Greetings from Nashville!  Our last full day is almost done.  Tomorrow morning at around 11:30am we load the bus to head home, but let’s review this day first.

Morning devotions began at its normal time of 9am.  The theme for today was freedom.  Through Christ we have been set free.  Our speakers talked about what this freedom means.  It does not mean we are free from following the laws of the land, but we are free from following God’s law in order to get our way to heaven.  We are free to follow the law because we love our God and our neighbor.  This is indeed a reckless freedom.  It goes against what society says is true.

Worship celebration started at 10am.  Our speaker talked about this freedom in Christ more.  He broken down the word "F-R-E-E-D-O-M" this way.  To understand freedom we need FAITH; a gift given to us by God.  Next is the "R" of REDEMPTION.  God redeems us through Jesus Christ.  The first "E" stands for ENGAFTING.  This is being permanently connected to Christ.  The second "E" is ETERNITY.  We were encouraged to think in terms of eternity not in linear time.  Our future is in heaven.  The "D" stands for Dominion.  We have authority, through Christ, to reign as free children of God.  So far we have spelled "FREED"  God has freed us so now what?  Well, we get to the "O" which stands for OFFERING.  We are to give our whole life to God and also understand the "O" means admitting that we contribute 0 (zero) to our salvation.  It is God’s gift.  Lastly we have "M" which is MISSION.  We need to have a mission/purpose in life.  What are we meant to do?  This was very well put and I believe it got the kid’s attention.  But I pray that this freedom is something the kids live when they get home so they can make a difference in their world (or sphere of influence). 

After worship we went to our smaller groups for missional youth ministry training.  Here we discussed what it means to share our story (with our peers).  The big question that needs to be answered is "How do we move beyond religion to the heart of the matter?"  What is the heart of the matter?…a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  That is what matters.  Who is Jesus for you?  Why does Jesus matter to you?  I challenge you to ask yourself those questions and then answer them.  Church, confirmation, Sunday school, etc. should not be about religion and doing all the "right" things and saying all the "right" things.  What matters is this personal and intimate relationship.  Why does Jesus matter to you?

The afternoon was time for workshops.  The kids went to a couple interesting ones.  I will let you parents ask them about those.  I went to one dealing with the Internet culture.  After worships we walked downtown to the Hard Rock Cafe.  We got there early enough to beat the crowd.  We then proceeded to walk back to the hotel taking a different path.  The girls had fun having their picture taken with various weird statues and objects.  Whatever works for them.

So right now we are hanging out at the hotel and taking a night off.  Everyone is shot right now so we let the kids go to play.  Later tonight we are meeting for some group time to talk about what is next.  How do we take what we have learned home with us?  How do we use it?  How do we make a difference?  I want to challenge these kids tonight…so we will see what happens.

Tomorrow morning we are leaving so this will be my last post here in Nashville.  I will post again on Wednesday morning after I get some sleep.  Thank you for your prayers.  This has been an amazing experience.  I can hardly wait to get home to tell you more about it.  Hopefully the kids are excited to tell you as well. 

Blessings to each of you and take care. -EDH-

I am back.  We just finished our group time.  I am so impressed with these kids.  Last night when we prayed only a couple people spoke up (mostly the adults).  Tonight, the kids lead the way.  I can definitely tell they are getting something out of this event.  I hope the momentum continues when we get home.  Please keep praying for us and praying that what the Holy Spirit has planted may keep growing in us (especially the kids). 

But lets backtrack a little bit.  When I last left you we were getting ready for supper.  This time was a segregated time.  The two female leaders from Lakefield took the girls and Steve and I took the boys.  We had fun.  The guys walked downtown to explore.  We had no plan on where we were going to eat.  We walked through a cheesy gift shop and laughed at a life sized cutout of President Bush.  We then noticed a Joe’s Crab Shack down the road and that was the choice for supper.  We ordered our food and had a fun talk about a number of things.  Then the waitress walked by with a platter that had two huge pieces of chocolate cake.  Trevon’s mouth dropped open.  Soon we were all gazing at the cake (hopefully the people did not think we were staring at them).  After supper Steve took the liberty of ordering two pieces of cake for the five of us to share.  And let me tell you, that was some awesome cake.  Every calorie was worth it.

We regrouped at the convention center and played some Uno Attack before worship.  After worship the whole group (all 1000 of us) walked a few blocks to a place called Rocket Town.  It is a youth place where there is a skateboard park in the basement, and lounge area, and huge open area where Bethany Dillon was in concert.  At 9:45pm we headed back to our room for devotions and sent to kids to play.

For you parents reading this:  Your kids have been incredibly well behaved.  I have enjoyed getting to know them better.  I am feeling closer to them all the time. 

For anyone else reading this:  There is hope for the church.  That’s is all I will say about that.

Tomorrow (Monday) is our last full day.  There are some good workshops coming up so I am looking forward to that.  Thanks for your support and prayers.  Take care and God bless! -EDH-

Hello everyone!  It is Sunday afternoon and we just returned from our service project.  The group is getting cleaned up for supper and for our evening activities so I am taking this chance to update. 

First Word began an hour today earlier at 8am to the chagrin of the kids.  The theme for today was service.  We talked about service and then participated in a service project this afternoon(more on that later).  After first word we went to the convention center for worship.  We had some great praise and worship and I finally found some decent coffee (whoo hoo!).  After our large group time we broke into our smaller groups for more discussion on missional youth ministry.  Our leader read Exodus 3 where Moses encounters the burning bush.  Here we learned about some common excuses used to avoid leadership.  Some of us say things like:  I am not good enough, I am not smart enough, I don’t know enough about God, what if people do not listen, etc.  But through all these excuses (all excuses Moses uses) God is with us; no one is good enough, no one knows enough about God.  What a powerful message.  I hope the kids took something home from this.  They had better because I am going to be asking them to be leaders in Wednesday Night Live (our Sunday school program on Wednesdays).  Just try to use an excuse with me now 🙂

After lunch we loaded our bus for a 20 minute ride to one of the parks in Nashville.  We were told it is the second biggest park in the country.  We split up and picked up garbage for about 1 hour and 45 minutes.  We loaded the bus and came back.  Right now we are waiting to meet for supper.  There is a small cafe across the street that has burgers and pizza.  That wins for tonight.  Tomorrow night the kids want to go the Hard Rock Cafe so I guess that is the plan.

Tonight we head to this place called Rocket Town for a concert by Bethany Dillon.  This will be a fun time and I am sure the kids will enjoy this.  Following the concert there will be some house bands from churches around the country.  We should be back at a reasonable time so hopefully I can update later on. 

Take care and I will be back later.  God bless! -EDH-

WOW!  Another awesome day.  Right now I am hot and sweaty, but I will explain more later (I will tell you that it involves a mechanical bull).  Anyway…let’s get to our day.

We started out with First Word (devotions) at 9am lead by a group of college age students who did some mission work in India.  The topic of devotions and for the day dealt with truth.  We discussed what truth is and how do we know what is true.  There are so many people vying for our attention trying to tell us what they are saying is true.  But Jesus says that if you are in my Word you will know the Truth (with a capital "T") and the Truth will set you free (we are talking about Jesus here).  A good start to the morning.

At 10am we went to the celebration worship for the morning.  The band Foolish Things lead the praise and worship time again.  The Bible study leader then came up and lead us in a study about truth.  He emphasized that we need to be true to our selves and to be bold if we are going to live recklessly for Jesus.  Ken Davis took the stage again and got us laughing one minute and near tears the next then back to laughing all the while driving home the point of Jesus’ reckless truth that he loves us.  Wow…what a way to slap us in the face with a basic truth like that.

At 11:30 we were sent into smaller groups to talk about missional youth ministry.  Here we learned how the church is making Jesus vague and that we really don’t like talking about Jesus like we should.  We know the basic words and phrases; but the real question is: Why do you believe in Jesus and why does it matter?  The kids were challenged to make a difference in their churches.

After a McDonald’s lunch we went to various workshops.  The kids learned a variety of things that they shared with the group when we had devotions tonight.  I am really impressed at how much they are learning.  They are definitely here for a reason.

For supper we walked a couple blocks to a place called Demos (pronounced with a long "e").  This is an awesome steak and spaghetti place.  We definitely got plenty to eat.  Afterwards we went back to the convention center to the Fun Youth House.  We had about 2 hours to burn before our evening session so we decided to have some fun.  They had a bunch of inflatable games such as a Velcro wall, an obstacle course and bungee cord run.  But my favorite thing was the mechanical bull.  That was hard to pass up.  Trevon got on and set the bar.  At first I struggled and soon gave it up.  But Trevon kept setting the bar higher so I had to try again.  Trevon’s record was 18 seconds and he was quite proud of it.  So I got on and had a good ride…I hit 24 seconds.  Of course I had to rub that in (but in a loving way). And of course Trevon could not let that set so he tried a couple more times but could only score 24 seconds.  I guess we will have to settle for a tie (for now).

Our evening session had more praise and music before our new speaker for the evening.  It was Miss Virginia 2002 and she talked about the three pillars of truth:  God’s love, God’s strength and God’s vision.  She drove home how Satan feeds us lies to try to topple these pillars, but she exposed these lies to give us strength against Satan’s attacks.

After our session we returned to our hotel for devotions and then off to bed.  Tomorrow we are participating in a service project.  I will tell more about that tomorrow.  Thanks again for your prayers and God bless.  -EDH-

WOW!  What an awesome evening.  Right after I last updated this site we walked downtown to Jack’s BBQ and had a really good meal.  It was nice to get out and walk around after that long bus ride.  After supper we went to the convention center to scope things out.  We spent some time playing on the escalators (of course I was leading the charge of going up the down escalator and vise versa…can you blame me?).  At 7:45pm they opened the doors to the assembly hall.  Our group was in the fourth row so we were right up there close to the action.  We were told that there are just under 1000 people registered and at how loud it got in there I believe it.

Things started out with some praise and worship before someone introduced us to the theme for the week:  Reckless.  We are going to be learning what it means to be reckless Christians; going against the norm of society and getting out of our comfort zones.  Then two guys called the Skit Guys entertained us for a while emphasizing the "Reckless" theme.  But the message that I felt that really hit home was when Ken Davis (the main speaker for the evening) talked about not needing to impress people to try to achieve value for your life.  Christ’s death and resurrection already gives us value.  We have nothing to prove.  We can all be reckless in our own little way that will make a powerful impact on the world around us.  What a powerful message for our teens to hear today.

After the main session the kids listened to an up and coming Christian hip hop group called Grits while the adults went for some orientation.  And that was fine for me.  The bass was so loud that my chest was vibrating, but I guess the kids like that sort of thing.

At 11pm the kids were ready to go back to their rooms and who can blame them.  The rest of the week is looking great.  We were looking over the workshops coming up and it is hard to decide what to go to…they are all good.  I look forward to reporting on those.

Well, it’s time for bed.  Thanks for you prayers and support.  I will catch you tomorrow.  God bless. -EDH-

WE MADE IT!!!

Our bus ride was uneventful.  After we left Jackson we headed for Ames, IA to pick up one other group.  We arrived there at about 1:30am.  So we had five groups on the bus:  northern North Dakota; Rothsay, MN; Hutchinson, MN; Jackson/Lakefield and Ames.  The other groups brought some DVDs so we watched some movies on the way down. 

Sleeping on the bus was interesting.  A couple of the kids found a place on the floor to stretch out.  That is were I found myself.  A couple hours of sleep is better than nothing.  We stopped at a rest stop for a bathroom break at around 8am.  Many of us had a chance to brush our teeth and get cleaned up a little bit.  Also, luckily (for me and the rest of the bus) there is a coffee machine at this rest stop.

We stopped at 10:15am for brunch and loaded up again at 11am.  I was really impressed because we were only two minutes late leaving.  All the kids have been very well behaved and have been on time for things thus far.

We arrived in Nashville at around 3pm.  After getting checked in and unloading the other groups at their hotel we drove to ours which is only 2 1/2 blocks away.  We got to our rooms at about 4pm.  We got settled in, showered, explored the hotel and met to plan the rest of the day.  Looking at the schedule this is going to be a fun time. 

Remember to keep us in your prayers and check back tomorrow for more updates (probably tomorrow night).

God bless and take care! -EDH-