Duck Duck...GreyGoose?

Well, I survived yet another year at Youth Quake, that wonderful retreat that a certain bible college in the middle of Saskatchewan just north of Moose Jaw. Now this is my fifth year in attendance, and second as a sponsor, but it is my first since I’ve earnestly started thinking about things a little deeper. And lets just say it was…um…interesting at points. Okay scratch that, man was the speaker awful. Screw beating around the bush, the speaker made me angry. Maybe I’m getting a bit cynical in my ‘old age’ (nothing like a bus full of screaming high school students to make someone barely out of high school himself feel like an old geezer), but have youth speakers always resorted to that many jokes about shit, piss and vaginas? Because if so I don’t remember it.

Even though I don’t know if I agree with the content many Christian speakers feed their audiences anymore, at least most have some. This guy just told story after story, all irrelevant to any sort of message, at the end of each time he spoke he’s throw something out, claiming that he had been talking about that all along. It was ridiculous, I even had a 15 year old boy in my youth group complain about the lack of content. YOU KNOW its bad when that happens. For the most part when I was in grade ten if a speaker would have spoken about his kid crapping his pants and tasting it I would have cheered him on. It takes A LOT to get a 15 year old guy to say there was no content in a speaker’s talk.

Here, allow me to give you the ‘cole’s notes’ of our dear speaker Jason’s weekend worth of talks:
Said Jason about himself:
-I am insecure about myself
-I don’t think much of my child who is “dumber than a bag of hammers”
-I am an awful parent who does not think through my actions and
therefore should not be trusted with the spiritual wellbeing of 3500 youth.

That brings me to a side note. Why do youth workers feel the need to be cool? Why do we as a collected whole (myself included in this) try so hard to win the approval of the kids we minister to? I saw an illustration that gives a good representation of how Christian leaders should be (or at least an okay representation (see diagram below, and no those aren't lasers). How come youth workers struggle so much with this? Why can’t we just duck? Why do so many of us need to be the center of attention when we are actually called to be a pointer to the center of attention?

On the bus there was one youth pastor who hogged the PA system and basically ran the show on the bus, the problem with this was that another youth pastor was actually in charge. So for 8 hours there and 8 hours back I had to grit my teeth as this man who claims to want to lead people to God basically shouted “LOOK AT ME!” but never ducked.

Well I think that has been more than enough ranting about Youth Quake, it wasn’t all bad after all. I did get to have some good talks with the guys I’ve been working with and it is a fun weekend.