Summer Camp Trains Kids for `Spiritual Warfare’

c. 2007 Religion News Service KELSO, Tenn. _ “What’s this?” roars “Sgt. Major” Henry Phillips. “There’s trash on the floor in here.” Inside the simple block cabin, teenage girls stand at attention at the ends of their bunks, each bed neatly made up with a Bible and study notebook placed on top of the pillow. […]

c. 2007 Religion News Service

KELSO, Tenn. _ “What’s this?” roars “Sgt. Major” Henry Phillips. “There’s trash on the floor in here.”

Inside the simple block cabin, teenage girls stand at attention at the ends of their bunks, each bed neatly made up with a Bible and study notebook placed on top of the pillow.


Trash clutters the entryway to the little cabin; Phillips has just dumped over the trash can, spilling crumpled paper towels and cups onto the freshly swept floor.

“There’s to be no trash in the cabins whatsoever!” Phillips shouts, his voice ragged from a week as drill sergeant at Spiritual Warfare Camp. “And no trash in your hearts. Do you have the message?”

“Yes, sergeant major,” the girls answer in chorus, their eyes focused straight ahead as he marches up and down the line.

Inspections at the weeklong camp, designed to toughen teens’ bodies and souls, are just one of the rough parts. If you pass the camp general, Pastor Lou Ostrzicki of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Hazel Green, Ala., and forget to salute, you’ll be on the ground doing push-ups. Make a wrong remark, and you might have a dog biscuit pushed into your mouth.

Each day begins with half-hour of physical training and a run, then another half-hour of prayer done while marching.

One boys’ squad spent a day wearing diapers over their jeans when they whined about push-ups. At this camp, there are no excuses, no whining and no let-up.

What matters in life, Phillips tells the kids, is not what happens to you, but how you deal with it. Sometimes, in fact, abuse comes because life isn’t fair. That’s what Satan does to Christians, no matter how hard they try, the camp leaders say.


The kids are met the first day with the command to walk through the pool with their clothes on and then roll in the dirt. The first morning’s inspection was more a visit from vandals than from officers.

“The first day, we tore everything out of there,” Phillips said as he and the camp officers headed to the next cabin. “There’s a little bit of edge here.”

“We turned the bunk beds upside down,” Ostrzicki said.

“That’s what Satan does: He tears up your life,” Phillips said.

Phillips knows about disruption. He has survived three tours of Vietnam, failed marriages, the death of one child and the drug addiction of another. Now a history teacher at Hazel Green’s Meridianville Middle School, where he also sponsors the Fellowship of Christian Students, he’s determined to help other kids make better decisions than he did.

One activity at camp has the kids making decisions about the next step on a trail. One wrong decision could send them down the road to ruin. A paint-ball course taught them to work together toward a common goal. They earned each meal by memorizing a Bible verse from a list of Scripture about character, steadfastness and God’s love.

Unlike the controversial Kids on Fire School of Ministry, the subject of the 2006 documentary “Jesus Camp,” Spiritual Warfare Camp concentrates on children’s spiritual, mental and physical fitness, not on their political actions. While the services at Spiritual Warfare Camp are lively, they don’t tip into the charismatic speaking in tongues as did Becky Fischer’s North Dakota camp, now on hiatus.

The themes at Spiritual Warfare Camp were teamwork, respect for authority and creating the right relationships in life. The cabin squads go everywhere together, lined up behind a leader holding the squad’s guidon, or flag. They chant march cadences, some traditional, some special to the camp: “Alpha squad will always fight … Under God we will unite.”


Each squad was timed as it navigated a milelong obstacle course.

“It teaches us to work together as the body of Christ,” said Carrie Phillips, 23, of Fayetteville, Tenn., who attended Spiritual Warfare Camp last year in Michigan and returned this year to be a squad leader for one of the girls’ cabins. “The spiritual aspects far outweigh the physical. It draws you closer to God and teaches you to respect authority.”

Henry Phillips learned about the camp from Louie Barnett, who established the first camp in Michigan. Phillips’ own children attended one. Phillips was so impressed he gave up weeks of summer vacation to help run the camp in Michigan for 14 years. This year, he decided to set up one closer to home.

The camp for the 48 campers was held at Crystal Springs Camp, a Cumberland Presbyterian campground in eastern Lincoln County, Tenn. The camp has a capacity of 120 campers. Phillips said he expects it to be full next year, since all of this year’s campers have told him that they want to return.

For Aaron Ball, 15, of Tullahoma, Tenn., this year’s camp helps keep him on the course he chose last year when he attended the camp in Michigan.

“This camp turned my life around,” Ball said after Phillips and the officers completed their inspection and harassment tour of his squad’s cabin. “I did a 180. Before, I thought life was just stupid, and I wondered, what’s the use of living? But after camp, I was really on fire for God _ now I know why I’m living.”

“This gets us a lot closer to God,” said Billy Cox, 13, whose T-shirt still holds dust from his part as a wounded soldier in the skit the squad performed outside its cabin.


“The worship service (at night) is amazing,” said Kevin Clark, 14. “If you want to see teenagers go crazy for God, jumping up and down for God, it’s the place to be.”

(Kay Campbell writes for The Huntsville Times in Huntsville, Ala.)

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Photos of Phillips and campers are available via https://religionnews.com.

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