Building up Turkey’s next generation
of Christians

TURKEY — For Christian children life in Turkey can be hard. To the overwhelming majority of Turks, being Turkish means being Muslim.

Children and helpers busy with craft activities at the annual children’s summer camp held by the Bible Society in Turkey. Photo: UBS/Dag Smemo (TUR05DJ-3.JPG)

Debora Basmaci of the Bible Society in Turkey thinks there are perhaps 30 evangelical churches in Istanbul – and even those are comparatively small.

“There are very few Christian children in any particular church,” explains Natalie Konutgan. Married to Behnan Konutgan, the Society’s Bible Translator and Project Coordinator, Natalie is not on the Bible Society staff but she nevertheless works extremely hard on its behalf. “You may have two children in a church of 20 people and they will think, ‘What am I doing [here]? Is my family crazy?’”

Isolation

It was to counter the potentially damaging isolation of Christian children that, three years ago, the Turkish Bible Society started a children’s summer camp. On the Bible Society side, Natalie and Debora are its main organisers.

“When children first come to the camp they say, ‘All these Christian people!’ That ‘crowd of witnesses’ is an encouragement to us: we know that we are not alone. And for children that’s so important.”

Held in an evangelical churches’ retreat an hour and a half by road from Istanbul, the camp caters for Christian children aged from six to 13 and mostly from poor families. In its first two years 70 came, and this year the number grew to 80. There are 30 to 40 helpers – including kitchen staff – all of whom are volunteers: no-one gets paid.

The children’s ages range from six to 13 years and to anyone who has helped to run a church ‘holiday club’ for children, the activities follow a familiar pattern: songs, crafts, a running story, sketches, memory verses, prayers, and so on.

There is also a children’s park and a volleyball area in which they play in free time.

“Being a retreat centre, it’s designed for this kind of thing,” says Natalie. “It’s not luxurious but it’s perfect for us.”

“For many of the children, this week is their only holiday,” adds Debora. “There is no public swimming pool in Istanbul so during the week we try to take them swimming in the sea. Some have been in the sea for the first time ever during the camp.”

The Bible Society feels pleased this year to have produced its own activities resource book entitled The Life of Paul, containing stories, colouring pictures, quizzes, puzzles and the words to the songs they sing.

But to acquire other resources for the camp – while spending as little as possible – the organisers have to adopt an opportunistic/entrepreneurial outlook.

Says Natalie: “For the last two years an Armenian company has sent us cheese and an Assyrian company sends us sweets so we’re trying to expand on that. It would be nice to know of a company selling fruit juice, for example, and we might ask Danone for milk, as they’re here, or Nestlé…”

Even buying things can be problematic: when trying to obtain lettered beads to make up bracelets carrying a Christian message, she found that the supplier normally sold mixed letters by the kilo. “I had to tell them I wanted 600 ‘r’s, 800 ‘e’s and so on! It took the people who sell the beads eight hours to sort them out but they were willing! The sad thing is that the whole quantity only cost 10 YTL (US$7.50).

More stickers!

“They wouldn’t accept more money so I offered them a New Testament. Debora took it to them and they were very happy about it. It was an opportunity to talk them about what we were doing.”

Hardest of all to obtain, though, are the items of stationery with Christian motifs so loved by young children.

“Pencils, erasers and stickers bearing verses or Christian symbols: that sort of thing is very very precious to them but it’s impossible to get them here – there’s such a small market for it. But the more stickers children have, the happier they are! Ten stickers a day wouldn’t be enough!”

Perhaps the key element in the week is the story which runs on from day to day. Told by Debora, it’s a contemporary story with a spiritual dimension.

“They love stories and each night except the last the story has a ‘cliff-hanger’ ending,” she says. “It finally ends with the little boy or girl in the story giving his or her life to Jesus.”

At that point the children are asked if they, too, would like to dedicate – or rededicate – their lives to Christ, and each year more than half of the children respond. The group leaders then talk to them individually and a time of prayer follows.

Whether the children go to church or not, the camp and their commitment, if they make one, is something they remember for the whole year – until they go to the camp again, as many do.

Reunions

The Society would like to hold not one but three camps each summer, one aimed at children of elementary school age. And in conjunction with the churches, the organisers are doing what they can to bring the children together for church-based summer camp reunions around Christmas and Easter.

Affirmation of these isolated young Christians is clearly important for building believers who are strong in their faith. Natalie has seen what can happen to them otherwise.