Christ in Youth Conference, Day Three

It was another beautiful day in Durango.

If it wasn't six and a half hours away, I could really see myself coming here and hanging out. It's absolutely beautiful. The picture above is a view looking towards Fort Lewis College where we're staying (on top of the plateau).

Today started out kind of late for myself and one student because we woke up late. No running today.

Today's topic was community, and of course we had problems with our little community, the group of students and myself who went. One student wasn't getting along with another student and it was affecting our D-Group time, so I ended up getting all the guys together in one of the rooms and we hashed it out for about 45 minutes. In the past, as a student minister, I was not very good about confrontation and helping students solve problems. I'm not a confrontational person at all, although I'm trying to be better - and I figured that this time with the guys duking it out would help us actually be a better community. The amazing thing is that it worked.

After our D-Group, I had promised the guys in the group that we could go to Walmart down in Durango, because one of the guy students wanted to be in the talent show they were having later on. He's a spray paint artist, really neat stuff. I wasn't really sure that it would work in this context of a talent show - usually it involves mostly singing and playing instruments. Plus I was wondering if they would really give him the time to paint his picture. He went and performed - and he painted this amazing space picture in three minutes! Everyone was amazed and he became quite the popular guy on campus today. Which is awesome.

I'm going to go ahead right now and brag on the youth ministries I've been part of. In some way or another, every single one of my student ministries has made me proud at CIY and other trips. I remember my first student ministry, we went on a missions trip and we went to this beach event put on by the college that I went to, and they had a beach competition. Our youth ministry, which was located in a state pretty darn far from the beach (that would be Colorado), won the beach competition. The group I took to CIY from Dallas in 2001 had a bunch of musicians, and people from other churches would come and hang out with our music people and sing songs all night. And now, with this group - we have some talented students and because we're a small group, we've already "attracted" one girl from another group who has been hanging out with us because she gets "lost" in the large group she's with.

Anyway, during free time I got to spend some time with a youth ministry friend - I grew up with her husband, and they've been youth ministers of a church in Flagstaff, Arizona for 12 years. It was good to get caught up with her.

Tonight, the same guy who spoke last night came up and spoke about community. He talked about the stories of Achan in Joshua and Ananias and Sapphira in Acts and how these were examples of people who had the potential to destroy the community of people who believed in God - but that they instead were killed because God takes these kind of things seriously. Then he told us of four different community killers: (1) Make it all about you. (2) Lie to your leaders (in other words, tell them you're fine when they ask you and don't open up to anyone). (3) Never confront anyone. (4) Believe that cheating God is no big deal. Of course, we all thought it was interesting that #3 was the issue today, and our students resolved some issues and created actual community.

Tonight, before we talked in our youth group time, I took everyone to Baskin Robbins and treated them to ice cream. It was a fun ending to a great day.