BAGDAD, Ky. — For the first time in the history of the Kentucky Baptist Convention and Crossings Camps, a summer camp is scheduled June 4-8 at Cedarmore for Deaf and hard-of-hearing (HOH) students.
The camp is for grades 8-12, and 15 Deaf/HOH students will be among 700-800 students at camp that week.
“We’ve never done anything like this before,” said Dan Talcott, president of Crossings. “Those students will have designated front row seating in the worship center and all videos will be subtitled.”
Talcott added that Crossings “exists to support the local church in their discipleship-making of young people, so this is a natural extension of what we are trying to do. We are thrilled to partner and support this. At Crossings, we want to see the Gospel presented to all people, and that includes the Deaf and hard-of-hearing population that sometimes does not have access to the youth camp experience where the Gospel is proclaimed.”
“We want to make sure we have everything set up and ready for those students,” said Seth York, property director at Cedarmore. “We have staffers who go to school for ASL (American Sign Language), and they are going to be Bible study leaders. They are excited about it. Our technology is lined up for live captions.”
Crossings staffer Laney Meredith will be actively involved with the group.
York added that Julie Johnson, an interpreter with the Bullitt County School System and member of Parkland Baptist Church in Louisville, will accompany the group.
“They will go through activities together and hopefully have a great experience,” York said.
Johnson said most of the 15 Deaf and HOH students are unchurched. She said a couple of students attend a Deaf church in the Danville area and several others go to churches with their parents that are accessible to the Deaf, but the remainder — if they attend church at all — don’t have accessibility. “That is one of the main issues with Deaf teens — their parents not taking them to a Deaf church.”
She added, “The Deaf are everywhere in every community. As the boomer generation ages, they become hard-of-hearing. So it is not just teens we were dealing with. People in churches quit attending because they cannot hear. Youth are falling through the cracks because there are not programs for them.”
Beth Driver, a member of First Baptist Church in Bowling Green, is the Deaf leader who began asking questions several years ago to get this effort started to enable Deaf students to attend Crossings. The KBC Multi-Language Department is funding a large portion of the costs for this effort.
“This is a unique event, as nothing like this has ever happened before in the history of either KBC or Crossings,” said Eddie Torres, multi-language evangelist strategist.
“This is the first time we have Deaf children participating in the camp. Naturally, the Ethnic Department provided the funds to enable these children to attend. My funding comes directly from the churches’ Cooperative Program giving and the Women’s Ministry. That is why the Cooperative Program plays an active role in this event — thanks to the support of all the churches working together, we can make it possible for these children to attend the Crossings camp for the very first time.”
Statistics show that 90 percent of all Deaf people are born to hearing parents and most of those parents have no experience in deafness.
Deaf are considered the third largest people group in the world who don’t have access to the Gospel. Among the world’s 70 million Deaf people, less than 2 percent know and follow Jesus.
This article originally appeared at Kentucky Today.
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