Recognizing Our Spiritual Heritage -- Interview with Dave Hunter

Emily Schultz
October 2011

Dave Hunter is currently the Lovin' Life Ministries Youth and Young-Adult Pastor for New Jersey. He resides with his family in Clifton, NJ.

Question: The theme for this year's summer camp program was "The Shoulders We Stand On." Was this theme chosen to give participants an opportunity to explore their identity, much like past programs, such as Walking My Path Young- Adult Retreat and Going Deep Principle Workshop?

In a lot of past workshops, the focus has been about second- generation identity, about telling second-generation Unificationists who they are and therefore what type of life they should live. Our camp theme, "The Shoulders We Stand On," is about recognizing our spiritual heritage; it's about understanding that we come from God, we come from Jesus, we come from True Parents, from the first-generation church members and we live on the foundation of our older second-generation Unificationist brothers and sisters. I'm a firm believer that you can't really tell someone who they are but you can give them a context of where their life comes from and let them decide who they want to be.

Question: What were the reasons behind relocating summer camp from Bear Mountain to the Unification Theological Seminary (UTS)?

Actually, summer camp wasn't moved to UTS; Camp Lovin' Life is a brand new camp under the direction of our National Pastor, Reverend In Jin Moon. We chose UTS as our location for many reasons, not the least of which is the rich spiritual heritage that UTS has. It was the perfect location for an Unificationist Summer Camp. Not only does it have storied religious history, it was purchased by True Parents in 1974 with the purpose of being the center for religious education in the Unification Church for first and second generation alike. In addition, it has great facilities for all the numerous activities that go along with a summer camp.

Question: What does this mean for Camp Sunrise? Is it obsolete?

No, Camp Sunrise is not obsolete and never will be. We are tremendously grateful for the foundation that Camp Sunrise set over the years. They were pioneers of the Unification Church youth camp when the movement wasn't paying much attention to second- generation education. Camp Lovin' Life is totally new. We would be foolish to say we're not inheriting what all the other summer camps have done. I haven't attended camp since I was a kid but a lot of our staff was raised at Camp Sunrise and other camps nationwide and we definitely tried to inherit their best practices. We wouldn't be true to our theme, "The Shoulders We Stand On" without recognizing that Camp Lovin' Life stands on the shoulders of Camp Sunrise.

Question: Past youth ministers and youth educators have discussed the lack of consistency of education for each grade level. Can parents now expect a consistent foundation for education at summer camp?

The foundation for this summer camp is Lovin' Life Ministries. Our programming at camp is consistent with the vision of Lovin' Life Ministries, which translates to helping the youth understand their heritage, encouraging youth to lead lives of internal and external excellence and helping the youth understand who True Parents are, all while having a tremendously good time. There are certain themes that run through Lovin' Life and Reverend In Jin Moon's sermons that we tried to draw out in a practical way for middle and high school campers. I can't speak for other youth ministries or youth educators, but every ministry that I am a part of is one that tries to be consistent with the teaching philosophies of Lovin' Life Ministries. In addition, while they may have different titles or themes, I would be certain that all camps, workshops, retreats and youth ministries run by headquarters staff would have educational programs that are consistent with In Jin nim's vision. Providence has never changed.

Question: Do you feel you and your staff offered the participants at this initial Camp Lovin' Life the tools they needed to reach the goals you just listed?

Yes, but I would say that in addition to our educational goals, one of the primary goals of camp was to go back to our roots. In the early '70's and '80's, True Parents were constantly bringing people to Belvedere, East Garden and UTS to educate them and to love them. In this day and age, considering the numbers of members we have in the United States, it isn't really possible for all of us to come to New York all the time. Lovin' Life Ministries has brought us back to these roots through the national broadcasts, which brings thousands of people together in worship every Sunday. What our Senior Pastor is trying to do through this is regain our national identity as Unificationists. In a similar way, I think Reverend In Jin Moon wants to re-establish a national identity of second-generation Unificationists by having a national summer camp. When I was growing up in the church, second-generation Unificationists from all over the country came together in New York for summer camp. Over the years, however, our communities, our youth ministries and our camps have become increasingly isolated. I believe that our Senior Pastor wants our youth to realize they belong to a broader community beyond their own local youth ministries. Having a national camp for kids all over the country is one way to bring that idea home. We had ninety-one high school kids from twenty different states across the country participate in Camp Lovin' Life. That included five from Hawaii and two from Alaska. We also hosted 115 middle school participants from 14 different states. The campers began to recognize that they're not just part of the hundred or so Unificationist youth in their community, but part of the thousands of Unificationist youth across the United States. Now they have that broader context of where their life is coming from. This helps them understand they are part of something bigger and hopefully, this will help them form a broader idea of what their identity is. That's one of the things I think we were very successful in doing.

Question: How long did it take your team to develop the program for Camp Lovin' Life?

We started putting the program together in late May, which is way too late, but with our small team of committed second- generation Unificationists, we were able to put together a great program in that limited amount of time. Our staff represented a cross section of young adults from around the country and we constantly reported to and received feedback from the HSA-UWC Director for Education, Heather Thalheimer.

Question: With the limited planning time, did any element of the program fail to meet the standards you were looking to set?

I think our limitation was having a broad array of educators. The presentation workload mostly rested on my shoulders for middle school camp and it was split between myself, Heather Thalheimer and Reverend Philip Schanker, director of the Blessed Family Department, for the high school camp. Luckily, we were able to have Reverend Schanker who taught on certain aspects of True Parents' life, Jesus' mission and the course of the first generation and Mrs. Thalheimer who was present to give her testimony about being kidnapped and forced through an attempted deprogramming. Where we are most limited, though, is in having more second-generation Unificationist educators.

Question: What age are we talking about it?

Well, the majority of our staff was between the ages of 18 and 23. I'm 33 years old. I would like to see more second generation Unificationists in my age demographic able to participate, even if it would only be for one day. One of our themes was about recognizing that these young Unificationists stand on the shoulders of their older brothers and sisters. But that message is kind of hard to get across when the young ones don't have much opportunity to interact with them.

Question: Was there enough time to solicit presenters in that age group?

Admittedly, we didn't really have the time to do so much reaching out. The feedback I received for the presentations I gave were very positive. As an educator, that just tells me that we need more older second-generation Unificationists teaching the Divine Principle from a second-generation Unificationist perspective. For some reason, the Divine Principle is much more powerful to a second-generation Unificationist when they hear it from someone that they look at more like their peer than their parent. Therefore, we plan to have more second-generation Unificationist educators next year. I think it would be nice to have more testimonies, which were the highest rated educational experiences for the campers. If there are people out there who are passionate about teaching the Divine Principle, it would be great to have a broader perspective of people teaching next year. I think the major point that everyone needs to work on when they're teaching the Divine Principle is how to take the text, and make it applicable to these kids lives. To me, Camp Lovin' Life was a huge step in that direction. This is what I'm constantly trying to gear people towards thinking.

Question: What was least successful about the camp? Why?

I can't pinpoint any one thing that I felt was unsuccessful about camp itself; I thought the camp was great. My biggest regret is that although we wanted to start something new based on the foundation of other camps the way we announced Camp Lovin' Life alienated a lot of people who had worked hard and were very passionate about second-generation education, especially those who had run Camp Sunrise in past years. It's unfortunate that our staff at headquarters didn't do a better job of bringing those people on board and using their expertise to help Camp Lovin' Life. As I mentioned before, Camp Lovin' Life stands on the foundation of Camp Sunrise and all the other local camps. But we feel it's time to take summer camp to the next level and we can do that now because the biggest difference between Camp Lovin' Life and past summer camps is Camp Lovin' Life has as connection with True Family that no other camp can boast. At the same time, we can't lose all that was built by Camp Sunrise.

Question: How can camp coordinators who are not employees of HSA-UWC fit in with future plans for summer camp programs?

Well, we hope the many programs headquarters is creating are so good that other people will be inspired and want to get connected. That's going to take some real down-to-earth work.

Question: What about the flip-side of that? Does the Camp Lovin' Life staff want to be equally as inspired by other camp programs?

Absolutely. We want to share best practices; we don't want to reinvent the wheel. Now, what would be really revolutionary is if all of our summer camps were on the same page. I feel that Lovin' Life Ministries should drive the vision for summer camps. One thing we can do is gather all the camp coordinators to discuss and bounce around theme ideas, programming ideas educational ideas, and activity ideas and end up on the same page. It would be awesome if all the summer camps around the country were running the same theme next year, but doing it in their own style that's good for their community so that, basically, everyone is receiving the same education.

Question: Is there anything else you would like to add in terms of how summer camp adds value to one's life of faith?

In the past, I had actually felt we relied too heavily on summer camps for our religious education and we weren't consistent enough in our regular ministry throughout the year. Because we relied too heavily on the inspiration a summer camp can provide, we were losing our youth due to no follow up throughout the year. One of the things that Reverend In Jin Moon pushed for us to do at Camp Lovin' Life was to make it a 21-day camp, which is different than most other local summer camps, which typically last 7-10 days. What we witnessed at Camp Lovin' Life was that in a 7-10 day stretch, a participant can get really inspired because of the spiritual atmosphere of the camp, being surrounded by a bunch of like- minded young people who are also inspired. In the second week, they go through this kind of plateau in their inspiration and things get difficult. However, in the third week, they're really able to start building on that inspiration, understanding that it's not enough to just get that spiritual high, but they have to work with it and be focused and determined. When this happened, they were able to apply the things they learned at camp and make it relevant to their own lives. To me, this is a metaphor for our own lives of faith in general: we receive inspiration but it means nothing if we don't' do something with it. Summer camp is really a microcosm of learning to practice our faith in real and practical ways. As an added bonus to that, being at a camp with over a hundred youth from around the country, you're bound to take that experience with you for the rest of your life.

In my own personal experience, I first felt the hand of God at Camp Sunrise and that helped me to understand that, no matter how much I struggled in my life, God was there, that God existed. I never struggled with God's existence because that was a realization I had at camp. I think, for the most part, the youth at Camp Lovin' Life had some sort of experience with God that's going to add to their life of faith. Of course, any life of faith takes daily, monthly, yearly practice, and camp is a great start. The connection they were able to make with True Family was invaluable.