The leaders always wanted us in the camp meeting meetings. Something about, "You're here to get a spiritual blessing, not to just stand around and talk." So we stayed outside, paying occasional attention as scratchy PA systems battled canvas and conversations.

That all turned around the year I became a ministerial intern. The conference youth director assigned a couple of us to care for the younger youth at camp meeting. We swallowed hard and tried to find ways to get the kids involved. Our solution included doing the things we wished we could have done during camp meetings past.

We played lots of softball, rafted rivers, created a daily live radio program, baked cookies and had long discussions on whatever the kids wanted to talk about. Evenings were full-on Bible studies under the trees, usually continuing the conversations of the day, but doing so directly from Scripture.

We were feeling good about the week because the kids were having a good time, and because the evening Bible studies were awesome! We were beginning to connect well enough that we had some "right" to talk about where Christ was in their lives.

The kids came for the cookies, the games, the studies and just to see what was happening.

Friday night "what was happening" was an ancient preacher who had been relegated to "tell the kids some stories." He was at least 110, and we leaders groaned, and then prayed for a miracle. "Lord, please help the kids be kind."

The preacher assigned to us was E.L. Minchin, long retired from the General Conference youth department, a circuit-riding preacher who kept his Bible slung low on his hip.

I do not remember his text. What I remember is the silence. Less than a minute into his sermon all conversation was gone, replaced with rapt wonder as youth and leaders faced South Pacific head-hunters, Mongolian bandits, Ethiopian camel-drivers and sinking islands.

Once in a while the kids would remember to breathe, usually right after an angel saved us from the devil's claws.

The stories captured our imaginations and put flesh on God. "You could hear angel wings in the tent."

After taking us on the wildest ride of our lives, he stopped, looked each person straight in the heart, and said, "God is calling some of you to be preachers—to speak His words to the world. You'll go places you've never dreamed of going. You'll face problems greater than you can solve. You'll be the guests of kings, princes, actors and farmers. You will be God's hands, God's arms, God's voice and God's presence in thousands of lives. God wants YOU to be His Preacher. If God is asking you to be a preacher, are you ready to accept His call?"

Never having thought about any of these kids as pastors, I held my breath and waited.

The first to stand was the son of a local dentist who surprised me by even being in the meeting. Then there was another young man, and another, and then three girls. Before long the pews looked like an EKG with short and tall kids standing in lines—guys and girls—linking arms and committing to be there if God needed them as pastors.

There was a prayer and much hand shaking, and then he was gone—a one-night miracle-worker whose way of walking God's walk made us all want to grab our passports and take off for the mission field.

I walked long and slowly through the camp's forest that night, re-living the evening I had chosen to become a pastor, wondering if my life might include some stories worth telling, and kicking myself for not seeing ministerial potential in our softball players.

That was the only time I heard E.L. Minchin preach, but on the Internet I have found copies of old programs where he and Eric B. Hare led seminars on how to tell stories ... and "how to invite youth to become pastor."

"And did I tell you about the time in Sarawak when..."

Dick Duerksen is the official storyteller for Maranatha Volunteers Interntional. Readers may contact Dick by e-mail at: dduerksen@maranatha.org.