On Thursday night, I was told that two of the youth and one of their parents would be joining me for the service project.  While it wasn’t as many people as I was hoping for, it would be a decent amount and it meant that we met our conference’s Safe Sanctuary requirements (two non-related adults when working with children).  It turned out, however, that only one of the kids came.

Knowing I was in a tough spot with our requirements, I spoke with my pastor (who was at a worship design meeting at the church) about adults who might be available.  We weren’t able to come up with any names, so we decided I would bring the lone child home and would go to the soup kitchen alone.

The four hours at Elijah’s Bowl went by very quickly.  There were seven of us, which seemed to be the perfect amount: enough people to do the work but not too many that we were in the way of each other.  I’m sure we could have used a few extra volunteers, but we weren’t in such bad shape that we couldn’t get the work done.

Though I didn’t count the number of people who came, I would guess we served around 80 people, probably more.  The pour economy is hitting the town (Sunbury) rather hard, as we weren’t able to provide take-out meals for people to bring home for later in the day/week.  I’m very glad I was able to help out because the experience shed a new light on how difficult things are right now.

For the few people who read my blog, if you’re able (and I’m guessing you are if you are fortunate enough to have access to the Internet), please donate food to your local soup kitchens (or grocery store gift cards so they can buy what they need when they need it and not be stuck with a hundred cans of creamed corn).  Additionally, and equally important, try to find time to help prepare and serve meals, whether it be once a quarter or once a month.  Those running soup kitchens rarely have enough staff, so I’m sure they’d love the help.

I went with five members of my church’s youth group, a friend of one of the members and another leader. We had a group site with a nearby church, which allowed us to be much closer to the main and fringe stages than we would have if we had gone by ourselves. We (the eight of us) left Tuesday afternoon at 2:00, arrived at the festival shortly before 4:00 and had our portion of the site set up not too long afterward.

The festival didn’t officially start until Wednesday evening, so we had almost a full day to hang out and have fun. I played frisbee for a while that first day and throughout the week, including my first ever game of ultimate frisbee with a group camping nearby. It’s an awesome game, but quite difficult when playing on a hill!

It would take quite some time to review the entire festival, so I’ll just touch on some of my favorites.

Wednesday:

• Justin Lookadoo
• Leeland
• Skillet
• Switchfoot

Thursday:

• Greg Stier
• Britt Nicole
• Jeremy Kingsley
• Ron Luce
• Family Force 5
• David Crowder Band
• Newsboys

Friday:

• Greg Stier
• Paul Baloche
• Bob Lenz
• Group 1 Crew
• Hawk Nelson
• Kutless
• Amy Grant (special guest!)
• Chris Tomlin

Saturday:

• Jeremy Kingsley
• Reggie Dabbs
• Bob Lenz
• Reggie Dabbs
• Barlow Girl
• Jeremy Camp
• tobyMac

And lastly… for those of you who’ve heard about how tarps are put down on the hill each morning, I found a video on YouTube of Saturday morning’s “tarp race.” It just so happens that Saturday wasthe only day where people had to go back and wait 30 minutes.

Overall, the event was pretty decent, though I didn’t think it was as good as the previous week’s conference at Messiah College or a training held by Group a few years ago. My main gripe was that the training was more theoretical than practical, so instead of going home with lots of examples and ideas to try, I came home with lots of conversation starters for me and the other youth leaders. Conversation starters would be great if I had lots of time to invest in youth ministry, but I’m neither a full- nor part-time youth leader, so any time I do have comes after my 40+ hour a week job.

Would I recommend the conference to other youth leaders? Most definitely, as long as they understand going in that they’re not going to be talking with their staff on the ride home about all the great ideas they can put in place.

This year, the youth and leaders decided on a theme of “Jesus is our hope.” The idea primarily came from a popular YouTube video that shows a young woman who was very close with Christ but was torn away and distracted by her boyfriend, greed, drugs and alcohol, etc. Eventually, the young woman realizes that her only hope is in Jesus and, as a result, he breaks through all of the tempters to save the girl.

The teens used the skit (which they performed!) as the service’s sermon. The youth also chose three scripture readings for the morning:

The Parable of The Wise and Foolish Builders

²⁴“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. ²⁶But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. ²⁷The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

The Parable of the Sower

³“Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. ⁴As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. ⁵Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. ⁶But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. ⁷Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. ⁸Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, multiplying thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times.”

⁹Then Jesus said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

¹⁰When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. ¹¹He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables ¹²so that,
” ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving,
and ever hearing but never understanding;
otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’”

¹³Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? ¹⁴The farmer sows the word. ¹⁵Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. ¹⁶Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. ¹⁷But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. ¹⁸Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; ¹⁹but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. ²⁰Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—thirty, sixty or even a hundred times what was sown.”

Comfort for God’s People

²⁷ Why do you say, O Jacob,
and complain, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD;
my cause is disregarded by my God”?

²⁸ Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.

²⁹ He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.

³⁰ Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;

³¹ but those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

The services were extremely moving and the youth received wonderful compliments from the congregation; all of the credit, though, must go to God, as during our last couple practices, I had no idea how we were going to get through the services because we just weren’t prepared.

The skit was filmed during the early service, so if I’m able to get a copy of it, I’ll post it here for all to see.

The highlight of my day was most definitely the keynote speech (broken up into two parts) by Kenda Creasy Dean, a professor and the director of the School of Christian Education at Princeton Theological Seminary.

The focus of the speech was that today’s teens don’t have a Christ-centered faith. Instead, they follow a faith system called moralistic therapeutic deism which has the following creed:

1. A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

The problem, Dean said, is not that they’ve learned this faith from television, movies or music; instead, youth practice this type of faith because that is what the church has been teaching them.

Dean continued by saying that teens need a consequential faith, a faith that is the foundation for everything that matters in a person’s life. To get there, we need to let teens know that there are four key toeholds to consequential faith: a creed to believe (is God worthy of my devotion?), a community to belong to, a call to live out (vocation) and a hope to hold on to. In particular, the hope teens are looking for is that the world is going in a good direction and that they have a role in getting it there.

One of the best parts of the keynote was that I was seated next to a youth leader from a town not too far away from Selinsgrove. It was great to be able to talk with someone from the area who I can interact with after the conference, instead of someone from hours away whom I will likely never see again.

In addition to the keynote speech, the conference also had two other sessions in which participants could choose from a number of topics/discussions. I chose “Writing God’s Story on the Heart of Teens” by Mike Harder and “The Jesus Contradiction: Why People Like Him but Dislike Christians” by Rob Tucker.

In those sessions, I learned how to share the Gospel with students in new and creative ways and be more effective as an evangelist for Christ.  Both sessions were decent, but they seemed rushed, which is typically the case at day-long conferences.

Looking back, the conference was a great opportunity to be refreshed and revitalized for youth ministry.  Each time I attend a conference or training like this, I return home more excited than ever before about serving God by reaching out to teenagers.  If you’re involved in youth ministry and have the opportunity to attend a conference such as this, I highly recommend it!