This was my first time really hanging with Greg, and I am really glad I got to know him on this trip. He is a cool guy, really chill, reflective on things, funny. We all went out to Taco Bell, then to the convention center to register, check out all the stuff going on. We played Rock Band, jumped on the trampolene where it is attached to bungee cords and u can do flips, check out lots of display tables, and lots more. Then we went back to the hotel and hung out.
Friday we hit the convention in time for the general session. We were staying at the Millenium Maxwell house, which has free shuttle to and from the airport, and also to and from the convention center. I love free, but as we realized the shuttle has some slight drawbacks. In the morning it was always pretty easy to catch, but at night we would wait for almost 20 minutes and then crowd in with others in order to ride back. At one point 7 of us crowded together in the back area where they put the luggage! The biggest drawback was that we could never stay for the late night events, unless we wanted to pay for a taxi, b/c the shuttle ended at 11pm. Anyway, back to Friday...
On Friday we made designated that I would be the JOD of the day. JOD is Jerk on Duty, and basically is the decision maker regarding where we are going to eat, etc. Greg took Saturday as JOD and Matt took Sunday. I went to the art room and made a house out of paper, and while there met two cool girls from I believe the Caaman Islands. The house was supposed to represent you and then u put it on a table with lots of other houses made by other people, to show community. Good idea...
The main session that morning was probably my favorite of the entire event. It consisted of worship by Mercy Me, speaker Francis Chan, and then a concert by David Crowder Band. This was my first time hearing Francis Chan, and I was blown away. He had interesting insights into things about Jesus not trying for huge crowds, but being skeptical when they came, and speaking in parables not so that they get it, but so that they wouldn't get it...Wow. Look at the story of the parable of the sower. Then about how large crowds that aren't getting it aren't good for anything but saying look at my large crowd. He used salt to show this, how if salt loses it's flavor it isn't good for anything but to be thrown out, but u could have a big pile of worthless salt and say, look how big my pile is. He also talked about rethinking how church is done, do we really need huge buildings? He pointed out that the church in the Bible is so much different, out church today almost shouldn't even be called church. It is like calling people in an ice skating rink playing with hampsters soccer. U see it and go, that isn't soccer, where do I begin? The early church in Acts is an unstoppable force, and beatings and jail and martyrs do nothing to stop it. Our church today gets stopped pretty easy, just by ourself. the music isn't awesome, or there is dinner to eat, or someone changed the service time, and people get stopped. It is like the idea that we are in a spiritual battle is totally lost on a lot of the US church today, and we just think we show up Sunday morning we are awesome! Forget prayer, or giving, or dedication, or really trying to live like Jesus. We are fallen from the model set. It is a lot to think about, and so I bought the CD of his talk to chew on it some more.
Dave Crowder is lots of fun to watch in concert. He has a really good stage presence in getting the crowd involved with talking and joking with them, where a lot of musicians u wish they would just be quiet and go on to the next song. He has fun with it, and it is infectious. He played one song on a keytar, and one song on a converted Guitar Hero guitar, where the buttons have been configured to play actual guitar chords. Oh, and the start button is the sound of Mario hitting a brick and getting a coin, which his guitarist demonstrated with a running jump fist in the air.
We ended up going to a pizza place for dinner and getting meat pizza, and then we met up with KJ for the evening session. It was good to see my old roommate again. He is the same in some ways, and in some ways has changed for the better (family man, minister), and changed for the unique (hunts elk in Colorado, huge beard and dreds, does yoga). We listened to Shane Claiborne talk, in his surprising huge East TN accent. He started by singing a song about being proudly un-patriotic if it means supporting some of the sketchy things our government does and how our government is similar in ways to the Roman Empire. Interesting perspective, but I don't agree with it all. I think u can be patriotic and still love God, u just love God more than country. I do agree that we shouldn't wholeheartedly support all that our government does, especially if it goes against Christ. And there is a lot that does. Then he talked about living with the homeless, a lot I had read with Irresistable Revolution. He closed by showing a cool clip of a guy that had been inspired by him, won two cars on the Price is Right, sold both back to the dealerships, and used the money to go to Rwanda and help at an orphanage there for 6 months. Definately inspiring.
A fellow named Andrew Marin came up and spoke about reaching out to Gay and Lesbians. His story was that he had 3 best friends in HS, and they all turned out to be gay, and so he decided to live in the gay and lesbian community and be "the gayest striaght person" to undertand their community and how to reach them. Among his points were don't call them homosexuals, just gay or lesbian. Love them, reach out where they are. Don't tell them it is a sin, they already know. I agree with a lot of his points, but not the never confront their sin part. If it were any other sin the church wouldn't see it this way, we would be trying to show love for the person while encouraging them to turn away from their sin, whatever it may be. Vince Antonucci and his church at Forefront have done it this way. To me just showing love and not stating homosexuality is a sin opens the door for those in denominations that feel now that it isn't a sin and that openly gay and practicing individuals become leaders of the church. I know every church leader has a sin they struggle with, but the key is that they struggle with it, they don't just say it is okay and pretend it isn't a sin in the name of love. Still, I agree with him that more love could be shown to the gay and lesbian community by the church.
Next up was Tony Campolo pushing that America is like Babylon in Revelation. The greatest on Babylon on earth, but Babylon nonetheless. And it is falling. And this causes the people to panic in the Bible, but it causes the angels to rejoice. And it is during this time that Jesus' sermon on the mount starts to make the most sense. Not from a capitolistic perspective, but from a godly perspective. And that now is the time to realize that storing up treasures on earth when there are so many needs around us is probably not what God meant when he said, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust (and falling 401k's) destroy...but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy...for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Matt. 6:19-21 Instead as our economy struggles and job will be lost, let us now look at how to better serve those in the congregation that might be losing jobs, need help paying the bills, etc, and then look at helping those in the community do the same.
After the sessions we went back to the hotel, and KJ hung with us and we talked about different approaches to ministry. KJ's church is a megachurch, but they are trying to grow out of their building and instead do mostly housechurches, and let the building be a Boys and Girls club or whatever. He is taking pay cuts every year and having people in the congregation support him with the rest of the bills. Interesting perspective, I don't think it would work at Edgewood, but the idea is moving from the west (Francis Chan spoke of doing the same thing). Still in the Bible belt that would be very unlikely now. 20 years from now, we'll see if it begins to catch on here.
Saturday I checked out the prayer room. It was great, with lots of different prayer stations, including a place to trace your handprint, write a request in it, and then put your hand on someone else's print and pray for them, a art table to draw/sculpt a prayer, a prayer wall, a rest area, a lily to stop and literally consider the lily, and a circular station in the middle to rest, read the Bible, etc. It was a great time of spiritual refreshing, and I would love to do something like that at my church.
I check out 2 Seminars while there. One was Barry Shafer's "Developing a Hunger for God's Word in Students" and the other was Les Christie's "dealing with rude, obnoxious, and apathetic kids." Both were good, but I won't go into much detail here since I have the notes. If u are actually reading this and interested in what they said just leave me a message and I'll let u know.
Mark Yaconelli spoke on the Soul. He spoke about what it is: The place where u are deeply yourself, where God dwells (that makes u a temple). It remians alive, awake, a place of knowing truth. It is where u encounter the true God. what it is like: 1) it is in constant wonder, it is attentive to the 10000 wonders we see daily. It doesn't like to hurry, it likes us to stop and recover wonder. 2) it grieves for the grief of others. when we grow numb to news of death from war, our soul still grieves. (an early Christian practice was to pray to cry, for your heart to break, for u to feel your soul again. that idea kind of makes me uncomfortable, which makes me think I need to do it. but i don't know if i actually will, because again I amuncomfortable with the idea. I just don't like crying.) 3) it waits for joy. Yaconelli shared how God can use different things to bring joy to a hurting soul, like disco music to a 13 year old boy, and then he danced for us. It was a trip.
Somewhere the night before I got conficted to really give to the poor, and so I put it into practice Saturday. I went to the different booths and got lots of free stuff, loaded up a bag, and then went to give it away to homeless people in Nashville. I talked with one homeless guy in particular, who called himself Shredder b/c of the way he played the guitar, and told him the lyrics to the 3rd verse of Amazing Grace, which he wanted to sing on the street for money since all of these Christians were around. I gave away lots of candy, a starbucks giftcard, shirts, a hat, a red bull, books, and money. And it felt great! It truly is better to give than receive.
That night we went to Spaghetti Factory for dinner, and talked about RBC a lot. Then we went to the evening session, which included Lincoln Brewster worship and a talk by Francis Collins. He is a Christian geneticist who did work on the human genome project, and believes that their has to be a God b/c of the evidence he sees in genome patterns. However, he also believes in evolution. He pointed to evidence including the fact humans need vitamin C b/c our GULO seems to be defective. He said he reconciles this with the Bible saying that God created the earth 13.7 billion yrs ago, but he is outside of time, and that Genesis is about God's nature as a creator, not scientific, and thus doesn't have to be read literally. If u know me u know I don't agree with this, I'm not going to get into the reasons here, but I do respect the man for following the evidence where it leads him and for genuinely being concerned that this issue would cause division among our body of believers. It is not an issue of salvation, and he had an interesting quote from St. Augustine that said something to the effect of "In matters far beyond our vision...don't develop a position that if it falls you fall in it."
Sunday we listened to Shane and Shane, who were great live, I had never listened to them before, and Matt and Greg said they wouldn't normally pop in their CD to listen to, but they were fabulous live. They led us in some of the most powerful worship of the weekend. the Skit guys were hilarious, they were their Sunday morning, evening, and Monday morning. they were by far my favorite entertainment. There were some corny illusionists called living illusions. The lady did great tricks, but her husband wasn't that good. And they both had really corny staged talking to the crowd, including a guys vs girls shouting match. I heard Kendall Payne for the first time, she sang just her in front of a piano playing, and she nailed it. Beautiful voice, and a interesting love song where she talked about how she and her husband would fail each other time and time again b/c they aren't perfect, but their love would remain, and they would remain together and strong.
The General session main speaker on Sunday was Mike Pilavachi. He is from England and talked about how Jesus trained the disciples for ministry by having them help with bits of it (like distributing the bread and fish at the feeding of the 5000 and moving the stone when he raised Lazarus, and giving them a test run on going out to cast out demons) and how we need to train students the same way. have them help with ministry. And it won't always be great, they aren't pros, but they will learn. And as u do this show them and tell them u love them, and that they are important to u and to God.
I skipped the Sunday evening gen session to go to the Prayer labyrith. It was totally worth it. It had 11 stations and u just go through and pray at each one, slowly, focusing. There are different things set up at some stations to help u concentrate, like a journal, a compass that is off north because of magnets, TVs, mirrors, communion, candles, and sand for footprints. I came back really spiritually refreshed and the guys told me I hadn't missed anything the main speaker was horrible. We watched Jars of Clay perform in concert, their singer gets really into it, constantly running or jumping, or lying on stage while singing. I got to hear them do Carry Me, but missed their older stuff, but it was totally worth it.
Monday morning Greg and Matt left, and I went solo to the final session. Mark Oestreicher, YM pres, spoke, and talked about how he had struggled before with the "stuff" ministry philosophy, and thought he reached the pinnacle of youth ministry when he rented out Universal studios and a water park for a back to school bash. But he talked with kids later and realized that those things were not what made the difference in their lives. They missed the circling up and sitting, talking about life, God, relationships, etc. It was communion (like community, but on a deeper level). His point was that the intersection of mission and communion is small (big is a western value), it is simple (not a huge complex program), it is fluid (not a 40 day packaged resource). It is about a person, not an idea. All about Jesus, and all these resources, etc are great but they can be distracting (said the president of YS, and the irony was not lost on him). We have all we need to reach teens. We are the equipment. Well said.
I spent the afternoon at the Frist (I got in for free with a text message) checking out famous photos and Rodin sculpture. Then it was back to the hotel and off to the airport. I got back to Roanoke around 1am (Tyler picked me up from the airport in Lynchburg), and stayed at the Workman's (the Wynne's were at our house). I'm really glad I was able to go this year, and we'll see about next year when it comes.
