Lee Abbey Camp has been running since 1948. It was originally set up as a camp to get inner city kids who had never seen fields or the sea to experience a week in Devon. Now we welcome over 200 13-18-year-olds over 2 weeks.
Vision statement
Camp has its own vision statement and values, which also reflect those of the wider Lee Abbey Movement.
Our vision is to gather and inspire young people to discover their true identity in Christ, enabling them to live out the generous love of God in their community and the world.
Our values
Loving
We want to reflect Jesus in the way that we love the campers and each other.
Simplicity
Camp life is simple: sleeping in tents, cooking on fires, no internet or phone signal and we like it that way. We want to create space, free from life's normal distractions and complexities so that campers can experience God in His beautiful creation.
Honest
We want a community that is honest, authentic and real.
Fun
We want camp to be ridiculously fun. Laughter is obligatory.
Encountering God
We want every camper (and leader) to encounter God at camp. It might be for the very first time, or the hundredth, but we pray that these encounters would transform the campers' lives and bring them closer to Jesus.
Joining community and promises
The camp is run at Lee Abbey Devon. We are only there for 2 weeks in the summer, but many other people live there all year round in Christian community. We join the Community for the duration of our stay, by making the 'Green Badge Promises' which all Community members say upon arrival.
They are:
- Do you affirm before the Community your personal faith in Christ and your desire through prayer, study and service to seek a deep and mature faith?
- Do you understand by this that your mind, your time, your talents, your possessions and all your relationships are to be increasingly surrendered to Christ as Lord?
- Do you promise to be loyal to the Community in its aims, its work, its standards of behaviour, and its disciplines?
Our faith and our struggles
We know that we will all be struggling with different sins and issues and so recognise we come as imperfect leaders, but hold onto our perfect Saviour as our Lord, and as our example who we strive to follow. We would want leaders to be regularly turning away from sin and coming to meet with our God of grace in His Word and by prayer.
This means that we agree to live as Christians who sit under the Word of God and obey His commands.
The Lee Abbey Movement believes in Jesus Christ as the only way of salvation through grace and by faith. It upholds the orthodox Christian position on many issues including sexuality and marriage. We know that within the church there are different views on some issues, and at camp we want to expose the teenagers that come to God’s Word and teach them to read and understand it and to allow God to convict them. This means that whilst Lee Abbey holds the orthodox position we want campers to be given space to come to their own conclusions through personal study and corporate teaching.
