At a Mexico Trip campfire, while over 200 students huddle up, faces bright in the shimmering orange light, two worlds of opposites mingle unseen. Cold hands and shivering bodies meet warm, fire-lit faces. Eyes sting and tear with smoke while minds clear and unburden themselves in the starlight. Non-religious students listen attentively to Piedmont Community Church Pastor Scott Kail talk about God. Everything is in harmony. Everything makes sense.

“When we do all the campfire stuff and we do the talks, the prayers, even if you aren’t understanding and agreeing with what he’s saying, it’s still a cleansing feeling sitting in the camp and listening to Scott talk about what he believes in, even if I don’t believe in it and even if the people around me don’t believe in it,” senior Drew Collins said.

Collins, who has been a member of PCC since he came to Piedmont in first grade, will go on the Mexico Trip for his fourth time this year. He will lead a house-building team with his partner senior Katie St. Claire. But he does not attend the trip for religious reasons.

“I don’t know anybody who goes there for the religious experience, except, you know, Scott, Jig, all those guys,” Collins said. “Since you’re doing such great things and you’re so close to everyone at all times it’s just so different from everything that it’s kinda got this veil around it. Everything just feels better and makes more sense, and you just think ‘Why can’t it always be like this.’ That’s the spiritual part that I feel.”

Pastor Scott Kail calls it the “Mexico Magic.” In his 31 years of preaching and of all the places he has preached in — New York, Colorado and Virginia Beach — Piedmont is by far the most secular, Kail said. And yet every year of the thirteen he has led the trip, students that are self-proclaimed agnostics or atheists tell him they feel close to God while building houses in Mexico.

In fact, over half of the students on the trip say they don’t associate themselves with Christianity, and many never attend church, Kail said. So why do they attend the Mexico trip, an ostensibly Christian mission trip, according to the Amor Ministries website?

“Part of what makes the trip work so well is that it really doesn’t matter what your faith background is, or whether you confess a belief in God, or you’re Jewish, or you’re Mormon, or whatever,” Kail said. “As they say, we’re not just taking the choir to church.”

Since he came to Piedmont 13 years ago, Kail grew the occasion from a small trip of 20 to 30 kids to a huge school-wide event that students of all grades look forward to every year, including the upcoming trip this spring. Which is a fascinating success considering that the national rate of religious affiliation is between 70 and 80 percent while in the Bay Area it is less than 30 percent, Kail said. According to a “Barna: Cities” report on the top churchless cities, San Francisco ranks first, with 61 percent of people non-church attending. Still, he has never had a single complaint about the religious aspects of the trip.

“I think they all still feel very comfortable coming here, and I hope that reason is they know that we would never force anything on them,” Kail said. “But even the kids that would confess to be agnostic or atheist, which some of them do very overtly on their applications, make comments about the spirituality of the trip.”

Kail makes a clear distinction between spirituality and religion.

“I would use the term spiritual for everyone,” Kail said. “Some would clarify it as Christian and others may not have the point of reference or terminology to articulate what they are experiencing, but I believe it affects all that attend the trip.”

The trip, according to Kail, should be equal parts religious experience and community service experience.

“I think the kids know that I want them to be challenged or motivated spiritually, but I don’t have an agenda or an expectation for an outcome,” Kail said. “That’s kind of up to them and God.”

Kail said he understands that people often misinterpret the trip as part of a perceived agenda to convert kids to Christianity, but this is not the case… at least, not completely.

“I want to give the kids in Piedmont a chance to serve the neediest of the needy in Mexico and then as a product of doing that, I want to create an environment where God has the best opportunity to grab ahold of them and impact their life,” Kail said. “I want them to come back motivated to make a difference in other people’s lives.”

Kail loves the fact half the participants are non-church-going.

“We want to give the experience, the door-opening, the eye-opening, to everybody,” Kail said. “It’s desiring and hoping that this experience will point people to God but never having an agenda to try to make it happen.”

Only a few students, Kail said, will truly “start a relationship with God” and convert to Christianity because of the trip. Many, on the other hand, become valuable members to PCC, Piedmont’s “spiritual pub” according to Kail.

But in the end, all Kail wants is for the trip to be a safe haven for all types of people.

“Everybody becomes such a tight-knit group it really doesn’t matter,” Kail said. “Everybody just takes away from it what they want to.”