I feel as if I’ve stabbed an old friend in the back.
Tonight, the Mountain T.O.P. board approved a very difficult budget for 2005. Our Youth Summer Ministry, after several years of decline in a changing environment for short-term missions, has stabilized and is showing some signs of potential growth. But our Adults In Ministry (AIM) program, hurt by rising costs and dropping camper numbers, is being refocused. In 2005, there will be only two week-long AIM camps, not three as in the past, and they will offer only major home repair. The programs that I’ve participated in over the years, Kaleidoscope and Summer Plus, will not be held in 2005.
Kaleidoscope was (and perhaps will be again, some time down the road) an arts camp for special-needs children from the Cumberland Mountains. Summer Plus was (and perhaps will be again) an enrichment program for teens from the mountains. Also suspended for 2005 was Day Camp, another program for mountain children. I posted here, prematurely, in September that Day Camp was being moved from YSM to AIM; now, it won’t be held at all.
I understand the budgetary reasons for this decision. I did not, and can not, dispute or debate them. The board did what it had to do to save the ministry. But, as I told my fellow board members tonight, the decision breaks my heart — for selfish reasons and on behalf of the mountain children and teenagers who benefitted so much from these summer activities.
My selfish reasons, of course, were that Summer Plus and Kaleidoscope were my primary connection to the Mountain T.O.P. ministry as a camper. I first participated in Summer Plus in 1993. From 1998 through 2003, I attended two different AIM weeks each summer just so that I could do both Summer Plus and Kaleidoscope.
Please keep the Mountain T.O.P. ministry in prayer, but also pray for the children and teens of Grundy and Marion counties who were once served by these programs.