Super Summer team leader Lyndsey Stumpf attended IBSA’s student discipleship week for the first time prior to her freshman year in high school. “And that was actually when I came to realize that the way I was living was not even like a Christian,” she recalled. “I had never been saved before.”
Stumpf, a member of First Baptist Church, Bethalto, accepted Christ that summer, and cited the intentional discipleship she received as one of the main reasons she still attends Super Summer today. Now a junior in college studying biblical counseling, Stumpf sees the need among middle school and high school girls to learn the spiritual disciplines and standards she was taught.
“They need to be discipled,” said Stumpf, who served as a team leader in the Yellow School (pictured below). Along with other adult leaders at Super Summer, Stumpf is dedicated to investing in the next generation.
This year, 136 students attended Super Summer 2016 at Greenville College. The week is for students in grades 6-12. It is mostly geared toward those who are already leaders in their youth group – with the intent of discipling them to go back to their church and make even more disciples.
“That’s what this camp is all about,” said Pastor Chip Faulkner from First Baptist, Bethalto, “maturing in Christ in such a way that passes it on.”
All week long, kids take classes with their individual school, determined by their age and designated by a color the students wear during recreation time. Andrew White, a recent high school graduate from First Baptist Church, Mascoutah, said, “We are in class or in worship most of the day when we’re not sleeping or eating.” He and fellow Gray School member Abby Olcott talked about how intentional discipleship at Super Summer the last three years has had great impact on their development as leaders.
“It’s very high quality, what’s done [here],” said Olcott, a member of Woodland Baptist Church in Peoria. White chimed in that the high-caliber people and more intense teaching at this particular camp are the reasons he has returned multiple times.
A high percentage of Super Summer graduates come back during their college years to serve as team leaders – a testament to the camp’s strong discipleship focus. One of those leaders, Alex Hancock, said that in his school alone, three of the other team leaders attended Super Summer with him as students just the year before, “and there’s two or three more [in other schools] as well!”
Brooklyn Byars, a 16-year-old from First Baptist Church in McLeansboro and a Super Summer veteran, was one of the girls in Lyndsey Stumpf’s group this year. She said the training she’s received at Super Summer has inspired her to help other people. “I’ve [even] started a small group,” she said, something she never thought she could do before.
Asked about having Stumpf as one of her team leaders this year, Byars said, “It’s been great. I’ve had questions that I’ve come and asked her about, and she answered them. In small group, we’ve had good discussions.”
Chip Faulkner, who is Stumpf’s pastor in Bethalto, noted how much different generations can teach and learn from one another when they take the time to gather in biblical fellowship at events like Super Summer. “This is cooperation partnership at its best,” he said, “discipling generations that are making other disciples. That’s what it’s all about.”