YWC2012 Part 4

On Saturday morning, we dragged our butts out of bed a ridiculous o'clock to have breakfast in the hotel that we now knew well. We had to be at conference for the keynote speech at 9am... man, that hurt. 9am on a Saturday is difficult when it is supposed to be your day off and you've been up discussing the highs and lows of life, into the late hours of the night. Still, what we did discuss was important to all of us. I keep talking on and on about how vital fellowship is to me and the church. No cliques, no concerns. It's difficult to get to that point some times.

Anyway, the key note speech was important, unfortunately it was too much information for me to take in. I didn't get some of the cultural references and even now, I know it was about youth participation. The keynote is important, but not at 9am, sorry guys and gals, you got that one wrong this year.

Saturday continued to be all about butts. The seminar I attended ended with us 'breaking through the butts', or at least praying about them. The people I was with found this very funny, though the point was serious. God had a big dream, and so should we, except the tiny three letter word that often holds us back from doing anything at all sometimes 'but'.

'I would love to run youth alpha with all of the young people that attended SOLID, but...'
'I would love to clear the church worship space every Friday and let the young people use the space, but...'
'I can really see how the church can change in the next 15 years so that it doesn't die, but...'

It takes a lot of courage to dream big, well at least humans think it does. We are limited, because we are not God, and can't ever hope to be, in His all-knowingness! God is not stupid, he knows exactly what we want to do, and knows how to give it to us as well.

Right, back on track, the second half of the seminar was a bible study, which fell a bit flat for me, jumping around the New Testament, looking at the way Jesus reacted to the culture that was around him. It seems Jesus was picky about what he chose to do with culture. He also used the things he was good at (namely, oh, everything) to worship his Father. So what do you use to worship God? I write, sing, reach out and listen.

Saturday afternoon was pretty chilled out. Got to play some Pool (of which I am winning 7 games to NOTHING, my colleague really needs to up his game) and watch the qualifying for the last grand prix of the season. Quite good considering I could've filled my time with a seminar about how to not burn out ;) Thankfully I know exactly what is needed when I am at the end of everything! A bit of sport and a nap!

Saturday evening was Chris Durso. He's passionate and he has a smoking hot wife, apparently (I never saw her!). He really made an impact, being American, he would always. He runs a youth ministry, and you can hear what he has to say about being a misfit here. There is still so much in my head about what I can do with what he said. Spending more time with the young people I know seems to be the number one priority.

We spent one more night in the pub going through the day, crashing through the butts and allowing ourselves time to talk about what had happened. Little sleep followed and Sunday morning came around too quickly!

We started with worship and then moved on to seminars. I attended Double Trouble. It made me realise how much I don't know, but confirmed some truths in me and my work. I want to help the young people who are really struggling to lead a life that is full. I need to know more about who can help them when they are in distress. I have taken one thing from this seminar about talking to the young people and encouraging my volunteer leaders to do the same. We all need to be a positive influence for the young people that we work with.

Back to the main room via a quick chat with a friend, and back to Chris Durso talking about being successful about what we do. I am tempted just to take a picture of my notes at this point and let you read them, but they won't make too much sense to you! There were 4 bible passages... Mark 11, 1 Cor 9:25-27h, 1 Tim 6:12 and Phil 1:21, that's a good lot of scripture there about working hard for God, going that extra mile just to please him. See that your success is not measured in earthly terms, but with the name of Jesus being known by as many people as possible. The men in Mark 11, that go to collect the colt, don't even have names, and they would've already done a lot of hard work to get to the point when Jesus said to them 'go and get me this'. They are just disciples, trustworthy ones, given an important job to do. They don't answer back or ask to ride on the colt. What do you do for God and how do you do it? With a lot of reluctance or with a joyful heart, knowing that your hard work will be rewarded in heaven?

So that's it, conference is over for another year. We have leaders conference, retreat and summit to look forward to in 2013, not to mention all of the other exciting things that are work! Getting out of bed isn't going to be so hard next year.