On August 23, 2021, Stephen Moore fell on his face in front of more than 40,000 people, and it couldn’t have been a better day.
Moore and his wife, Hope, had finalized the adoption proceedings for their second son earlier that morning. Later, the pair celebrated with a trip to an Atlanta Braves game, where Stephen raced a former Olympic sprinter-turned-mascot dubbed ‘The Freeze’ as part of a stadium promotion.
The race around the edge of the outfield grass ended with Moore stumbling and face-planting just before the finish line, earning him a spot on ESPN’s “Not Top 10”, replaying the painful moments to millions for the next week.
But Moore was floating “on cloud nine” regardless of the stumble, because his family had finally grown by one.
“I’m a little bloodied by that incident, but it was a special day for our family,” Moore said. “I did not win the race, and I was bloodied and embarrassed, but the Lord still used it for his glory.”
The Moores were not only celebrating bringing their son home for the first time, but also joyfully marking the end to an especially bumpy adoption process that was lengthened and complicated by the COVID-19 epidemic.
Two weeks after their second adopted child was born, and after about nine years of infertility, the Moores found out they were pregnant. The family is six total now, with two adopted children and two biological.
It was far from the plan and was far from easy, Moore says, but they wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It felt like we were in the midst of a storm and we couldn’t get out. But, by God’s grace, we were able to continue to cling to him, put our faith and our trust in him. The safest place we can be in the midst of a storm is with Jesus,” Moore said.
“It was all worth it. Our family, we're not perfect. But by God’s grace, we get to love and care for our kids as well as we’re able.”
That heart for adoption, along with the many lessons learned through adopting, directly informs and strengthens Moore’s vocational call as the Director of Camps for Communities for WinShape Camps, a Christian summer camp system started by Chick-fil-A founder S. Truett Cathy.
WinShape serves more than 30,000 campers every year, primarily at their four overnight camps in Georgia.
One of the fastest-growing facets of the ministry is Moore’s purview – community day camps. Traveling staff teams put on week-long day camps in 79 U.S. cities each summer, along with international community camps in Brazil and Costa Rica.
The camp format is a natural medium to share the Gospel with families who are just looking for something fun, safe, and affordable to do during summer days. Many of the families WinShape interacts with are unchurched and unbelieving, but an impactful experience at day camp can change more than one life.
“[Some families] don’t know it’s faith-based, but then their kid has a transformational experience with Christ. Then on Sunday, the kid wants to go back to church and mom and dad are like, ‘We’ll go with you,” Moore explained.
“I love that I get to [share the love of Christ] both at home and at work.”
Many such stories come out of WinShape’s international day camps in Brazil and Costa Rica, something of a hybrid between short-term mission trips and summer camp experiences brought to local churches abroad.
Local churches and volunteers come alongside WinShape staff to provide rich experiences for both the children and the communities at large.
The day camp model not only allows the organization to reach places far beyond the state of Georgia, but it also opens the door to many families who would otherwise be unable to afford an overnight summer camp experience.
WinShape emphasizes this effort of lowering the barrier to entry, providing robust scholarship programs that dramatically lower the cost for kids to become campers.
Since the camp began in 1985, it’s been fruitful work. Hundreds of thousands of kids and their families have been exposed to the good news of Christ and what it means to live as his children.
The question of long-term vision is an easy one to answer for Moore.
“I would hope that we could just continue to reach more communities. We want to be a community camp of local churches. We want to see churches partnering together to bring in campers that otherwise wouldn’t attend camp,” Moore said.
“Those families that are unchurched, we want them to drop their kids off and see there’s something special and want to learn more about. So then they get plugged in, and Jesus can transform their life through the ministry of camp.”
In the end, both his journey of adopting children and serving many others through camp are about spread the good news.
"I think what our family represents, and what hopefully we are able to share with campers is that, apart from him, we are lost," Moore concluded.
"When we as non-believers become believers, we become a part of God's family. Our lives are transformed, our names are changed. We are now children of God. That's what our goal is at camp: to go serve and share the good news with those that are lost, so they can become part of the family of Christ."
To learn more about WinShape Camps, click here.