Christ In Youth Conference, Day One

So I thought it would be kind of cool to each day at the end of the night share my experiences of that day at the Christ In Youth Conference. For those who don't know, eight high school students and I are in Durango, CO at Fort Lewis College. We are at the Move Conference, a summer event that takes place on college campuses all over the country. This is my first CIY adventure in seven years, so I'm not sure what's different going into it.

It's a six and a half hour drive from Aurora to Durango, so we left at 8:00 a.m. and for the most part had an uneventful trip. We get about twenty minutes outside of Durango, and they're doing construction, and we wait in a line for over an hour. We got out of our van and skipped rocks in the creek. We finally get to Durango, we eat, we fumble around trying to find our rooms and where to get the keys, I miss an important adult leader meeting in the process, and then finally there's the evening session. By the way, the girls totally got shafted in the room department. They actually are in guys' dorms (there aren't any guys in there during the summer), and the guys are in nice apartments. The girls all have to share showers with their hall - each room in the guys has its own shower.

Anyway, the session starts. The worship leader is pretty good, I had never heard of him before (remember, it's been seven years!), but I find out he was there last year as well, which is why there are a lot of screams when they come on stage. They do several worship songs - most of them I know but some are unfamiliar to the students because we haven't done some of them yet. Then the conference director - Nate Karnes - gets up and says some interesting words, words that made me think. He talked about the way we judge people even when we get to the conference, and he even brought up how youth leaders do the same - they look at a large group, and think "they must be shallow" or they look at a small group and say "that church must be lame."

The last few years I went to Christ in Youth, I was regularly taking 50 plus students every summer. I remember being one of those "large churches". I remember the pats on the back. I remember one of my youth ministry friends comment to me, "Wow, you really have done well in your ministry. You have one of the largest groups here." I remember being proud because there was only one youth ministry that brought a larger group than we did one summer.

I looked at the seating chart this year, and our group is the smallest. There's a church in Arizona that has over 300 students at the conference. Our small group, highlighted in blue, is very obviously small. And I wouldn't have it any other way. Thankfully God has changed my heart in this regard. To me it doesn't matter how big or small a group is at CIY. I'm extremely excited about the group God has led from our church to come to CIY. I'm excited to get to know our students and for our students to get to know each other.

Oh, and before I get ultra-spiritual, I just had two of our students knock on the door and moon me.

We'll see what God has in store for us tomorrow.