Christ In Youth Conference, Day Two

Day two started out with a bang - actually a run, as three of us guys got up at 6:30 a.m. to go running. We didn't go very far, considering 1) two of us don't usually run very often, and 2) we are in Durango, which is 7500 feet up. But it felt good to do a little exercise to start. When we walked out of our rooms, we saw three guys doing some kind of Tai Chi or something and when we came back they were still doing it.

The theme of the day was The Holy Spirit, which I thought was a good theme. Unfortunately, for the most part, the "brotherhood" of churches I've grown up in and that CIY is part of has not done a good job teaching about the Holy Spirit. He's kind of that uncle that everyone has that no one talks about because 1) We don't know a lot about him, and 2) He's kind of weird when we get around him. Our brotherhood has emphasized the Word of God way over the Spirit of God, emphasized reasoning and logic over feeling and emotional responses. So I was glad that we were able to spend a day learning about the Holy Spirit.

Our youth group time and D-Group place* (see below for what happened) is this rock garden area that opens up to a circle that's perfect for a group. So for our discipleship group we talked about the Holy Spirit, and I had this great illustration about letting the Holy Spirit work in our lives, but the two glasses that I was going to use were stuck together and we spent about ten minutes trying to get them unstuck, so I had to modify.

We had about four hours of free time after lunch, which I used to work (after all, I'm also a worship minister who does all the media stuff) and take a short nap. Dinner was not good. I wish the Holy Spirit had told me not to eat the pork chop, because it really affected me later on. Then we had the evening session, which was really good. The worship band played three of my favorite worship songs (From The Inside Out, Consuming Fire and Mighty To Save). The speaker was Chris Duncan, someone I spent a couple of weeks with back in my ILYGD (stands for Impressively Large Youth Group Days) - and all the students really felt that his message impacted them. He talked about the Holy Spirit and then we did this neat exercise where a third of us sang with the band, a third read scripture, and a third prayed a prayer on the screen, and then we rotated. After that exercise we spent some time allowing the Holy Spirit to move in our lives and guide us.

Which was my favorite part of the day. I have been for the past year been bombarded with God telling me to do something with the whole human trafficking problem. But I keep getting busy and I don't allow room for God to work in my life to make a difference somehow, even though he keeps telling me this. Case in point: I had not listened to Mars Hill's podcast in over six months. Three weeks ago I decide to listen, and they had a guest speaker. Guess what he talked about? Human trafficking. And today we saw a video about - guess what? - human trafficking and sex slavery. God is convicting me - now I just need to get serious and specific about what he wants me to do.

* Least favorite part of the day - session gets out and we go to Youth Group time, to our spot - the spot we had last night, the spot we did our Encounter and D-Groups at - and someone has already taken it. We tell this person that we have been using that spot, and he throws out the ILYG card by saying, "Well, our group is big and we need a bigger place for us to meet." So we lost our spot. Not cool. It made me think if I would have done the same in my ILYGD. I'm not sure. Probably. I didn't think much in those days about smaller youth groups, although we did plan things to do with a couple smaller youth ministries.

Anyway, that was the day. The guys' supply of Cheetos, Oreos and Mountain Dew is disappearing rapidly. We may have to stock up again tomorrow. And oh yeah. My jaw is going to be sore tomorrow, since I got hit with a frisbee we were playing with in the dark. I know. Genius.