Our Philosophy

The Pillars of Confrontation Point

Our ultimate goal is your group's growth! All programming elements and activities within a program are designed to create a safe environment where this growth can occur. We use five elements to achieve growth in your group: focus on God, community, service, leadership development and challenges. We call them the pillars of Confrontation Point. While the different programs we offer may focus more predominately on certain elements, the pillars-our core philosophies-are weaved into all programs.

Focus on God

It is often easy to focus on the life we are living rather than the reason for it. At CP, we deliberately schedule time into every day to reflect on God and think about His challenges to us. There are so many things that God wants to teach us from His word, and through our relationships with others.

Tools Used:

Morning devotions give us the chance to take time away from everyone else to read the Bible, pray, and journal. When we listen, God speaks! Devotional themes change each year and are designed to bring the Bible alive to youth by speaking to real, relevant needs/issues. "Seed Thought," as we call it, is just the beginning of the spiritual development plan for the week.
Evening worships help the group to communally focus on God.
Teachable Moments are those times that we could walk right by a lesson about God. We want to take the time to stop and see something new, or experience a new understanding of God through His creation or His people.

Community

We are committed to living, teaching, and modeling a supportive Christian Community. The biblical model is a body-we are all members of one body and need each other in order to exist and function. No parts of the body are more important than the others though some may be more prominent (Ephesians 4).

Tools Used:

A Covenant is an agreement between two or more people. At the beginning of the week, your group will write an agreement that will be the focus of your relationships for the week. Members of the group will be responsible for helping others to keep to this agreement for the good of the whole group.
Doing activities as a group helps us to stop thinking of just ourselves, but thinking of the others in the group (i.e. if two people are late for a meal, the whole group waits until they have arrived before eating).
Decision making is done by the whole group, not a select few. Often the leadership will say to the group "These are your options, what do you want to do?" Making a group decision is not an easy thing, but doing it with respect for everyone's views and discovering a solution that everyone can accept is a victorious moment. Decisions involving safety will remain the responsibility of the leadership team (CP staff and Youth Group Leaders).
Chores are used as an initiative activity to teach small groups how to work together to achieve a task. Upon your arrival, your group will be split up into smaller groups of four or five who will then be in charge of different responsibilities including preparation of meals, clean up of meals, and preparation and leading of the worship service, etc.
Initiatives and Trust Games are activities that have a specific goal in mind (e.g. to teach the group how to achieve a difficult task using everyone's skills and talents). These are not only fun, but they teach many things about yourself, and others in your group.
Debriefing is a daily time of discussion for the whole group. We look at the day and share the things we learned, the struggles we had, and deal with issues of conflict or frustration in a healthy way. It gets the whole group on the same page and is an integral part of processing growth.

Service

Consider Christ's "parting shot." In His last hours, He chose to demonstrate to the disciples that "the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the servant." Humbly their Great Master set aside His garments and girded Himself with a towel. He then poured water in a basin and began washing the disciples' feet. As He finished and took His place at the table. He challenged the disciples with the truth that the greatest among them was their servant. He then called them to live likewise. As Christians, it is this humble servant life we are called to emulate. We are God's hands and feet here on earth, and it should be our desire to incarnate (flesh out) God's love to those with whom we come in contact.

Tools Used:

Serving each other by helping with chores and encouraging people who are tired is essential. Your group will be challenged through the covenant and actions of the leaders to display a servant attitude to the other members of the group.
Serving people outside your group. Whether home repair clients, day campers, or other individuals that you meet during your trip, your group will have the opportunity to communicate Christ's love through service and compassion.

Leadership Development

Intuitively, we all know that claiming to be a leader or even holding a leadership position does not make someone a leader. Countless books have been written within the secular and Christian arenas exploring this topic, each with its own definitions and ideas of what leadership is and how it can be nurtured in our lives.

We believe that spiritual leadership is the responsibility of all who take the name "Christian." All Christians will naturally find themselves in some sort of leadership role, whether as an "up-front" leader or one who leads in relationships by example. Of course, spiritual leadership itself is a broad concept with perhaps an entirely different definition than simply "leadership". We suggest that the definition of spiritual leadership is closely tied to an individual's understanding and interaction with God, community and service-other pillars of CP. Based upon the principle that leadership is learned, "Leadership Development" has been at the core of CP's philosophy since our inception in 1980.

We want to give your youth a chance to take responsibility, to take ownership, to struggle, to fail, and to succeed. We desire to foster a safe arena in which youth can "practice" leadership. The key here is empowerment-giving them the tools necessary to be successful in their endeavors and then LETTING them proceed. Our philosophy, simply stated, is:

Show Them
Help Them
Let Them.

"Let Them" can be the tough part, but it is the crux of what we want to accomplish here-giving the youth ownership. We want them to be forced to engage their mind (facing a situation), to overcome obstacles (difficulties or consequences of their decisions), and complete a task without all the answers and how to's being supplied by the adults. We want the youth to have this opportunity to make mistakes, and learn from them. We want the youth to have this chance to shine-to accomplish more than THEY ever thought they were capable of...more than YOU ever thought they were capable of!

Tools Used:

Planning and leading worship. There are various ways to organize worship, but one option is to let the youth plan it and carry it out. With support from the leaders, the youth have the chance to express their love for God in their own way and to challenge others in the group.
Decision making is used not only to build community, but also to help your youth think through a problem and find the best solution.
Responsibility for much of the experience is given over to the youth. All leaders will be asked to step back and allow the youth, at times, to make mistakes (when safety is not endangered). We use the group setting to process and evaluate successes/failures and frustrations that may arise from youth leadership.

Challenges

Romans 5:3-4 says:

"...but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope." We strive to produce an experience that is not "easy" or "comfortable," but challenging, difficult, yet achievable. We want your youth to be outside their comfort zones where they have to rely on God and their peers to help them through. We view growth opportunities in our personal lives in three stages-the green, yellow and red zones.

Green Zone: This is the place we are comfortable and life is easy. It's where we live the majority of our lives-it is the sustaining zone.
Yellow Zone: Here participants are placed in an out of the ordinary position where they are uncomfortable. This can often be a place of "perceived risk," but is actually a safe place where growth can occur.
Red Zone: This is the danger zone where participants are placed in an environment that is so far away from where they are comfortable that they cannot grow because they are restricted by fear due to threats to their emotional, mental, spiritual, or physical health and well being.

All participants will find themselves in different growth zones at different times throughout their experience. Our goal is that each individual would experience the yellow zone without entering the red zone.

Tools Used:

Camping means living in close quarters with the outdoors and each other. This means bugs, rain, no soft bed, no gourmet meals and no television or radio. It is a challenge to find that you can actually live quite happily in this situation.
Outdoor adventure activities often put the youth in a scary situation. Fear of heights, water, small spaces and rocky terrain are very real fears that can be faced with bravery, giving people more confidence than they ever had before.
Program specific challenges lie in the daily activities. In the Mystery Trip program, not knowing what to expect is trying for many youth. Doing physical labor all day is a challenging part of Home Repair, and many adventure activities test those in the Wilderness program. Sometimes, being responsible for something like cooking for your whole group is a challenge!