Mountain T.O.P. continues to meet needs

Last Saturday, I attended the end-of-summer closing celebration for Mountain T.O.P. (Tennessee Outreach Project), a ministry with which I've been associated since 1993. The closing is really a tribute to the college-age men and women who run our camps during the summer season (and who leave for home the next day). It was a wonderful evening -- a terrific meal in the dining hall at Camp Cumberland Pines, followed by a slide show and worship service at a nearby church.

In one way, though, it made me sad, because it reminded me that I didn't get the chance to be a Mountain T.O.P. camper this summer. Our Adults In Ministry (AIM) program took place the week before and the week after my Bolivia trip; even if I'd had enough vacation days to go to one of the AIM weeks, I just couldn't have been away from work for that long of a stretch. (We also had a shorter camp event over July 4th weekend, while I was in Bolivia.)

For a while, before I started doing my foreign mission trips, I was doing two separate weeks of AIM every summer. One of those weeks, I would teach creative writing to teens from the Cumberland Mountains as part of our Summer Plus ministry. The other week, I would assist in arts programming for special needs kids as part of our Kaleidoscope ministry. Each has its own benefits and drawbacks; you get more interaction with the teenagers but more affection from the younger kids.

Most of the adults who come to AIM aren't working with kids, but rather with our Major Home Repair ministry. Men and women, many of whom have never picked up a hammer before, help to build, expand or renovate homes for needy families from the Cumberland Mountains.

Mountain T.O.P. is best known for its youth ministry, which places church youth groups from across the eastern U.S. into the mountains for week-long camps similar to our AIM events but with less-complex home repair projects. We also have a program for college students on spring break, and this year we started a program at which families can work together.

I know I'm contributing to the Mountain T.O.P. ministry in my role as secretary on the board of directors. We've gone through some major changes over the past few years, and turned around the ministry's finances and camper numbers, adapting to a new environment while staying true to the vision of ministry established by our founder and former executive director. I'm proud to have been some small part of that. But I get so much out of actually being on the front line of the ministry, as a camper. Watching the slide show last Saturday, I was reminded how much I missed being there this summer. There's such a wonderful sense of Christian community at an event like that. We're all focused on supporting each other and obeying God in a particularly intense way, and I get so much more out of it than I could ever put into it.

I may try to make it to one of our fall AIM weekends, even though those are home repair-only and home repair isn't my strong suit. I don't know what my future plans are yet for another foreign mission trip, but I'm hoping there's some way I can get to an AIM week next summer.

Mountain T.O.P. is interdenominational -- we have volunteers and church youth groups from a variety of denominations and backgrounds -- but is affiliated with the Tennessee Conference of the United Methodist Church. I'd be happy to get you more information about the program if you're interested, or you can go to the ministry's web site, www.mountain-top.org.

Maybe I'll see you on the mountain next summer.

John I. Carney is city editor of the Times-Gazette and covers county government and other topics. His home page is lakeneuron.com.