Davis — With teen pregnancy, illicit drug use and high school dropout rates all above the national average in Oklahoma, the all-familiar Christian camp hopes to engage with the younger generation to help combat these issues.

Falls Creek, a Christian summer camp located in the Arbuckle Mountains, has drawn hundreds of students from churches across the Ada area for years. This year’s camp started June 1, with seven additional weeks scheduled after that. Camp leaders hope to fight against “striking” statistics they believe is hurting today’s generation.

“We’re 41 percent live birthrate from unwed mothers,” James Lankford, director of the camp said. “It’s a striking shift in both behavior and attitude to be able to say ‘this is now who we are.’”

Lankford said this behavior will take this generation in a direction they do not want to go.

“The farther we go down this direction, the more chaos there will be in families and in lives and in our own government structure and everything,” he said. “We will begin to look at this generation and ask ‘how did this happen?’”

To prevent these statistics from getting worse, Lankford said the students need to listen to what is this year’s Falls Creek theme: The Echo.

“There are things that people older than them have learned and have lived that need to be passed on to them,” he said. “They need to be able to hear the echo of the generation before them.”

Lankford said they need to learn by both elders’ achievements as well as their mistakes.

“We’re encouraging students to turn around and listen for a moment to the echo of previous generations and to say ‘is there some wisdom that would actually take you down a better path than where you’re headed,’” he said.

The reason why these statistics seem to be growing is because of a combination of things, Lankford said.

“I think more families anticipate that the church will disciple their students,” he said. “If they can send them to church, they’ll take care of it instead of the parents engaging with their own children, to be able to teach them about scripture and teach them what they know and to be able to pass on some of that.”

Lankford also said society still does not readily accept people of faith.

“I do think there is a cultural de-emphasis on faith,” he said. “If you have faith, you’re marginalized. You’re just one of those people at one of those churches, and that’s not really mainstream.”

Almost 5,000 teenagers are expected to attend every week for eight weeks. About 4,000 have a church background and about 500 to 800 do not have any church background, Lankford said.

“The morning services are shaped around Christian students,” he said. “They’re geared towards helping the Christian students go forward in their faith. We’ll be addressing to Christian students the cultural things we’re seeing.”

Lankford said the evening services will be dedicated to those who are not yet Christians, and will try to answer questions they have about God.

“We try to help address some of those questions about God and how you know Him and what it’s like to follow Him and why this is even important,” he said.

Despite the cause of this year’s camp, some parents are leery to send their kids to Falls Creek because of what Lankford calls a “long-standing rumor.”

“I can remember hearing a statement made that all these people go to Falls Creek and get pregnant,” Lankford said. “Since I’ve been here in 1996, I have yet to have one mom or dad call me and say ‘wow, there’s some big issue that happened with my child.’ As the director, I would probably get that call.”

And with the student-to-faculty ratio being 4 to 1, Lankford said campers are carefully watched.

“We have a lot of adult leaders here,” he said.

Lankford said he is excited about Falls Creek this year and hopes the week will make a difference in students’ lives.

“I really do hope it is a spiritual marker for them,” he said. “There is an echo of what’s right that is still out there. There’s a piece of truth out there that we need to pick up.”