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This is not a week of church camp. It is not a camping trip. It is not even a backpacking trip. Instead, it is a pilgrimage, a journey without a destination, a daily struggle to make yourself work hard. It is an exercise in faith, not knowing where you are going that day or what you will experience before you pitch your tent that night.

Pilgrimage trips are one-week spiritual excursions run May through October, currently in three locations: Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario Canada; Boundary Waters, Minnesota; and Grand Sand Dunes National Monument, Colorado.

The youth group from Summit Baptist Bible in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, led by Pastor Frank Passetti, took thirteen girls, sixteen boys, a photographer, and myself out into the Canadian wilderness. The boys and girls separated into two different trips. The girls would cover nearly thirty-five miles in their week; the boys, an ambitious seventy miles.

We arrive at the Pilgrimage base camp on Saturday afternoon. Base camp has hot showers, electricity, running water, and cooked meat—things we won’t see or use for the next seven days.

At orientation, we receive backpacking gear, and we’re taught to how set up our tents and hang a bear rope (it has nothing to do with catching bears). We’re given some basic instructions on canoeing, during which we learn a new word, “portage.” (In between lakes, you must get out of your canoe, pull it to shore, put on your pack, pick up your canoe, put it on your shoulder, and carry or "port" it on your shoulders to the next lake while pretending it is "portable.")

A seasoned guide shows us how to portage with the seeming ease and grace of a professional ice-skater pulling off a twirling triple toe loop. I take one look at our guide, a female college student who is both shorter and smaller than myself, and figure I’ll easily hoist my canoe in a fashion similar to hers. But the result of my attempt, even though assisted by my male ego, is like to me trying one of those twirling figure skating jumps in my hockey skates, except with a canoe falling down on me as well.

After orientation, we are split into our canoe and tent groups: three students to each canoe; two students to each tent; and each student getting a backpack containing one or two group items, their own food for the week, and all clothes and personal items they are willing to carry.

The average pack weighs around sixty pounds; each canoe, just about sixty-three pounds. The small personal items we have brought along are soon a hulking burden, and the word “portage” quickly becomes associated with agony and pain. We begin to understand why the Israelites murmured against Moses. “This is nuts!” “Why am I doing this?” “Let’s go home!”

We are not allowed to carry or wear watches. Only the leader has a map or knows where the group is going. Our feet are almost always wet. We get sunburned. We are made to paddle in the rain. And the bugs are relentless. There seems to be no goal. I imagine the teens wondering what God could possibly want to teach them and why their youth pastor couldn’t think of a way to teach it to them at Six Flags.

Yet there is a point. There is a goal. Though there is no seeming destination, there is a destiny—for each Christian young person to realize what he or she must change to become Christlike.

Pilgrimage “is a great trip because it takes you away from the distractions of life so you can clear your mind and focus on God,” says Pastor Frank Passetti. He had students carry laminated memory verse cards to fill their undistracted minds with memorizing I Peter 4:7–11. This passage gives instructions to be self-controlled and clear-minded so that you can pray.

Caring for others, serving others, taking care of others in your group—these things quickly become a reality because, amid weariness, sore muscles, and overall lack of comfort, we respond with one of two attitudes. If we do not put God’s Word in the very front of our minds, we will not control the self, and the self will scream loudly, "I AM UNCOMFORTABLE, and it is everyone else’s fault!" Yet, as we let the mind of Christ overwhelm our sense of self, we can minister God’s grace to each other with kindness and care, and without grumbling or murmuring.

The point of Pilgrimage could not have been made clearer to seventeen-year-old Andrew over the course of the week. All Sunday and Monday, by his own admission, Andrew kept to himself and took care of himself. He did not take any turns carrying the canoe at portages.

“Tuesday started off cold and bad,” he shared. “I was arguing with my canoe partners. They were telling me how to do things. I told them to ‘shut up.’ Phil (one of the youth group leaders) made me carry the canoe on the next portage; I didn’t think I could do it. I wanted to stop and quit, but he made me do the whole portage. It felt good to finish the portage on my own. I felt more confident. I felt like I was pulling my own weight.”

Andrew continued to pull his own weight, and much like the Grinch, Andrew’s heart changed as well. And with that change of attitude, he discovered the newfound strength of five grinches. Andrew solo-carried the next five portages in a row, no help, no turns for his canoe partners. He could do it, and he wanted to do it.

I sat down with him that night at the campfire and bribed him with Pop-Tarts (not a Pilgrimage-issued food) for information. “My attitude affects how I perform more than I thought. Everything that I have, I take for granted. My life is so comfortable.” I asked him what he would learn the most from this trip. He responded, “It shows you your potential, all of what you don’t use.” When we leave our selfishness behind and we change our focus, what an influence we can have on others.

Attitudes did change. Leaders emerged. Encouragers emerged. Helpers emerged. And servants emerged. Songs of praise broke from lips that had grumbled only days before. As I sat around the campfire with this group of young people singing songs of praise to God, I took in what it meant to go on Pilgrimage.

The correlations between this Pilgrimage and the pilgrimage of our Christian life are nothing short of beautiful. While we are “just passing through,” we cannot pass through unchanged. The lessons we learn go with us as we experience the truth about ourselves and about our God.

Author Bio:
Brian Cannon

Position: youth pastor of First Baptist Church, Whitefish, Montana. Family: wife, Stefanie. Favorite piece of technology: my Palm Pilot. Farthest you've been from home: Australia. A personal accomplishment: getting some poetry published.