Hey everyone!! My name is Cailie Bruxvoort and I have the privilege of being the Communications Intern for this summer at Summer Training Project (STP/Project)! I’m a senior Ministry and Communications student at the University of Northwestern-St. Paul, and I am also serving as a team leader for this summer. I am so excited to keep y’all updated on everything that is going on down here in South Carolina and all that God is doing!
It’s been a full week down at Project, but it feels like we’ve been here for a whole month! Leaders arrived on June 3 and participants arrived shortly after on June 5. This summer is a unique one because we have students from three different Campus Outreach regions: Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Louisville. With around 70 students representing 11 different colleges, it has been a great week getting to know and making friends with so many different people! Before I hop into this first week recap, I’d like to define some STP jargon.
STP Jargon
Teams: Project is split up into four different teams led by one male and one female team leader. Each team has their team leaders, room leaders, and participants. The team leaders are in charge of their team, logistics of Project, and leading the room leaders on their team. The room leaders lead a room of two- four other guys or girls.
Theme Nights: refer to Monday nights where we have a Project meal where all Project eats together followed by a meeting time consisting of a hype, testimony, talk, and worship. The hype is an interactive introduction to the theme night put on by whoever is planning out the week. Theme night is most similar to a camp rally.
D-groups: Short for discipleship groups, a d-group consists of either a room and its participants, or a team leader and their room leaders. In the discipleship group, Bible study, connection, prayer, and vulnerability are emphasized.
Socials: Thursday night we have the weekly social consisting of a Project meal and a planned out activity for everyone to participate in.
Word Training: Word Training is on Friday mornings where we get trained in effective ways to read and study the Bible.
Evangelism Training: On Saturday mornings, we all meet together to train in why and how to share our faith. After the training, we go to workshop time where we go out on the beach to engage in conversation with people we don’t know.
Life Training: The last training to note takes place on Sunday mornings before church. For these training sessions, we discuss real cultural issues from a Biblical worldview.
Summer Theme
Each Summer Project, a different book of the Bible and Theme are focused on. This summer, we are reading through the book of 1 Peter with our theme verses being:
“And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.”
-1 Peter 1:17-19
The theme for this summer then is Exiles! By focusing on our status as exiles on earth, we get to spend the summer learning about who God is, who we are as Christians, and what it means to live a set apart life as an exile here on earth.
First Week Highlights
Evangelism Training
The first thing I want to highlight from the past week was our evangelism training. For the summer, our training is focused on living a life full of real relationships full of gospel persuasion.
For the first training, the focus was on why we should want to be laborers for the Kingdom of God. The talk also discussed three common difficulties of living a missional life and how to combat those difficulties. The talk portion ended with a time for small group reflection on why we personally struggle to live lives of evangelism and what most excites us about it.
After the talk, we were tasked with our group to go out to the beach and engage with strangers in conversation. The goal of the time was to create reps of getting comfortable talking with strangers and asking intentional questions that would ultimately lead to a gospel conversation. While most people were very nervous to go out on the beach, everyone came back excited to debrief their conversations and learn from each other's experiences. So far, this has been both mine and most other’s favorite time and what we are most looking forward to for the future.
Thursday Night Social
On the fun and fellowship side of projects, socials are incredible. This past week, the social was the Low Country Boil, a night for all us Northerners to really embrace and become acclimated to the caricature of Southern culture – hick-hood.
Imagine a night with everyone dressed in the most hick garb they could find from Goodwill, a feast of boiled shrimp, sausage, potatoes, and onions dumped out into the middle of the table where everyone eats with their fingers, karaoke, and a multitude of competitions including a watermelon eating and toilet plunger throwing contest. Needless to say, many laughs were had and friendships created through such a fun evening together.
Culture of Project
This year, the team leaders and staff have been very intentional about creating a culture on Project where people spend time together and want to be with each other. So far, it has been really encouraging to see all of the friendships blossoming at Project as people are playing games under the tent, swing dancing in the yard, and having endless amounts of “POOL PARTYYYYY”s.
More importantly though, we have wanted to stress the importance and benefits of getting into the Word of God every day. Only a week in, it has been incredible to see the amount of students excited to get up early before work and study the Word together. It takes around 60 days to form a habit, and we have the incredible opportunity to be down at Summer Training Project for 9 weeks, around 60 days. Summer Training Project is an incredible place to form the habit of treasuring the Bible and carrying it with us for the rest of our lives.