As this column comes to you, I plan to be in Greensboro with our youth group. We will be at a youth camping/missions experience called Passport (passportcamps.org). If you’ve been around Broadway long, you’ve likely heard references to Passport by people in our youth and children’s ministries.

Here is Passport’s mission: "With Christ as our foundation, Passport empowers students to encounter Christ, embrace community, and extend grace to the world."

How do we partner with them in our ministry? For years now, our youth and children have gone each summer to participate in the camps they run around the nation, and also in Africa. Passport allows us to bring our young people to a structured week of Bible study, worship, service to the community, and fun! Our youth spend a half day each day at Passport working on projects, such as painting homes for senior adults or entertaining children in special programs. It also allows a time of intensive spiritual growth through daily Bible studies and worship. Each year, around 2000 people participate in Passport camps.

Passport has been a crucial training ground for young ministers. Susan Reed, Chris Liles, and Emily Holladay all worked with Passport back when they were young ministers! We’ve also had 7 students from our youth group continue on to work at Passport Camps after graduating high school.

Broadway’s gifts played a key role in helping Passport to grow as a ministry. Through your gifts to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, you helped CBF provide initial seed money to begin Passport 22 years ago. More recently, the Missions Committee approved a grant of $5,000 to help Passport with a capital campaign. For the past two summers, we have hosted Passport camps in our building as they worked at mission projects around Louisville.

We certainly do all we can as a local congregation to nurture the spiritual formation of children and youth, but it’s great to have partners like Passport to help us achieve our goal!

~Chris Caldwell