Well, staff training worship was a great success tonight. It certainly seems like we have a great group of staffers, and it was a moving service. This is from the traditional singing of the “Mountain T.O.P.” song at the end of the evening, when we formed a big circle around Altamont Baptist Church.
When Brown Bannister wrote “The Mountain Top Song,” he didn’t have our ministry in mind. But, back in the 1980s (long before I had gotten involved), the ministry asked him for permission to use it as our official theme song. It’s perfect!
To quote the chorus:
I’d love to live on a mountain top
Fellowshipping with the Lord
I’d love to stand on a mountain top
‘Cause I’d love to feel my spirit soar
But I’ve got to come down from that mountain top
To the people in the valley below
Or they’ll never know that they can go
To the mountain of the Lord
I’ll be leaving in a little bit for Mountain T.O.P. summer opening, which is a dinner and commissioning service for the college-aged summer staff who will run our camps. Hopefully, I’ll post some photos late tonight when I get home.
Until recent years, opening was held Memorial Day weekend, when the staff members were arriving for their training. I like holding it at the end of training much better.
Unfortunately, a scheduling fluke meant that today is also the 50th anniversary celebration for George and Rene Bass, Mountain T.O.P.’s founders, in Nashville. I’m sorry I’m not there to give George and Rene my love and regards.
Here’s a great idea: start a daily devotional blog, and then when you have written 365 devotions, publish them as a book. What a terrific use of blog technology!
Wish I’d thought of it first.
I will, however, have an opportunity to write a devotion which could have a large audience this summer. Ed Simmons, executive director of Mountain T.O.P., e-mailed me and one of our other board members to say that the ministry is going to revise its camper devotionals this year and would like us to contribute if we were willing.
I might rewrite and adapt what I call the “skillet devotion,” which I did a couple of times at AIM in 2002 and then on my first foreign mission trip in Nicaragua in 2003. It ties in nicely with Mountain T.O.P. because it has to do with Lodge Manufacturing in South Pittsburg and the cast-iron cookware they make there. I use the metaphor that a well-seasoned cast iron skillet becomes more useful the more it’s used, as opposed to, for example, most cars, which become less valuable as you put more miles on them. I then apply this to the fact that God uses our struggles and trials to strengthen us.
I’m not sure if these new devotions will be just for the youth ministry or for AIM as well. If they plan to use them at AIM, maybe I shouldn’t do the skillet devotion because some of the AIM crew has already heard it. Then again, it’s been five years and they’ve probably long since forgotten it.
Ed is going to get back to me with more specifics about what they are looking for, and that may answer the question for me.
During late 2005, when Mountain T.O.P. was going through a time of transition, the “Support The Ministry” web site was created as a way for friends of the program to discuss the situation and their visions for the future. Now, the site has been re-launched as a place where friends of the ministry can network and converse. Check it out, won’t you?
In response to Stace’s and Laura’s favorable comments about the return of my header image, here’s the original uncropped photo. This is from Kaleidoscope, a one-week arts camp for special needs kids in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee which is staffed by volunteers from Mountain T.O.P.’s Adults In Ministry program.
This was not from one of our specific arts workshops but from a playtime for the entire group, probably after lunch and before the start of the afternoon workshops.
I was in the kitchen at church from 2 p.m. until almost 10 today, helping cook (and then clean up) for our annual men’s club steak dinner, which this year raised money for the new bathhouse project at Mountain T.O.P. It was a satisfying day — I think the dinner was well-attended and well-received. My sister decided to come up today with the kids, not knowing about the dinner tonight, and luckily they were all able to come as well. Unfortunately, I was stuck in the kitchen and didn’t get much of a chance to visit with everyone tonight, and by the time I left the church it was really too late to go over to my folks’ house. I think I’ll get to see them tomorrow, although I’m not sure exactly what their schedule is.
Andy Borders, our chef extraordinaire, grilled the steaks. We also made Andy’s yummy spinach salad and twice-baked potatoes. We bought cheesecake for dessert, so all we had to do was put a little bit of cherry topping on it.
Anyway, I’m tired tonight, and my back is hurting a little. But it’s the best kind of tired.
During our Mountain T.O.P. board meeting last Saturday, Bob Turner gave a devotion which used a nut and a bolt as examples. A bolt can be held in place by various types of fasteners; it’s actually the bolt, not the nut, which bears the load and the bolt, not the nut, which is irreplaceable. The symbolism was that God is the constant in the universe and it is we who must figure out how we fit into God’s plan.
At the conclusion of the devotion, he gave each of us on the board a little nut and bolt as a memento. I stuffed my nut and bolt into my pocket.
When I did laundry a few days later, I realized that I’d left them in my pocket; when I was retrieving the load from the dryer, I found the bolt but not the nut. So much for my memento!
But then, a few days after that, I did another load of laundry and the nut turned up after all. Fortunately, I had saved the bolt and now I have both of them together again. There has to be some sort of deep, spiritual meaning to this, but I’ll be darned if I know what it is.
Here are my parents with Gail Drake. Gail was at tonight’s tribute as a member of the Bass family — she’s George Bass’s daughter and was director of adult ministry for Mountain T.O.P. for many years. Regular readers of this blog will know her better as one of the co-founders of LEAMIS International Ministries, with which I do my foreign mission trips.
Gail said tonight that so far, the team for our Bolivia trip is, well, small. We will make the trip regardless, and it’s always possible that God is waiting to call someone else to join us.
Here we see Mountain T.O.P. past chair Rich Campbell, right, making a presentation to Mountain T.O.P. founder and past executive director George Bass during a tribute to the Bass family held tonight at Camp Cumberland Pines. The evening was a great success, and I think everyone enjoyed it.
Meanwhile, I think my parents and Andy and Edna Lee Borders have had a great time at Friends Weekend, which began Wednesday evening. They will come home tomorrow morning. They are tired, and in one case sore, but have had a wonderful time in the community of volunteers.
Volunteers during Friends Weekend have made considerable progress towards extending the dining hall at Pines so that the kitchen can be expanded, remodeling the dining room and remodeling the upstairs bathrooms in the lodge.
My parents, along with Andy and Edna Lee Borders from my church, drove to Camp Cumberland Pines today for Mountain T.O.P.Friends Weekend. This is an event in which past Mountain T.O.P. participants, most of them veterans of our Adults In Ministry program, do repairs or renovations to our camp as we prepare for the spring and summer camp seasons. The volunteers this weekend will renovate the bathrooms at the lodge and will expand the kitchen in the dining hall.
They should have a fun time. My parents have been to a fall AIM weekend, but I’m still hoping to get them up for a full AIM week during the summer, maybe not this year, but some time.
In any case, they’ll have fun this week. Some of my favorite Mountain T.O.P. friends will be there, and it should be a great camp community. Friends Weekend isn’t heavily-programmed like one of our camp weeks, so there will be plenty of free time.
I wish I had been able to join them. Between my California vacation this month and the Bolivia mission trip this summer, I have to be parsimonious with my vacation days. I won’t make it to AIM this summer, especially since the Bolivia trip will be right in the middle of the camp season, but if things go well I may be able to catch an AIM weekend this fall.
I will go up to Pines on Saturday afternoon for our Mountain T.O.P. board meeting and for a tribute Saturday night to our founder and retired executive director, George Bass, and his family. I plan to get there a little early Saturday so that I can check out the work going on there in camp and see how my folks are doing.
After exploring the community features of the new United Methodist Church web site last night, I got the idea to set up a “village” for Mountain T.O.P., the interdenominational but UMC-affiliated missions group for which I am a board member. After touching base with our staff, I set up the village, at http://www.7villages.com/MountainTOP. Anyone reading this who is Mountain T.O.P. affiliated is welcome to join, and you don’t have to affiliate with the UMC portion of 7 Villages to do so.
Anyway, my first post in the new village revealed the difficulty of finding and using appropriate content filters. 7 Villages has filters for foul or offensive language, and they apparently don’t like the fact that Mountain T.O.P. is located in the Cumberland Mountains. They have replaced part of the word “Cumberland” with hash marks.
This is the sort of thing that makes me skeptical of content filters. When set aggressively, they tend to flag non-offensive content, and yet the unfortunate people who want to post inappropriate remarks in a family-oriented forum can usually find some sort of alternative spelling or ASCII representation that will get around the filter.
UPDATE: One of the administrators noticed the problem on his own and asked me what the proper name should be. He’s going to fix it manually. Kudos to 7Villages for their customer service!
I had a wonderful time today at the Mountain T.O.P. New Year’s Party. We started with a roundtable this morning at which our executive director, Rev. Ed Simmons, gave a status report for the ministry and took questions and comments from those in attendance. The afternoon was free time — I spent it with a group from Hillcrest UMC including Curtis and Elaine Piper, Chris and Amy Smith, and Keri Cress. We went to Gail Drake’s shop, Lorena’s, and to the Dutch Maid Bakery and to Mayhew’s pottery in Beersheba Springs.
Along the way, we made several stops related to Chris and Amy’s hobby, geocaching. This is a sport in which you use GPS coordinates and clues posted to a web site to find a hidden container. When you find it, you sign your name on a list to prove you were there. In some cases, the containers have toys or souvenirs in them, the rule being that you can take one if you leave some sort of little knick-knack of your own in its place.
I am pleased to be able to report that Bishop Dick Wills of the Tennessee and Memphis conferences of the United Methodist Church is a truly helpful spiritual leader. A leader who is not afraid to call our attention to difficult truths. A leader who is willing to give even Gavin some timely advice, as you can see in this gripping, edge-of-your-seat re-creation:
Thanks to St. Phransus. (Go to his site to hear Gavin tell the story himself)
Technically, my third term on the Mountain T.O.P. board of directors had been scheduled to expire at the end of this year. You can’t immediately be reappointed to another three-year term. However, if your services are needed, you can have your term extended, a year at a time, for up to three years.
Well, they want me to stay on for another term as secretary, and I was reappointed tonight.
The past three years have been difficult, with staff changes, financial crises and general angst. But we have definitely turned the corner. Finances are looking up and camper numbers are looking up — but, far more important, there’s a clear vision for the ministry. Ed, Patrick, Betsy, Jeff and Buddy are finding new opportunities for mission and new ways of supporting our existing programs. They are honoring what George Bass achieved during Mountain T.O.P.’s first three decades while taking it into the future, with unforseen challenges and situations. I am looking forward to being on the board in 2007 as we follow through.
or 
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