Three days of gospel saturation at a youth camp last week paved the way for a big day Sunday at Farmington Baptist Church in Farmington, Kentucky.
“It was one of the best services we’ve had in a while — the Lord really worked down there, and it spilled over into our service Sunday,” said pastor Ben Stratton as he reflected on six people coming forward for baptism, with several more expected to come forward in the weeks ahead.
The church had 29 teenagers and about a dozen adults go to Laguna Beach, Florida, for the camp. “We rent Christian Cottages Retreat and put on our own camp,” Stratton said, noting the church has been going there every few years since the 1990s. Stratton has pastored Farmington for 16 years.
“We left on Monday and came home on Friday,” he said, but noted the three days between the travel days were filled with Bible study, devotionals and preaching. “We had four boys get saved there — it was a great week.”
The Tuesday through Thursday schedule included youth minister Jamie Kendall giving a daily devotional from 1 John, Bible study in the afternoon and teens being divided into teams and competing in Scripture memorization. Kendall said that 25 campers read the entire book of 1 John and 23 of them read all of the Gospel of Luke. There were 42 memory blocks of verses memorized in addition to 92 individual verses memorized. Three teens memorized entire chapters of 1 John.
‘Intensive week’
There were devotionals in the boys cabin and girls cabin and was worship in the evening that included Stratton preaching four times during the camp.
“We gave them some free time, games and activities,” but “there was a tremendous amount of Scripture during the day. We were cramming the Word of God — reading, studying, hearing and memorizing it — it was an intensive week in the Scripture, and we know the word bears fruit,” Stratton noted.
At Sunday morning’s worship service at Farmington, Stratton preached from Hosea 10:12 about “break up your unplowed ground. It is time to seek the Lord until He comes and sends righteousness on you like the rain.” He also used Jer. 23:29 where it talks about the Lord’s word being “like a hammer that breaks the rock into pieces.” Stratton noted, “When the word of God is preached it breaks up the hard hearts. (On Sunday), people kept coming forward, coming to pray — people are so excited.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Chip Hutcheson and originally published by Kentucky Today.
