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So, it all started a while back when church asked if I’d get involved in thier youth weekend. At the time I hadn’t fully grasped what driving to Birmingham in the snow to meet 2000 other young people at “The Gathering” was going to be like.
<— This was our back garden on the thursday morning. The drive up there was SHOCKING had I known how bad west Brom was I wouldn’t have gone, in fac it made international news, that was funny as we were sat in it. The worst moment had to be when we were coming of the M5 to find 4 guys in yellow jackets hanging around to help push cars up the slip road if they couldn’t do it themselves! The drive home was much better! So we got there friday night, the evengin meeting was pretty much cancelled, but the band came and played a couple tunes for us which was cool, they were awesome. However it then took us 50 mins to find the place we were staying, the bloke we were following got completely lost followign the directions we had all been given! when we finally go tthere, huge uproar over child protection and the room set up, we all have to move around, then we were greated wiht eh tbiggest snoring bloke ever. Now we look back and laugh, this video isn’t that great, but you’ll get the idea, turn you volume UP HIGH!
So yeah, that made it a long night, on top of having to give my sleeping bag to one of our youth who left his bag in his mums car. That is his bag containing everything! I slept ontop of a fethcing pink blanket and under a blue blanket with little sheep on. NICE!
SAturday was AWESOME. I was extrememly challanged by Nigel Tween who is the director of training for Elim, he did a seminar for over 18’s on leadership and mentoring. It was fantastic. He said for us to survive as chirctians we need to be operating on 3 planes. up, across and down. We all need a mentor (UP) who will challange us when we need it and encourage us in our persuit of God. We all need to be mentoring (DOWN)someone or two, encouraging them in thier relationship with God and the gifts he has given them, but we also need to be meeting together with our peers (ACROSS). But he really hammered home that we need to be selective in who we have as a mentor, it needs to be someone wise and probably older. We need to be mentoring young people, after all, we only need to be one step a head of them but it all needs to be born out of relationship and those relationsihps need to be based on Jesus. So I got thining, who I my mentor. Is it my Dad who has taught me so much and is alway there, but is also 3000 miles away and not involved in everyday life, or is it Geoff our paster at church or is it one of the guys at work? Umm still need to get that sorted and maybe a bit more fomalised. Who am I mentoring, that was a bit easier to answer, but wahat about all the youth at church, who is mentoring them? Who woudl make good mentors? Where do we even start? How does cell group with into that structure? Does that change as cell group leaders? So that was a BIG challane as you can see!
Then was Saturday night, J John was AWESOME even if he does have a couple of storeies he tells everytime. Have you heard the one about the lady on a plane who asked what his job was? You’ll have to go hear him. Well he gave a very challanging talk about being there for people and being prepared every moment for God to use you. He also told a pit of the stomach stories. You know that time sat on the bus and you get that feeling in the pit of your stomach that you should go talk to that person? He then gave an alter call in a very simple sensible way that wasn’t presurful like a lot of evangelists do, and our of our girls stood up liek a rockets. It was a huge privelege to be involved in leading that 1 soul into the Kingdom of God, definitely a highlight for me!
Well without making this the longeest post in histroy, the band
5 worship leaders 4 guitars 3 drummers 1 percussionist 3 keyboards 1 bass 4 backing vocals 6 dancers 1 AWESOME saxaphone 2 Rappers
Did not evny the sound engineers on that job!
