Lessons from Youth Specialties #1

Youth Specialties is a very cool thing . . . especially if you're involved with youth ministry in any way. Incidentally, I'm at a YS conference in Atlanta right now.
Unfortunately, that means I'm away from my wonderful wife, which has been very difficult and I miss her very much.

On the upside, I've already learned some interesting things and had some interesting experiences which I will share with you now.

1. When you put a large number of youth pastor type people (approx. 6,500 people) you meet a lot of interesting, and very friendly people.

2. Fast food is seldom good but always convenient.

3. My calling in life has nothing to do with red tape.

4. Truth is everywhere. This is a paraphrase of the thoughts of our first speaker of the day, Rob Bell. He spoke about truth and how you can find truth everywhere. He said to claim truth where you find it: essentially to use whatever truth you can find, no matter what the source, to help your ministry. He based everything from 1 Corinthians 3 where it says that everything belongs to you (you, meaning us, and everything meaning the whole world, life and death, etc) and that we belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God. A=B and B=C kind of thing. Examples: you may find truth in a music video, in a book, from a secular website, etc. In Titus, the writer quotes a Cretan Prophet. In Acts, we read a quote from a Greek poet. The implication he descibed was interesting and hit home with me in a powerful way. He encouraged us to raise our kids, either our own kids or rentals in youth groups, etc., with the mindset that God's truth is everywhere. Don't Christianity as being in a box, where anything outside of said box is not true (example, anything non-army is not true). Imagine raising a child that is taught that only her church, way of life, is correct and that there is no truth outside of that. Said child will go off to college someday, and will hear from professors some things that will be true . . . the now-older-child thinks that they have to choose one or the other - that both Church and world are at odds, when in fact God OWNS the world. He made everything in it. If the child is taught to discern truth from many sources, this problem is quickly eliminated.

5. Tonight, Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker's son spoke. He was supposed to be controversial. I was disappointed in the lack of controversy, though I did like the direction he was headed. He basically said the church is like a hosipital that has shut it's doors to sick people. "Oh, you're bleeding. Do you . . . do you think you could come back later when that stops? Everything is really white in there and the doctors don't want to get messy." etc, etc.

That's all I've really got time for right now. Except to say, I've realized I've become more open in my old age. I've already sought out a few people from my past and new people to ask questions to, etc. Example, the bass player from Downhere. Also, it was very good to hear Starfield again . . . I'm here in a hotel room with Murray. We opened for those guys!

Grace.