Earlier this summer, I was holed up in my temporary dorm room at Converse University, groaning at my laptop while my students and our other church chaperones were outside practicing their performances for the annual camp variety show. I heard faint versions of their giggles and chatter as I typed away.
Converse is one of the locations of Passport camps, which provides an ecumenical and interdenominational summer camp experience for children and teens to worship and find community amid a week of fun and challenging activities, like volleyball tournaments or local mission projects. As I ponder my sense of calling to “ministry,” I have chaperoned youth groups to three iterations of Passport.
In another vein of my professional life, since becoming connected to BNG four years ago, I have written about a handful of topics. These days, much of my work attempts to tell stories of sexual abuse that happen in Christian institutions, like the summer camp Kanakuk, based in Branson, Mo.
Mallory Challis
Because of this, the summer always brings mixed feelings into my heart. This year, especially.
A couple of times during our scheduled “free time” at Passport, when most of my students were playing games, taking naps or chatting with their newfound friends, I had to turn “off” my joyful chaperone personality to do journalism.
While they were safely gathering in community with peers and other chaperones who did not have emails to attend to, I was working on my latest project about sexual abuse. That meant talking with survivors about what it might look like to publish their stories and trying to steady my anxious heart while calling BNG Editor Mark Wingfield to discuss the horrific stories I learn more about every week.
And when those “free times” were over, I turned my chaperone personality back “on” for the next activity. I did not realize how tiring this switching was until the drive home, when I finally had some time to process the week.
I had been wondering to myself, “What unsafe things could be happening that I can’t see right now?”
I had been wondering to myself, “What unsafe things could be happening that I can’t see right now?” Not just near me, but anywhere in the world.
I typically blame my paranoia on being an Enneagram 1, which is the perfectionist personality on the profile’s spectrum. Admittedly, rules and regulations always have made me feel safe. Knowing what guidelines I ought to be following and having a playbook for responding when someone breaks the rules gives me a sense of control over my anxieties.
But this obsession with rule-following felt more intense — and a little dramatic — compared to years past.
After all, I certainly was in a safe space at Passport. The organization has strong procedures in place to keep kids safe. They have worried about these things and created a leadership structure that prevents opportunities for abuse. Every adult who walks into camp is background checked and responsibly vetted before having access to kids.
And in the three iterations of Passport I’ve chaperoned with youth, nothing would lead me to believe bad things were happening there. The entire week at camp always felt very safe.
In fact, here are a few of the safety measures Passport takes to protect campers:
- Background checks are required for all adult leaders.
- Their Safe Harbor policy prohibits adult chaperones — regardless of background check status — from rooming with campers.
- Staff counseling protocols include a strict rule that no Passport staffer is ever alone in a room with a camper.
- Any report of camper misconduct, verbal harassment or abuse is addressed immediately and decisively.
So, what was I paranoid about?
As I drove, my mind wrestling with possible sources of anxiety, I recalled the theme verse for this year: “God stood me up in wide open spaces; I stood there saved — surprised to be loved!” (Psalm 18:19)
The camp theme was “Wide Open Spaces.”
We learned about the broad possibilities of God’s love and how it beckons us to engage the world with open arms. Camp preachers told stories about moments when they felt called to welcome, wonder, act and dance. Students learned about Carson and Laura Foushee, who are Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel doing ministry alongside a small community in Japan. And we were encouraged to think about what wide open spaces God might have stood us up in to cultivate relationships, work for social justice or explore God’s love in our own lives.
As I recalled what we learned at camp, I realized each time I left that wide open space to sit alone at my laptop with stories of abuse, I had been straddling a dichotomy of spaciousness and silence.
Even though I spent the week in a safe space with safe adults, I was reminded of the thin line between safety and violence.
Even though I spent the week in a safe space with safe adults, I was reminded of the thin line between safety and violence. Between empowering young people and using power to abuse them.
The wide open space my students and I experienced at Passport was totally antithetical to the small, cramped and dark spaces I had encountered while reporting on sexual abuse at Christian institutions like Kanakuk, the Lord’s Ranch and local churches where power had gone awry.
While one of these spaces allowed my students to think about and experience God’s love in deep and dynamic ways, others facilitated traumatic violations of bodily autonomy. While one showed students how God’s love was bigger than anything they could imagine, others closed the door on God’s love by letting abusers reign free.
Still driving, I wondered about my own sense of calling, which constantly feels the pulls of both journalism and ministry. I thought about the complex spaces God had stood me up in.
And I realized God had stood me up in the midst of this dichotomy, not because I ought to be paranoid at every moment — it’s OK to lean into safety, vulnerability and peace.
But because God had called me as a journalist to bring stories of sexual abuse out of the darkness of their closed-off spaces and into the light of God’s wide open one, where survivors can be stood up with confidence and bravery. And at once, I realized I had been called to ministry to protect the tender balance of safety and freedom, which allows us to explore God’s love without restriction.
God had stood me up in this complex space, bolstering my posture with this calling. I had been positioned at the intersection of love and fear, where stories of survival and possibilities of freedom meet.
And what a joy it is to live in that wide open space — saved from my anxiety and surprised by God’s love.
Mallory Challis is a summer staff writer for BNG. She is a Master of Divinity Student at Wake Forest University School of Divinity and is a former BNG Clemons Fellow.
Related articles:
Litigation in Yandel v. Kanakuk proceeds in court of appeals
Judge dismisses Yandell v. Kanakuk claims, but litigation may proceed
Kanakuk survivors speak on nondisclosure agreements at House hearing
Eight more former residents of the Lord’s Ranch come forward about alleged sexual abuse