Myra summed up camp with this note:
"Camp was fantastic, better than last year. Kudos to all those who put in all the hours planning it. God is showing up in young adults right now and you all lit that fire even bigger."
A First for FCA LEADership Camp
Brent Voight • August 17, 2026
A message from the Northland FCA LEADership Camp Director, Brent Voight.
Each year heading into LEADership Camp I think, "we've done this before, nothing new can possibly happen this year, right?" And then I get surprised. Let's recap LEADership Camp today starting with this, my favorite story:
We had a record number of huddle leaders--most of them college students--this year, 41. A donor has seen over the years how much FCA collegiate ministry grows on a campus when their college students serve at camps like our sports camps and LEADership Camp. So he offered to donate whatever the cost was to have any and every college student who wanted to be a leader, be welcomed to camp and assigned to a huddle. With record number of high school students signed up for camp, this turned out to be not only a nice desire, but a must have!
On the first morning of huddle leader training--these college students come in 1.5 days early to do training before campers show up--we have 39 of 41 leaders sitting in the training room, on-time, ready to go. I will admit I was a bit perturbed at the two who were late until I heard their story.
Eli wanted to come serve at LEADership Camp so badly that he boarded a Greyhound bus at 12:15AM in Milwaukee to get to the Cities by 8:30AM. He networked with another leader to pick him up at the bus depot and bring him to the camp, and after all that, they arrived 15 minutes late. Eli was such a treasure all weekend, made more special by his level of commitment. He was able to jump on a camper bus for the ride back home after camp was over.
Cole is one of our incredible FCA staff from Southeast MN (pictured above, far left). He's young. Like super young. Just barely older than my middle child! But he's a go-getter, easy to talk with, supremely talented and intelligent. He got to spend part of a day with us at camp last year, but joined us for all of camp this year. Had a variety of small roles to play.
On the last night, most of us adults are huddled around talking about the camp and what we've seen and heard from students and huddle leaders. Cole tells us that he never understood LEADership Camp, even though he'd heard us talk about it for over a year, and seen part of it last year. The thing he most took away was the reason we capitalize LEAD. Said now that he's been here for a full camp, he sees the way we've intentionally designed the camp for Leadership Exploration And Discipleship.
The picture above is a portion of all 41 huddle leaders and several staff--up late, 11:50PM--reviewing the day, planning for the next, and most importantly, praying for God's movement in the hearts of the campers. So blessed to be a part of it. But even better, each morning there was a group of seven huddle leaders who got up earlier than they needed to in order to pray together over the camp.
I suspect there was some prayer going on from many of you during camp, but it was another wave of confidence in the Lord working in and through this camp to listen to these seven astounding young women pray. This wasn't your run-of-the-mill evangelical prayer either. They were full out urgently and fervently praying. I felt so confident in their leadership and their heart for their campers after listening to and watching them pray.
As I share below, worship regularly gets rated as the #1 highlight of this camp. Like a lot of pictures I see from camp, there are so many stories being told. One of the girls in the front right is from White Bear Lake. I worked a bit with her brother who was a huddle leader when I was focused in the east metro. Wonderful two siblings totally sold out for Jesus and for FCA. You can see in the reverence of several of these girls that worship for the campers here at LEADership Camp isn't just about singing good songs. They pour their heart out.
Speaking of pouring out, look at the girl on the far left. She's having a deeply moving spiritual moment. That's what I get emotional about in the back as I'm surveying the room during worship--that I get to be part of drawing dozens of high schoolers together for the purpose of worshipping Jesus whole-heartedly and who desire to grow in their skills to go and lead their peers to do the same. What an honor, and thank you to all of you for putting me in this role, keeping me here, and being a part of the team that makes this camp and ministry happen. Your financial investment is far more than financial...it's eternal.
Brent A from Marshfield, WI is one of the unsung heroes of camp and he's one of my dear friends on staff. I affectionately call him The Other FCA Brent. Brent works tirelessly to get as many students as he can to camp. He removes barriers by raising money for scholarships and he arranges a tour bus to make several stops throughout central Wisconsin so that transportation is not a hindrance for these families getting their kids to camp. The bus showed up just before we were really ready with our check-in process, which forced us to be ready real quick! And we had 20% of campers checked in before we officially started! Brent is an incredible asset to this camp and he's enthusiastically stepped up to take on more responsibility and a more visible role next year.
We had campers from 90 schools throughout MN & WI this year!
I'm so fortunate that I still get to work with my east metro team from time to time. These pictures of Brady and Gavin are so fun. And in Brady's picture is a grandson of one of the first-ever Minnesota volunteers for FCA, way back in the early 1970's. This picture of Brady will go down as one of our best ever, but his reaction isn't unwarranted: he was officiating tug-of-war and one team was within six inches of being eliminated but they came back in a fury to win and move on in the double-elimination bracket.
I love reading through the evaluations at the end of each camp. All campers, huddle leaders and adults are encouraged to submit them. Every year "worship" tops the "what filled you the most" question (thank you Emily Cameron and her bandmates!) and "food" takes the bottom scores (even when the Northwestern/Bon Apetit team does a great job! Apparently our addition of a 4th meal still doesn't quite hit the mark).
Some decide to send an email instead or in addition to. Hannah wrote me, "I have been prayed over, loved more than ever and made memories with my huddle I will never forget."
Eli tried to start a huddle at his school last year but was blocked by the school board and superintendent. He's more emboldened than ever to go back and start the huddle and we are ready to back and support him with everything we can to navigate the school administration and start the huddle with the right heart, effort and impact.
Years ago we started what we call Pop Up Sessions. We have 15 adults with a specific topic spread across the campus green, and we have five rotations of 18 minutes where campers get to choose which five speakers or topics they want to hear more about. It's such a joy to give our staff from across the region the opportunity to contribute in this part of camp.
I am always so impressed with our team that does the classroom teaching. Each year we keep the topics the same because it's what campers tell us they connect with the most: prayer, scripture study, telling good stories. It's hard to keep campers engaged for 25 minutes, four sessions in a row--once in the morning and again in the afternoon. But our team does a great job. In the morning session we train on the topic, then in the afternoon session we model and practice the skill together.
Competitions are for fun. Though the winners of the competitions get their name on the big trophy at the end of the weekend! Our campers have a lot of fun and we end each competition round with the teams praying together on the field before they rotate.
It wouldn't be a Brent Voight message if I didn't get the chance to call out my girls and embarass them a bit. It was so fun to have Kylie and Jenna serve as Huddle Leaders this year--Kylie's second. It was hilarious to watch other leaders when they figured out I was their dad. My kids grew up with FCA and I'm super-pumped they're still wanting to be engaged on their own accord, they don't feel like they have to just because they're my kids.
You can see all the pictures our excellent photographer Tanja took here. I encourage you to look at the faces as you go through the pictures. Imagine what's happening in their heart and mind as they go through this important week. My prayer has been that we've put together a camp that someday could show up in these kids faith stories as a formative marker or event.
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