Monday, February 27, 2012

CBCGB 2012 Winter Retreat: Recap


The Anticipation: One of my friends from seminary (Jen Lin) asked if I would be interested in speaking at her 2012 Winter Retreat. I received an email from her on September 14, 2011 titled, “Doing anything Feb. 24-26? Smiley face smiley face”. It took me 2 hours to check my calendar and replied, “consider it done!” More smiley faces.  This would be her first retreat since becoming the Jr. high pastor there and this would be my first jr. high only retreat to speak at. Needless to say…we were both a bit nervous and excited about the retreat. There were a couple of things that I wanted to do right away: 1) start my homework. I wanted to figure out the theme as soon as possible just so I could begin to pray over the topics and begin studying the passage. 2) I wanted to do my research of the church, the youth, and the leaders. Let me clue you in on how I did this:

1. Once Jen told me that theme was “Ready to Lose” and the verse came out of Philippians 3 I began to pray through the sessions. She told me that I had 4 talks to mold around the vision of “losing everything to follow Christ.” I think I spent the next month praying through the topic and asking God what in the world he would want me to speak to the students about. Then I started to dig through Philippians 3. Starting in verse 7 all the way to verse 14 the text broke down fairly well. Note: I wanted to let the text determine my points and my messages. So as I continued to study the passage, I broke down (as I saw it) into 4 parts – 7-8a; 8b-11; 12; and 13-14. Then with the theme in mind I kept asking, “what is Paul trying to communicate here?” Is there a process of losing? And I saw 4 things: 1) Paul counting all things as lost (even his achievements); 2) Paul suffering for the sake of Christ; 3) Paul striving to know Jesus; and 4) Paul forgetting and straining. From there I spent the next several months really digging into the verses exegetically.  I wanted to make sure I knew the text – each word, main idea, context, commentaries, etc. When it got closer to the retreat…I started asking, “What does this mean for the youth at CBCGB?” Which leads me to #2

2. I think if you’re going to speak to a group of people, you gotta know your audience. At first, my only frame of reference to jr. high kids were the ones at CBC. Now I know those kids because I work with them and I’ve been with them for over 7 months now. They know me and how we do things here…but I had no clue who the students in Boston were like. So I started to research the best way I knew how – facebook. I tried to get as much info on them as possible so I went to Jen’s and Stan’s facebooks and just tried to get an idea of what these kids were like. I also asked Jen through gchat about the students. Questions like: “what kind of students are they? How big is the group? What are some of the challenges that they’re going through?  Where are they at spiritually? How involved are their parents? What is the structure of the church? How about the staff structure? How old is the church and where do they land theologically?” I browsed through facebook pictures of events they went to. Unfortunately, their CBCGB facebook page was a bit lacking so I didn’t get much info from there. Their link though helped a little bit more. I looked through last year’s winter retreat blogs and pictures and registration forms. That helped a bit but there wasn’t much about the theme, what to expect, etc. So after all of this…I had an OK view of my audience…at least enough to feel confident in my messages.

5am Houston to Boston: I remember the week before leaving, the nerves overtook me and part of me was deathly afraid of going to speak. I was scared about everything and the what ifs started to creep up. “What if the kids don’t listen to me? What if the messages don’t make no sense much good? What if the plane crashes and I have to defend myself against a pack of angry wolves without the help of Liam Neeson?” My selfishness told me to stay here where it’s more comfortable. Houston is where everyone listens to me and my youth always pay attention to everything I have to say. But God continued to remind me, “Hey stupid…this is about me, not you, your job is to be faithful to your call and teach and preach to my people…not yours.” And yet again, He won.

5am and Aunt Trudy (one of my admin moms) takes me to the airport. Thanks Aunt Trudy! The plan was to refine the messages a bit more…but I can’t stay awake on planes so I just sleep. Jen picks me up and we just chill out for awhile until we get to church to work on more camp stuff. By the way, if you’re a CBCGB student/leader reading this…just know that Jen doesn’t stop working. She does her best so that you can experience the best possible retreat. Be gracious. That night we do pizza and we crash fairly early.
Retreat 2012: It would take me 209401 pages to write a full report on all that I’ve experience (and you’ll probably won’t read it) so I’ll just do this in bullets…go!

1. Weather: So apparently, 20 degrees is cold. I mean, “I think my blood is frozen” cold. I actually made a last minute decision thanks to Tina to bring my “big” jacket. Again, she saved my life. The day I left Houston, it was 80 degrees. The first night at the retreat it was like 20. And then there was this one kid who wore shorts. Crazy kid.

2. Camp Site: The camp was held in New Hampshire (I think) at a family-owned site  called “Maranatha”. I had several chances to actually meet the family and they’re wonderful people with a tremendous amount of patience and love for youth. So I’m used to retreat sites where it takes 1.7 minutes to get from my cabin to anything else. From the main worship center to the dining room was a 10 minute walk – up a mountain. I think my calves are twice its original size now. Highlights though: beautiful scenery, a blazing fire during meals, and a beverage buffet that was stellar. Oh, and one of the meals we actually ate outside in the snow. Parents, you’re going to love this – so they give pointy sticks to each kid and hot dogs and they get to roast them over these open fire pits. My first thought was “hmmm….shorts kids with sharp sticks running around...i’m going to get stabbed in the eyeball or somewhere worse.”

3. Sessions: I was pretty nervous about speaking…and I think it was more so because I really didn’t know the students all too well. But I kept on remembering the words of encouragement from the youth back at CBC, my discipleship, and my youth leaders. I think I could have refined the messages a lot more…there were times when I felt like I was a bit too dependent on my notes or the powerpoint. I also felt like it could have been a lot more clear and direct. And I guess this is why I continue to love the sovereignty of God, because if he moved in the hearts of the students…it had to be all him. The goal was to be as transparent and honest about the Christian faith as possible. I wanted to communicate that there was a difference between religion and actually following after Jesus. I wanted to challenge them to actually chase Jesus for the sake of joy instead of a duty-driven mentality of begrudging submission. All in all, I believe God used whatever we did there to glorify himself. *if you want to download a copy of the manuscripts, please go to www.cbc-youth.com and under resources and messages will be a copy.

4. Evaluation: I’m hopeful for the youth at CBCGB. I pray that the Lord convicted some of them of their pride, comfort them in the midst of trials and suffering, refocus their priorities on Him and Him alone, and finally helping them understand that the Cross of Christ covers all sins and nobody is out of the love and grace of his love. I pray that the guys there finally take their place and begin developing into godly men and stop acting like little boys. I pray that the youth understand the steps to gospel-centered growth. I think for the ones who really wanted to grow…they got something out of it. I believe there were multiple salvations and many more commitments. One student came up to me and in tears just said, “I think I want to do this.” At first I wasn’t sure what he meant and realized it was about following Jesus. And so I asked him, “You sure? You know what this means right? It’s a total sacrifice and commitment.” And sobbing he nodded yes. “Then you ask him to be your salvation. Ask him to save and grow you.” And as he silently and with great passion asked the Lord to save him…I was just in awe of how great and awesome our Lord is. Understanding theologically everything there is to know about salvation…but seeing it happen right in front of your face. That was a blessing.

5. Counselors: I continue to believe that the backbone of youth ministry is held together by its leaders & counselors. These are the ones who give up everything and demand nothing in return. They are spend everything and are not paid. They sleep little, work lots, and give it their all. These counselors here are no different. I observed them before, during, and after the retreat and my heart was again humbled by these servants. They were asked to drive to camp and back, to shuttle the students up and down the mountain, and stand outside in the freezing cold. Not only did they counsel, they led workshops, discipled, played with, and trained these students. I never heard them complain. In fact, they took the initiative to serve whenever they saw the need. Students, these counselors love you yes…but that love is motivated by the love of Christ. They value the gospel more than anything and because of that it transforms their action. Thank you counselors for serving your guts out this weekend and being a part of the transformative process of these youth. I thank you as a guest for allowing me to partner with you in ministry. If you ever need resources about anything…please let me know. A lot of our leadership training could also be found on our youth website.

I’m extremely gracious for this opportunity. For my youth back at CBC for allowing me to minister to other youth for a weekend and teaching them the things we learn at home. Thank you to my church for giving me these opportunities to be challenged and exercise my gifts. Thank you to Tina for always encouraging me to be better and reminding me that it is about Jesus. Thank you Jen for trusting me to speak to your youth and giving me the chance to minister to them. Thank you CBCGB and Metro West Church for allowing me to pastor you for a bit. Thanks for not throwing anything at me or pranking me. Thanks for being so warm and welcoming to a new person from Texas…and I hope one day soon we get to do this again.

Lastly, youth of CBCGB…do not slow down, do not give up…continue to pursue Christ with all your heart…because he’s so worth it. We at CBC Youth will continue to pray for you – that you play your part well and that one day we get to meet and share stories of how God moved in Boston and in Houston.

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