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A Glimpse into Immersion

This will be a full two weeks of diving into the most important questions about our faith, discovering how to think well about truth, God, our culture, and others, rich times of worship, growing alongside others who are passionate about loving the Lord, learning from guest professors and staff who are excited to live for Jesus and teach others to do the same, being equipped with tools to share the gospel with clarity and boldness, and putting those tools into action during off-campus experiential learning opportunities.

Immersion is more than a camp, it is a practical guide to stepping firmly into the truth of Christianity and living boldly for Jesus.
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Daily Summaries

Day Thirteen

Live with Spirit-Empowered Influence

Megan Almon joined us in class to discuss the question “What does it mean to be human?” Our culture has a lot of questions and opinions about the value of human life. As followers of Jesus, it’s our responsibility to protect the vulnerable and speak the truth. Created in the image of God all humans have innate dignity and value.⁠ Megan guided us as we discussed how to truthfully and winsomely navigate challenging ideas and opinions our culture holds about the sanctity of life.⁠ She taught us how to persuasively make the case for the universal right to life for the unborn from science, philosophy, and the Bible as well as how to compassionately and thoughtfully engage objections to the pro-life view.

Our afternoon session with Jonathan Morrow focused on the questions “what does it look like to be a disciple of Jesus?” and “how can we, in becoming more like Christ, lead others to do the same?” Jonathan guided us as we discussed what it means to truly follow Jesus and what it looks like to practically live as his disciples in our own cultural context.

Outside class time, we ended the day with a spectacular game of water war! Our entire soccer field will be taken over by super soakers, slip and slides, and all things water fun. Stay tuned for photos soon!

Learn more from Megan Almon on the Impact 360 Podcast:

What’s Coming Up:

Outside of the classroom, one of the highlights of Impact 360 Immersion is the time your teens get to spend building relationships with those who are leading them.

Our summer staff is deeply committed to their relationship with Jesus and passionate about coming alongside your teens to encourage them in their pursuit of knowing Jesus more deeply, being transformed in their character, and living with Spirit-empowered influence.

After two weeks of discussing what they are learning in small groups, we host a Celebration Night on Friday to celebrate all God has done in the lives of our campers and to send them off equipped and challenged to take all they have learned and put it into action back home.

We are excited to continue celebrating with you tomorrow for all the Lord has done in the lives of our campers this week. See you on campus at 10:00 am EST this Saturday!

Day Twelve

Stewarding Our Influence

Today, we’re exploring the idea of influence. Everyone is a leader because everyone has influence. The way that we see the world shapes how we lead ourselves and others. As followers of Jesus, we believe God wants us to use our influence to shine a light on the Gospel through the way we live, the way we treat others, and how we view and treat ourselves.

For our last off-campus experience, we’re in Atlanta at the Chick-fil-A support center, learning from the life of S. Truett Cathy. He’s a great example of someone who honored God and positively influenced others.

Our last stop before we return to campus is for the “DASH experience.”

During this experience, we’ll observe how, in a cemetery, each grave marker has two dates with a dash in between. It is in the dash, our time here on earth, we have the opportunity to reflect Christ and use the influence we have for the gospel.

We reflect on what we’ve gained the past two weeks in knowledge and confidence, what God has been doing in our lives, and how we want to live it out when we return home.

Day Eleven

A Rich and Historic Faith – Understanding Christianity’s History, Contrasting Views, and the Reliability of Scripture

Alisa Childers joined your teens today to lead a fascinating day focusing on a historical overview of Christianity and opposing views held in culture today. She painted a vivid picture of the origins and foundations of the faith, allowing the campers to gain a deeper understanding of its roots. Later in the day, Alisa also highlighted the distinctions between historical Christianity and Progressive Christianity, addressing some of the key theological differences. This session encouraged campers to think critically and engage with the challenges faced by the Christian faith in contemporary society.

Our next sessions with Jonathan Morrow, we continued learning why the Bible is reliable and why we can have confidence in the authority of Scripture. Later, Jonathan will guide us in a session where we will think through and ask questions about how to enter into relationships well. This time will build on what we’ve been learning in our sessions seeking God’s will for our life, why our choices matter for both our body and soul, and how to seek and make wisdom a rhythm in our lives.

Want to continue learning from Alisa Childers?

Check out Alisa’s two books Another Gospel and Live Your Truth and Other Lies that help Christians become prepared to lead with and know truth in conversations with progressive Christians and understand more of the foundational elements of Christianity.

Learn from Jonathan Morrow through Impact Answers:

Check out Jonathan’s books that equip college students to live out their faith with confidence Questioning the Bible and Welcome to College.

Day Ten

Spiritual Conversations

Today is day two with Sean McDowell! We started the morning off in two different classroom sessions where we discussed how we can discover God’s will for our lives and walk in confidence in the choices we make when they are aligned with what God has revealed in scripture about His character and how He has designed us to live. Our second session focused on the problem of evil and suffering. The questions surrounding, pain, suffering, and why it exists are probably the biggest question we have to struggle with in life. While every worldview has an explanation, most do not satisfy our need for a real answer. As followers of Jesus, we have good news. God cares about us and enters into our suffering.

The past week and a half we’ve been equipped with tools to enter into spiritual conversations and this afternoon we’re at Georgia Tech putting these skills into action. Led by Sean McDowell, this unique experience gives your teens confidence and hands-on training in how to use questions to guide conversations with friends, family, and teachers in spiritually productive ways and we discovered that it’s so much easier to have these conversations than we often realize.

Day Nine

The Case for Intelligent Design and Do Humans Have Souls?

Today is day one of two, where we’ll have our classroom time in the classroom with Sean McDowell!

This morning, we explored the idea and theories of evolution. We talked about the differences between microevolution and macroevolution, the truth that science offers us concerning evolution, and the different myths about evolution our culture has taken for truth. We critiqued the theory of Darwinian evolution and made the case for Intelligent Design.

Sean discussed with us how words can hold a lot of different meanings and how important it is to ask someone what they mean when they use a specific word in conversation, like evolution. In order to have a fruitful conversation, it is crucial that we define our terms and have a clear definition for what we are discussing.

In the afternoon, our discussion focused on the question “Do humans have a soul?” Because we are more than physical matter, what we do with our bodies affects our souls and what we do with our souls affects our bodies. The choices we make have more than physical consequences. This led us to discuss challenges we face in our culture today, like pornography, and how we as followers of Jesus, should think and act based on what God has revealed in scripture.

Day Eight

Morning Rhythms, Afternoon Fun, and Rhythms of Wisdom

Did you know that we have begun each day spending time in God’s word? Your teens are going through the book of 2 Timothy and asking the following questions as they meditate on scripture and talk to the Lord.

1.     What is God saying?
2.     What am I going to do about it?

This morning and afternoon we’re resting from time in the classroom today and sending time enjoying each-others company at Callaway Gardens. We’ll hang out at Robin Lake Beach playing volleyball and adventure through the trees on the tree-top zipline course.

Then in the evening, we’re spending time in a session with Jonathan Morrow where he’s guiding us through a session on how to apply and pursue wisdom in every area of life.

Day Seven

What is God’s Plan for Human Flourising?

There are a lot of ideas in our culture today about gender, sexuality, and love that are contrary to the Word of God. What does it look like for us hold to our convictions while also building relationships with those who live and believe differently? How can we love others with the kind of love that Jesus showed? Why does the truth matter in this area of culture? What is God’s plan for human flourishing? How can we be winsome and filled with grace, while also speaking truth?

We believe this is God’s world and that we as human beings made in His image flourish best when we live in harmony with and in obedience to God’s revealed Word. On our third day with Alan Shlemon, we’re taking a look at big questions in our culture concerning sexuality and the transgender revolution.  We’re focusing on how we, as followers of Jesus, can look to the Bible to show us how we can live according to the good design God planned for human flourishing and how we can live this out in a culture that is increasingly more confused.

Day Six

Engaging Other Worldviews: Islam

We are off on our next off-campus experience today! We will put all we have been learning in the classroom into action in Atlanta, Georgia. Alan Shlemon led our sessions last night and this morning focusing on the Islamic worldview. Alan guided your teens as they learn about the history and beliefs of the Islamic faith and discussed how it differs from Christianity. As they learned the differences between Islam and Christianity, Alan emphasized the importance of clearly understanding the Gospel.

This time of preparation in the classroom will be expanded upon with the experiential learning opportunity to visit a Mosque in Atlanta, where your teens will engage in conversations about Islam with those who practice it as their faith.

Day Five

Why is Unity Important?

Monique Duson, co-founder and president of The Center for Biblical Unity, joins Immersion today in the classroom to discuss the topic of unity and kingdom diversity. Monique and your teens will discuss questions like “Why are having conversations about race difficult?” “What is Critical Race Theory, and is it the best way to racial reconciliation?” and “What is God’s heart for all people?” and “How can we walk in unity?” As they ask these big and layered questions, Monique will guide them by bringing her expertise in encouraging the Church to approach racial unity grounded in historic Christianity and what God reveals about His heart for unity in Scripture. We will discuss and evaluate these questions from a biblical worldview perspective.

In an afternoon session, Dr. Jonathan Morrow helped your teens explore another layer of why we can trust the Bible and explored the reliability of the Bible by diving into the question, “How do we know the Bible has the right books?”

Outside the classroom,we have grown closer together as fellow believers by beginning each class time in worship, having rich, meaningful, and life-giving conversations over meals, and having a ton of fun together on the field.

Learn from Monique Duson through Impact Answers:

Continue learning from Monique on the Impact 360 Podcast, where we discuss her book Reconciled: A Biblical Approach to Racial Unity. You can buy her book directly here.

Day Four

Science, the Resurrection, and Our First Off Campus Adventure!

This afternoon your teens are loading up to take a trip 30 minutes south to Columbus, Georgia where they will go whitewater rafting on what USA Today awarded one of the Top 12 Man-Made Adventures in the World. Be sure to check out the photo gallery tomorrow for pictures of some epic fun!

Before we head off for our adventure, we are diving into more rich content in the classroom. Dr. Jonathan Morrow will lead two different sessions. The first will focus on asking the question “Does science provide evidence for the existence of God?” In this session, your teens will discover that, far from science disproving God, science actually helps point toward the existence of God. In their second session, they will dive into the compelling, historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection.

Learn from Jonathan Morrow:
Are Christianity and Science at Odds?
Explore the Resurrection

Check out Jonathan’s books that equip college students to live out their faith with confidence, Is God Just a Human Invention, Questioning the Bible, and Welcome to College.

Day Three

New Tools for Putting our Faith into Action

Learning to understand our faith intellectually is so important to spiritual growth, but if we don’t put it into action we are missing the point. By putting our faith into practice, we grow our confidence in who God is and who He created us to be. While we are building on content from yesterday with a session about why Jesus is the only way to God, we are also starting to learn some tools to take our faith beyond ourselves. Brett Kunkle is teaching your teens some specific ways we can enter into conversations about faith with others who believe differently.

Your teens are learning how to navigate conversations with people regardless of where they are spiritually and, when given the opportunity, have the tools to share the gospel clearly.

Your teens are learning to communicate and lead others well through learning in the classroom but also through their leadership challenges on the field. They are learning to be clear in their words and definitions and be loving in the ways they communicate.

Day Two

Is What’s True for You, Really What’s True for You?

We’re starting our first week with a deep dive into some of the most important questions about our faith. For the next two days. Brett Kunkle, founder of MAVEN, guides your teens in class as they explore the concept of worldview and ask big questions like “Why am I a Christian?” “Does truth exist and can I know it?”, and “How does and how should my faith affect how I live?”

We’re engaging in these challenging and important questions about faith and Christianity through discussion and gaining tools to seek truth. We’ll also dive into the differences between objective and subjective truth and reflect on how we as followers of Jesus can determine truth and apply it to our lives.

Our days at Immersion are full of deep reflection and intellectual growth as well as time to live life alongside staff and students who are pursuing Jesus too. While we do spend a significant time in the classroom discussing and learning, we have plenty of time outside of class to grow closer together as fellow believers by beginning each class time in worship, having rich, meaningful, and life-giving conversations over meals, and having a ton of fun together on the field.

Day One

Yay! You've Arrived!

Summer arrival on campus is one of our favorite days! We are so excited to have your teens at Impact 360 Immersion this summer. We hope you enjoyed your time on campus, and we are looking forward to celebrating the end of camp with you on Saturday, July 20th. In the meantime, your teens are in incredibly good hands.  

Already, our staff are creating opportunities for our campers to start building new friendships. The environment at Immersion is designed to build rich and lasting friendships. While it’s only two weeks, it’s really more like one year in the “real” world. Our team started the afternoon off with a fun welcome session, followed by a time of worship, and we will end the evening with some games and ice cream. This will allow the campers to explore new friendships and have some fun!

Thank you for entrusting your children to us at Impact 360 Immersion. We are excited about the days ahead and the positive impact this camp will have on their lives.