done. Any human being that does anything a lot, it kind of grows— it kind of becomes mundane. So, a person who is at a camp, they kind of lose the awe-inspiring-ness of that experience. I like to walk. Every so often I have to remind myself that I am walking outside and I need to rediscover the beauty of creation. It is not something that we just naturally do. I think we need to be reminded that creation is out there. That God’s creation is there. So I talk a lot about rediscovery.
One of the things I wish I could have done— I didn’t follow up. And I am not so sure that I would have found that that experience was life changing for them for a long period of time. Because I really believe that it’s important for us to have something happen that allows us to— and I just use the word over and over— rediscover what we are, where we are, what environment we are in. And to be reminded that in fact we are in a very beautiful spot or that we’re in an area where we can focus on God’s creation.
I think it helps for a young person to learn those things early, and I notice with my grandkids that they are constantly bringing me pinecones and bird feathers, and cast-off bird eggs, and this and that. It’s because when we go out walking on a Sunday afternoon, or when we go to the park, I’ll say, hey, look at this. And they’ll see that to me this is interesting and exciting, and so, it becomes interesting and exciting to them. But I think if I were to stop doing that for a couple of years that probably would not continue. So somehow, there is a real need for Christian camps; there’s a need for people who love the outdoors to hold this up to other folks. There’s the importance of journals to every so often do an article, for a pastor every so often in church to preach about creation, and there’s a need for people to be out there who write about and talk about these things, to hold them up.
Probably as I look back over my life, how the outdoors has in fact affected me has been one of the biggest surprises. And I think it did start when I was a little kid. I’d ride my bicycle and I had a basket, and I noticed in the spring— well, we grew asparagus in our garden. But, I noticed in my community that asparagus grew wild, and I loved to find the asparagus that had seeded out (that is how I could find it) and then to go and find nice, fresh pop-off pieces, and take them, and my mom just would go crazy with gratitude. And that again was a reinforcement to me. But, nobody told me to go out and find asparagus, I just enjoyed doing that. That was fun for me as a kid, to ride my bicycle around out in the country and stuff like that. I’ve now looked back over my life, and I’ve tried to go through the 65 years of my life and try to document what outdoor experiences took place either accidentally (you know, not intentionally) or intentionally. And I think all of them have in fact had a cumulative impact to make me the kind of person I am. And in fact, to give me the passion for the outdoors that I have. And I’ve had opportunities to talk to other people and talk to them about their vocation or their calling and I have talked to them about what has been a passion of theirs.
What things that you have tried haven’t worked?
I can’t think of any specifics, but I know that certain parts of the sharing things that I have done with people have been met with more or less interest. Over the years I have done some stuff with doctoral students at the seminary, and they’re more ministry oriented, and they weren’t particularly interested in the metaphors of the out-of-doors, and that kind of surprised me. So, I get varying responses. But I don’t know if there’s been anything that’s just bombed particularly. Surely certain things are better received than others.
How has your programming changed over time?
When I started Tilikum and did the day camp thing with the children, there was a concept of sensory awareness created by a guy whose name is Steve Van Matre. It was a program called acclimatization and acclimatizing. He did some doctoral work and he was an Outdoor Ed teacher, actually, back in Wisconsin. And he wrote some manuals of experiences he had with 5th and 6th and 7th grade kids. All of it was sensory awareness oriented…blind walks, trust walks, tape the fingers so that you can feel what a raccoon feels without a thumb— all kinds of stuff. And I picked up on those and did those, and it was totally brand new back then. Well, now I find that sensory awareness is being used by a lot of people in all kinds of settings for various purposes. So, I am finding that that’s less unique. And yet again, I am taking that to Russia, and they are just going crazy over it. I do the same sorts of things with leaders, who then do it with campers (I am involved in training, I am not running camps) — I do it with leaders, and they get so excited and they get so into it. It’s like people did 20 years ago here in the United States. And so I find that kind of interesting.
But, I still am doing those sorts of things. And, I’m finding that there are a lot of books that are written in outdoor education again for 5th and 6th grade kids, where that’s part of the program— Project Adventure in the early 70’s started low ropes and challenge activities and they emphasized trust falls. They didn’t “patent” them, but they were ones that kind of promoted them. Well, that is 30 years ago, they’re still going. Tilikum has a high and a low ropes course now, and it has weeklong programs with junior high and high schoolers, and it’s as well received now as it was 30 years ago. It was brand new and exciting then, but those sorts of things are still being done now. And a lot of universities and colleges are doing high ropes and having climbing walls— they’re not quite outdoor education, but a lot of it is because a lot of it takes place outdoors. Those sorts of things have not cycled out enough yet to cycle back in at some other time. It is just that you see it more and utilize it more and you don’t have to explain it quite as carefully because people say, “Oh yeah, I remember doing something like that…” You put it in a new context and repackage it.
Thinking about outdoor education then, what are the main skills that you utilize in order to help teach most effectively?
Well, you sure have to be able to set the purpose, so they know what they are going to do, and then more critical is the whole area of the debrief, helping them to understand what they’ve learned. Otherwise, it’s just a fun experience, and it’s a fun experience either with a group of people, or in a high ropes sense by yourself. But to be able to help them see what they’re going to do without talking it to death, but just set it in its context. And then have them have the experience, and then take enough time to reflect on it. I think that’s what Outward Bound and Project Adventure and some of these other organizations have done, in their training.
I have done a lot of training with Project Adventure, and they emphasize the debriefing and the setting of safety parameters and stuff like that; they are especially good at helping people understand what value the experience has had. Whether it’s helping them to understand that they overcame a certain fear, or they worked together, or understanding trust, or whatever the situation was. That’s probably to me one of the most important things. When leaders aren’t trained adequately, they can put people through lots of experiences, but then they’ve just had a fun experience and probably haven’t learned an awful lot about themselves or other people. I don’t think that means they shouldn’t have taken them through, but it means they’ve lost a lot of potential.
What becomes different in this Outward Bound/Project Adventure model when you focus on the spiritual components, on God?
Well, Project Adventure talks a lot about group support, group encouragement and group interaction. All of those things are very key New Testament concepts of the church or the community. A friend of mine who runs camps in Australia wrote a book, “The Temporary Community” and defined the Christian camp as a community, short term, which can model all of the elements that we’re trying to teach people in a church context, among members of a church. So, you can do all of the things, and emphasize everything Project Adventure emphasizes, only you can take it one step further and you can take it into the Scriptures and say, what have we been experiencing? We’ve been experiencing what Paul says when he says, “carry one another’s burdens.” The other piece is that elements of things like trust and faith when you are doing climbing and you’re using a rope and somebody’s belaying you, or when you’re rappelling, or things like that, all of those — the steps of that activity can be again, transferred into: Do I have that same trust in God? Do I really believe that in a sense He’s belaying me? Or is He going to cut the rope when I get halfway up? Or when I’ve fallen, is God to blame for that? Or, what? To me, it allows a lot of opportunity when you go through these experiences to transfer them into the realm of the Spirit and to help people see them on another level.
I don’t think you get this in school. I think you have those experiences and then as a Christian, if you are in this field, you see that there is a rich additional area to help people consider in the area of spirituality. Everybody knows there are four seasons. And everybody knows that in the natural world, it’s important that there is a spring and a summer and the harvest and then the winter. But, very few people give any thought to the four seasons of life, either a year in a person’s life or over a person’s entire life. Now I am 65, and I’m realizing that I have gone through, in my life, lots of cycles of the seasons. And I have realized that I have not borne fruit all of the years of my life. In spite of the fact that pastors and youth pastors say: “you should bear spiritual fruit, bear spiritual fruit, bear spiritual fruit.” Well, there have been periods of dormancy in my life when I felt guilty, because I wasn’t bearing spiritual fruit— whatever that means. That’s mis-teaching.
Life normally and naturally is a life progression. There should be times in my life when I am growing, when I am busting out new shoots. There should be a time in my life when I am bearing fruit and that fruit should be evident to people. There is a time in my life when I would go through periods of dormancy. When it appears that I am dry, I’m not growing. Now if I’m dormant for 10 years in a row, maybe I need to say, “Is there something wrong?” But when that period of dormancy is over, then the normal thing is to see that there is new growth and ultimately fruit. Well, that’s been one of the most incredible discoveries that I have experienced, and one of the most freeing things to me, that I’ve had joy in sharing with other people.
So, the whole growth, tending the garden, hoeing and weeding, that whole metaphor is full of spiritual truths, much of it in the Scriptures. And, much of it is missed if we just do gardening or things like that. But when you see them, and when you’re looking for, again, those ways of re-discovering the truths that are there, then they become very evident and very obvious.
In Russia a year ago, a guy was at a workshop in the spring and he did a compass course with the Russians, just as a compass course. And I looked at that compass, and I said: “where is the magma, where is the metal, where is it that the magnet is pointing to?” They don’t know where it is and they don’t see it. And yet you give them a compass and they follow it. How are they following it? They’re following it purely by faith. They don’t know what that needle is pointing at and yet they’re following it. And I created a little 10-15 minute lesson by taking a compass with me to Russia and just going through a couple of the basic steps of the compass and asking them to tell me where that needle is pointing. North…well, what’s north? Why is it always pointing north? Oh, we don’t know! But, you follow the compass? You go where it says? Yeah… How? Well, we just trust that it’s a good compass! And that became one of the most helpful lessons in faith. What is faith? In Hebrews, it’s trusting what you don’t see. And that’s what you’re doing when you’re following a compass.
Following on that, then I’ve gone to the sun. The sun comes out at every camp in Russia. What’s the sun? Well, a source of light. What else does it do? Oh, it just feels so good when it warms me…yeah, warms me. Okay, source of light, source of warmth. What else? I just ask them, “What else? What’s the sun? [pause] Tell me about Jesus. He is a person. Okay, what else? Well, He is called the Son of God. Sun/Son…well what does Jesus do? Oh…He calls Himself the Light of the World! Ahhhhh…He warms cold hearts! Ah!…He is the source of spiritual life! No sun in the sky, no life…..no Jesus, no life! Ahhhhh…” So I had just taken a few of these teaching metaphors.
You can do the same thing with water. What does the water do? I ran a day camp once, and I wouldn’t let the kids drink all day. The whole purpose was, “What’s water?” Water is the source of life. If you don’t have water after three, four, five days, you’re probably not going to survive. And after one day, the kids are screaming that they are thirsty! Gonna die! Well, what does Scripture say? I’m going to give you water that will quench your thirst. John has some wonderful teachings. What else does water do? Well, water cleans. As I say to the kids in Russia, did you have a shower this morning? Yeah… Good, you don’t have to take one now the rest of your life! What?!! No, that’s not true. Water cleanses, it keeps cleansing. And so there’s, in Titus, a relating of spirituality to being washed. And in Psalm 51, David’s prayer after his horrible sin…wash me and I’ll be whiter than snow. Can you think of anything whiter than snow? So, what does water do? Water refreshes, water cleans.
So I try to remind people of some of these metaphors that are biblical that are available at camp. Last spring at a training session in Russia they found a horrible thorn bush. It just had long gigantic thorns! And I said, where are thorns talked about in the Scriptures? And they said…well, Christ had a crown of thorns. And I said, I wonder if you can make a crown? And they stuck themselves, but they made a very impressive crown of thorns. And we put it up on the piano and then we looked at those passages in Scripture where they shoved that crown upon him— and that brought the whole Passion of Christ much more real to us.
What other activities do you have to help people have spiritual discoveries?
Those seem to me to be so natural when you like the outdoors and you find yourself in the outdoors. I have a thesis written by a friend of mine at the University of Pennsylvania, Penn State, when a lady was on the faculty, and he did his masters work under her. She was a believer, and he wanted to do something that related to the outdoors and Scripture. So, she suggested, this was back in ’73, she suggested that he take the Gospels and put them into a computer and have the print out— it’d be a statistical study of all of the uses of outdoor settings and outdoor objects that appeared in the Gospels, broken down by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John— all four. And so the whole thesis is really a statistical study. He doesn’t do anything on interpretation, just says here is the data. Well, I ran across this thesis, he gave it to me and said, “You can do anything with it you want.” So, I’ve made dozens of copies, I’ve used it all kinds of ways. But one of the uses I made of it is, I’ve looked at Christian Camps, both in America and in Russia and I’ve said, what things in the Gospels appear in every camp?
And so, I found that there are between 10 and 20— therefore I developed those 10 or 15 things to the point where I can go anywhere. And now my focus is on Russia, and I’m thinking of the camps where I’ve been— last summer I spent over two months in 15 different camps, and I’ve now been on 20 or 30 camp sites in the former Soviet Union, and I know the sort of natural objects, creations of God, that are there that are also used as spiritual lessons in the Gospels. And so, I can talk about gardening and trees and flowers and birds and goats and grass and sun and water. So, you can take a group of campers on a walk, as I did last summer, and in 10 minutes, give them a little experiential tour of something that they can see and feel and touch and smell and taste sometimes and say, do you know what the New Testament says about that? Or do you know what the Book of Psalms says, or, you know, what the Bible says?
And you can help them, like I shared with you the couple of things about water and the sun, and trees. And my thought is, if they can see enough of these, and they can hopefully see a tree and see water and think of the very simple but very profound spiritual lesson that’s used by Jesus or somebody else, the lessons will stick in their memories. Often it’s Job and very often it’s in the Psalms. Right now, I am doing a study of Psalm 104 and I have gotten some of the commentary analysis of it, and the breakdown of it, and the form of it, and I’m seeing that in Psalm 104, not only is the psalmist amazingly awestruck by God’s creation, but again he uses some of the things that I’ve used in the New Testament. Here this one Psalm can serve as the basis to talk about the trees and water and springs and animals and crops that people grow. Russians are big into their dacha, and their dacha is a piece of ground out in the country where they grow their garden. Many Russians have a dacha. And they grow flowers, that they can enjoy, and they grow vegetables that will help carry them through the winter. And in Psalm 104, it talks about the gardens—crops that people grow that bring them joy. So, I’m into these little lessons that you can share— not a sermon that you can preach, but an experience that you can give people, quickly and succinctly, and ask them questions and then let them respond. So that’s kind of been my most recent experience. I don’t run that many weekend retreats anymore— I do this with my grandkids!
Being outdoors seems to reconnect us with the medium through which Jesus often taught; is that what makes it so much more than what we might get in church sometimes?
I’m convinced that Christian camping is successful in large part because, even almost by accident, we have copied what Jesus did. He was a teacher, a rabbi. He wasn’t the only rabbi— there were all kinds of rabbis. And we know that historically, rabbis customarily rented a room somewhere near the local synagogue. Jesus took his 12 students, his disciples, and he took them outdoors. Now it wasn’t just because the crowds were so large that he had to be on the side of a hill for the Sermon on the Mount. His purpose was to train the disciples; incidentally, the crowds followed and then he taught them as well. But in those three years, his purpose was to train 12 people. And I believe he chose the outdoors because he said to himself, as the God-Man: “I was with the Father when these things were created,” however many centuries ago, years ago, millennia ago. “And I remember that these things gave God joy, and I got joy” — Colossians 1 says Christ was with God in the beginning when the things were created. And so as the God-Man, when he’s teaching his 12 disciples, it’s natural for him to talk about the four kinds of soil, it’s natural for him to talk about the sheep and the goats. As the creator he has an awareness of the intrinsic lesson that he wants to share with people— and most of his parables are nature oriented. And those things are parables that are from creation, that have a spiritual lesson. His disciples were with him. And he shared those things with them.
Seems to me that when camps came along, they used the same environment, they had the same context of the small groups— that’s why camps today talk about the cabin group. How many? Seven, eight, nine, ten kids— and never more than that. Where are camps? Camps are in usually beautiful locations. I’ve never been to a camp that is in an ugly spot, that’s been on some garbage dump— it’s usually at a pretty place. Now, pretty is subjective— I was at camp in Illinois that’s cornfields where we went cross-country skiing in the winter and that was their “pretty “ spot. It wasn’t ugly, but when you compare it to Oregon, it’s not… But camps are basically using the outdoor environment. And it seems to me that the success of the camp is in large part based on how well they use and utilize that outdoor environment.
So, my plea to Christian camp leaders for decades has been— use your environment. And that’s where this thesis came in. It was so helpful because it gave chapter and verse of all the things that Christ used in teaching. He doesn’t describe the spiritual lesson, but he just describes the spot or the object. And it seems to me that wherever we are around the world, we can use these sorts of things. I’ve been at camps in Central America, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa… in Russia, I worked at a camp all summer in Siberia and I worked in a camp all summer near the Black Sea, and so, you know, I got a lot of experience. I’ve been in the Philippines, and they’re all using an outdoor environment, but to more or less of a degree are they capitalizing on what they’ve really got? That’s what my emphasis has been.
People, almost by default, are just ignoring the outdoor environments— they’re doing all of these fun activities, kids are coming and having wonderful experiences, many times life changing experiences, but it’s not because they’re capitalizing on the outdoor environment that could give them so much more practical teaching material.
The other piece is Jesus going into the wilderness, during his 40 days of temptation, and being hungry, being thirsty. The wilderness is not a friendly place. All of God’s creation is not nice and wonderful. Snakes bite, floods happen, hurricanes happen, and yet in the Old Testament God’s character is often described in terms of some of the things of nature: its thundering voice, Moses in the wildness, the lightning, the fire, the cloud—and yet where in that was the presence of God. Or Elijah, in the cave— God passed by, and he wasn’t in the hurricane, he wasn’t in the fire, he wasn’t in the thunder; he was in the still, small voice. And Elijah, after his contest with the prophets of Baal, goes 40 days into the wilderness, lays down and says, “God, nobody is loving you and you’ve forgotten me, let me die.” And God in the wilderness restores him, causes him to sleep and eat, and then he goes to this mountain and hears the voice, the still, small voice of God. Where God gives him a new job, a new task.
There is a lot of wilderness stuff that is different than what Jesus taught the disciples in Palestine. I think that is a whole other piece, and so a lot of people have asked, what do you learn from the wilderness? For example, Susan (Power-) Bratton; she sent me her original dissertation before it became the book. And so I had never bought the book (Christianity, Wilderness, and Wildlife: the Original Desert Solitaire). I just still have the dissertation. But she does a marvelous job in describing that other aspect of the outdoors, the wilderness.
And I’ve experienced that as well, in the wilderness, in the backpacking, in the river running and those sorts of things. And so, there are the two pieces. There’s the Christian camp, the retreat center, but then there’s also the person that goes to the wilderness— and that’s where the Native American went for the Vision Quest. I’ve been on a weekend retreat with Tom Brown. I’ve read everything that he’s written. He’s a humanist through and through, and yet, there is something about his love of the outdoors. I went to a weekend four-day conference at a state park in Washington, and I watched him track the animals and I listened to him, and there’s something about him that captures that part of the wilderness that a lot of people ignore… You know, I read his first book and thought— man, this guy’s got a lot of B.S., and yet when I spent the weekend with him, I don’t believe that— I think he has sensitivity to nature, and to the grizzly, and to the badger, and all the things he writes about. His spending a night in an oak tree during a storm really spoke to me. And yet, no awareness of the spiritual— the Native American spiritual perhaps, but biblical, no— not any interest or concern at all. But I can’t write him off. I can’t— there’s something that he’s experienced that I wish— that I’ve experienced a little of, but not much of, because I’ve never gone to the extreme of living for a year in the Pine Barrens wilderness like he has, or anything like that.
So that’s the same way with Steve Van Matre, who wrote these books on acclimatization and acclimatizing. I wrote to him and I said, do you realize how closely biblical you are? And he said, “Yeah, you’re not the first Christian that’s told me that.” And just by his response, I could tell there’s not a real lot of interest in biblical spirituality. But there is something about the way he describes the human body with its senses that is very spiritual. And so I’ve been able to take it, and others have been able to take it, just one step further, and make it a very meaningful experience using his exercises, make it a very meaningful experience in a Christian context.
So, one of things that I’ve learned in my years is that I don’t write people off. All truth is God’s truth and I really believe that. And I don’t believe that all people are godly, nor want to be nor pretend to be. But many of these outdoor people that have had these kinds of experiences— I’ve wondered about Muir, I’ve been to his little cottage down in Yosemite. I have been on a two-week trek with a guide who called it “Opening the Book of Nature,” and I’ve been down there, and I’ve read Muir, and yet, I mean, he always just kind of falls a little short of what— well, biblical truth? Why, lots of truth, lots of meaningful sorts of experiences— same way with Thoreau at Walden, but…
Joseph Cornell is another person. I have all of his literature, and I’ve gone by his center, although I have not gone in it, and I have a video that he’s put out, I have 5 or 6 books of his— it’s wonderful stuff, and yet it’s a little too new-agey for me. But, there is an element of sensitivity and truth, and what he does, some of his fun exercises with kids— it’s just, it’s great. And I’ve shown his video to my students. And he has a book that he’s published of beautiful sayings and pictures— and I’ve shown it to my students. And I’ve said, “How far can you go? What do you think? Be honest, be open.” And they’ve made some very interesting judgments about him and what they see from what the video says and what his book says, and his books for children— because I used his books for children for years. And his statement on how to interpret the outdoors is wonderful—I used that in the introduction to my book that was translated into Russian—the five or six steps of how to teach, and how to help people understand and appreciate the outdoors. So there are a bunch of people that have been very helpful to me, and I’ve utilized. And I’ve been grateful for it. They just don’t go far enough, or whatever, but still— very helpful.
What advice would you give to others who want to teach this way?
Well, I think the individual needs to open up his or her senses personally. Just be aware of what’s around. That’s a good place to start. And the teachable moment is also key— the outdoor educator knows when to discover that time, when there’s something there, and it’s really the moment to learn it. That’s key. And to be aware of what’s in the environment. Whether it’s your home or a park or a camp or a wilderness. Then get historical perspective. Starting with the Scriptures. What do the Scriptures say about creation and the outdoors? You know, a lot of people get hung up on “creationism” — how old is the world and evolution. To me it is not how, it’s that it’s here. And whatever is here, in my judgment, is the result of God. “In the beginning God…” Now how he did it— you know I have convictions, and yet I know other Christians who are also scientists, even at our own university, have varying views on the age and how all that happened. To me it doesn’t enter in at all. What is here is what we have, and so what we have is also talked about then in the Scriptures. And so, look at what is the relationship of what you find at a camp to what is in Scripture— and kind of bring them together. Think about them— you know, tie them in. And don’t be preachy. Just help people to see and to look and observe.
I spent a whole summer with the day campers at Tilikum with the theme of trees. The whole summer! And the more we spent, the more creative the kids got, as far as from week to week, adding cute things about the trees, and bark and leaves, and growth, and fruit bearing, and the stories that trees would tell if they could tell a story. So, out of that we picked a tree and put a tape together and had the talking tree. We sat the kids down, and plugged the tape in, and this tree says: “hello boys and girls, would you like to hear about this property you are sitting on and what it was like 150 years ago…” Yeah, yeah, and the kids acted just like the tree was talking to them! And we told all about the settlers and Indians, and the way the old journals talked about what this looked like back in the 1850’s when it was made a donation land claim under Abraham Lincoln! This whole area was donation land claim.
And so, just, you know, let people think and be— I think the biggest thing a person could do is just to thoughtfully consider how, where they’re at or what they have to do that can be meaningfully presented. If people become aware, then every time they pick up a Readers Digest or a National Geographic or any of the outdoor magazines, or anything, they’ll see that there are articles, and people have made observations, and they can clip it and use it. I’ve got two filing cabinets full of stuff that I’ve collected over the last 30 years. Just because I look and I’ve been aware of what others have said and have written about, and then I’ve taken it and have adapted it. So just, to me, have an awareness.
I think there are a lot of camp people who get so bogged down in fundraising and day-to-day issues, legal issues, other sorts of things, trying to come up with the latest hot programming gimmick, even in technology, that they’re not rediscovering the outdoors, and so, these things are just going right by. The kids come to camp— yeah, they swim in the lake, or they play ball out on the field, but there’s very little emphasis. So, I’ve held out for years saying don’t assume just because a camp’s in the outdoors that camp people are emphasizing the outdoors. Because I don’t think that‘s true. I’m more encouraged, but I am not encouraged also in certain areas, because I think we’re maybe going backwards. But I have students who’ve gone on and are today doing things very much like they were trained to do in some of my classes, and I’ve visited their camps where they’re leaders— this does give me hope.
Postscript
“It seems that the emphasis of my work, especially my MDiv thesis of 1995 called Rediscovering the Outdoors, was maybe 10-15 years ahead of its time. Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder is a 2005 book by author Richard Louv that documents decreased exposure of children to nature in American society and how this “nature-deficit disorder” harms children and society. This book, subsequent books, and Louv’s ’round the world speaking have all resulted in a new awareness of the importance of the outdoors in the life of humans. Much of what I documented, Louv talks about. I’ve had occasion to be with him several times and we emailed quite regularly 10 or 12 years ago. He is delightful. I promised him I would pray for him to have wisdom and strength as he spread his message.”
Additional work by Gary Fawver:
His dissertation, Rediscovering the Outdoors, can be purchased for view on the Theological Research Exchange Network