Scoutmaster Minute—The Founders

SM Minute—The Founders

Next Sunday is Scout Sunday, when we celebrate the founding of the BSA by William D. Boyce on 8 February 1910.  Boyce, as you know, brought Scouting to the US from England, where the movement was started by Robert Baden-Powell.

Robert S.S. Baden-Powell

As a youth, Robert Baden-Powell greatly enjoyed the outdoors, learning about nature and how to live in the wilderness.  After returning as a military hero from service in Africa, Baden-Powell discovered that English boys were reading the manual on stalking and survival in the wilderness he had written for his military regiment.  Gathering ideas from Ernest Thompson Seton, Daniel Carter Beard, and others, he rewrote the manual as a non-military nature skill book and called it Scouting for Boys.  To test his ideas, Baden-Powell brought together 22 boys to camp at Brownsea Island, off the coast of England.  This historic campout was a success and resulted in the advent of Scouting.  Thus, the imagination and inspiration of Baden-Powell, later proclaimed Chief Scout of the World, brought Scouting to youth the world over.

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(adapted from Troop Program Resources)

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Scoutmaster Minute—Our Spiritual Compass

For Scouts on a hike or a canoe trip, a compass is an important tool. Because it gives you a stable reference point (magnetic north), you can set a course and follow it. As long as your compass is accurate and you don’t damage it, it will serve you faithfully—if you trust it.

Our faith or spirituality is something like that. We have a point of reference that does not change: God. And we have a compass, so to speak, in our relationship with God. It’s something we have learned and continue to learn about, just as we learn to use a compass properly.

We use our spirituality and faith to get us through this grand journey we call life. If we are prepared to trust the things we have learned about God, our spirituality can Guide us through the joys and the temptation of life. We can use it to show us what service we can give and what potential dangers to stay away from. We can use it to guide us in our friendships, in our work, in what we say to people and about people, in how we treat our natural world.

I hope you can join us Sunday 7 February 2010, for a special Centennial Scout Sunday Service, followed by our Eagle Court of Honor.

(adapted from p.15 in BSA Troop Program Resources)