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Khasema Drinkard scanned the hundreds of young faces looking in her direction. It had been several days since she and two other chaperones — Anilda Barbosa and Wade Norman — arrived at the Christian camp, a wooded paradise on the banks of the snaking Table Rock Lake in the Ozarks, a 40-minute drive from Branson, Missouri’s entertainment mecca.
Although just 575 miles from Chicago’s Agape Center, the Kids Across America sports camp was a world away for the 17 inner-city teens traveling to the weeklong outdoors experience.
“They hated it the first two days,” Drinkard said. “They were full on ‘Take me back to the city.’ ‘We in the middle of nowhere.’ ‘We gotta hike to our food.’ ‘This is crazy, dude, bugs.’ ‘It's hot.’
“They had every complaint under the sun … but by day three, I feel they weren't ready to admit that they liked it, but they weren't complaining, either.”
The Agape Center students, some never traveling beyond their neighborhoods, attended the camp after completing Cru® Inner City’s Teens Summer Job Initiative, launched in 2023. For three weeks, the teens received practical training in financial management, goal setting, job skills and Bible instruction. The program also included paying jobs working with the Chicago team’s local partner ministries.
The camp was intended to change the teens’ environment and to build upon spiritual foundations, resulting from the Chicago teams’ yearslong investment into the kids’ lives. Only a few of the teens were new to the Agape Center, first joining for the jobs program.
Kids Across America, which specializes in serving inner-city children, operates three different age-specific programs on the single parcel, a peninsula edged by lakefront property. Biblical teachings are interspersed with a grocery list of recreation: football, baseball, soccer, basketball, wrestling, volleyball, archery, rock climbing, a challenge course, ziplining, gaga ball, swimming, trampolines, weights, games, lake activities and an arts bus.
“I visually saw them have that moment where they got it. ‘Oh, this is what God wants for me’ or ‘This is who I'm supposed to be in God because of Him.’”
During their stay, camp counselors served as mentors while the traveling chaperones were provided their own time of refreshing. During group meetings, the chaperones monitored how their teens were adapting.
“My hope is that the camp came along and gave them the personal (view): This is why I do this. This is why I trust God to teach me about finances. This is why I trust God to help me with my career, because he impacted my life in a way that I can't put into words,” Drinkard said.
Throughout the week, there were numerous occasions when she witnessed spiritual truths click.
“I visually saw them have that moment where they got it. ‘Oh, this is what God wants for me’ or ‘This is who I'm supposed to be in God because of Him,’” she said. “That made me like, ‘OK, I need a private room where I can sob.’”
As Drinkard watched one teen open up to his camp counselor, she was grateful for a new voice speaking into the young man’s life.
“He could still be poured into through these short-term relationships, but I'm so glad that he also has a consistent place to keep growing and not have to look for little pieces of relationship here and there,” she said.
After several days of acclimating to the facility and its programming, on-site staff gathered their young charges together into their three mini camps for an age-appropriate presentation about the crucifixion called Cross Talk. Afterward, the chaperones joined the camp staff for an altar call.
“God, even if it’s just one, I’ll praise you. I'll be so grateful. But if no one comes up, then, keep teaching us how to keep doing the work.”
As one of the leaders prayed, Khasema closed her eyes, saying she didn’t want the older teens she accompanied to feel pressured to respond. She wanted the decision to be between each teen and the Father.
“God, even if it’s just one, I’ll praise you,” she said with her eyes still tightly shut. “I'll be so grateful. But if no one comes up, then, keep teaching us how to keep doing the work.”
When she finally opened her eyes, the four girls in her group were sprinting to the altar, tears blurring their path.
“We said the prayer to accept the Lord, and then we hugged and cried some more,” Drinkard said. “Then they were like, ‘We gotta find the boys. We gotta find the boys. Can we go pray with them?’”
All four of the older boys also accepted Christ.
In all, 13 of the 17 teens either accepted Christ or rededicated their lives. Through the process, Drinkard and Barbosa, who chaperoned the younger campers, could see some inner struggles. Bruce, one of the younger boys, told Barbosa early on that he was scared because he could feel himself becoming a different person.
“It’s encouraging that God is moving in how He is in control and softening these kids.”
“That was the type of environment we were in,” Barbosa said. “It’s encouraging that God is moving in how He is in control and softening these kids. We can be listening and sharing all we want, but sometimes the youth have hardened their hearts. In this setting, it helps them to understand and grasp the gospel because this is so different.”
Initially, there was plenty of uncertainty as the teens negotiated new surroundings without the distractions of big city life.
“There was a spectrum of responses,” Drinkard said. “I think there were a couple of teens that were kind of just there to be there. I can tell that there was an internal impact, but I think that they just struggled to put words to it. It was different for them. They’d never really been immersed in an environment like that.”
For others, the camp experience built upon their growing relationship with Jesus, resulting from their longtime involvement with the Agape Center.
“This was like a reignition for them,” Drinkard said. “There were tears, but they weren't necessarily sad tears or even just happy tears, just overwhelming emotion. Then there were some teens that — honestly, I still don't know how to describe it — because it was so intense for them. There was crying and shouting, and on the ground at one point, and then they were jumping and celebrating at another point.”
One of the most deeply affected teens was Tamera, who was mostly looking forward to the sports and outdoor activities offered at the camp. An Agape Center faithful for years, Tamera never took the step of faith because, like many, she believed she needed to polish herself up first. That all changed during the Cross Talk.
“We were doing worship and she was on her knees with her hands to the sky, just sobbing and crying out to God,” Drinkard said. “I was watching her from a distance, being in that position, in that posture, and being, ‘Who is she? What is happening right now, Lord?’
“During the sermon, I never saw her eyes leave the pastor once … she was just really locked in with what he was saying.”
Tamera was one of the first to get to Drinkard after the altar call.
“She left the presentation to call her grandma,” she said. “She wanted to tell her immediately that she had just accepted Jesus and to call her mom. She immediately wants to tell everybody.”
In a separate gathering space elsewhere on the property, Barbosa was having a parallel experience as she watched her 13- and 14-year-olds respond to a realistic presentation of Jesus’ beating and crucifixion, followed by an altar call.
“Kids just started running up (to the altar). Some of my girls were crying. I was crying. It was heavy and intense. It was hundreds of kids and a lot of emotions.”
“It was an intense moment of them seeing what He did for them on the cross,” Barbosa said. “I was thinking maybe they won’t be moved by it because they had been exposed to it so many times at the Agape Center, but didn’t respond.
“Kids just started running up (to the altar). Some of my girls were crying. I was crying. It was heavy and intense. It was hundreds of kids and a lot of emotions.”
Debra, who was in the fourth grade when Inner City staff members first began working with her, was the first of them to reach Barbosa.
“I immediately fell apart,” Barbosa said.
Then there was Blake, who couldn’t wait to tell Barbosa that he woke up that morning praying for one of his new friends who had left camp the previous night.
“He was excited because he never prayed like that before,” Barbosa said. “He was filled with joy and peace.”
With a busy post-camp summer that included an all-Cru conference in Milwaukee and summer travel, the Chicago team still plans to debrief with the teens as part of their ongoing commitment to discipleship training.
“We want to keep it going,” Barbosa said. “This is important because it is one of those moments we can look back on in those seasons of drought.”
She noted that the staff members often receive calls and letters from adults who attended Agape Center decades earlier, saying the spiritual instruction they received served them well throughout their lives or provided an anchor if they went adrift.
“We want to use this time to instill that this is a place of safety and that they have something to come back to,” she said. “I’ve been praying that as they come out of that environment and go back to school without their Christian friends, that they continue to try to find more Christian communities and encourage each other in their new walk and that they don’t stray or go back to what life was like before camp. We need to be diligent in the time that we have with them to encourage their walk as they declare their newfound faith.”
Lori Arnold serves as the senior writer for Cru's inner-city ministry.
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