Last week I went to the Montreat Youth Conference as an adult advisor for my church’s youth group.\u00a0 During the trip, I had an experience that was … well … let me just describe it.<\/p>\n
First, a little background.\u00a0 I’ve written before<\/a> about my experiences with the church and my departure from the church almost 20 years ago.\u00a0 If you don’t want to read that, here’s a summary:\u00a0 very involved as a youth (deacon, Synod YAD, church camp), in college a few things happened and I left the church completely.\u00a0 I began searching for a congregation related to my return to church just about 3 years ago this month, and joined my current congregation later that fall.\u00a0 I’m currently serving as a youth advisor for the Sr. High youth group, co-chairing a committee, and I’m about to start serving as a deacon again.<\/p>\n During Monday night’s worship at Montreat, the song “Here I Am, Lord” was sung.\u00a0 This song was very popular at Camp Johnsonburg when I was working there, and I was happy to sing it again.<\/p>\n Around about the 2nd verse, I started getting very emotional and tearing up.\u00a0 Around about the 3rd verse, I started to get a picture in my head – one that I can’t claim came from me.<\/p>\n The picture showed something of a timeline.\u00a0 Over on the left side, there was a dark black line that represented my religious involvement of the past – from about age 13 to age 19.\u00a0 On the right side, there was another shorter dark black line that represented my religious involvement of the past few years.\u00a0 There was a big blank space in between.\u00a0 As we sang, I saw the picture of a jumper wire (almost like a car’s jumper cable, but more like something used in electronics work) connecting the two lines.\u00a0 I have been considering my religious life of the past to be different from the present.\u00a0 I believe that the message here is that they are part of a single whole and remain connected.<\/p>\n So I was standing there, singing, tears in my eyes, and a picture in my head that I didn’t put there.<\/p>\n In my mind, this was a full-on Religious Experience.\u00a0 Maybe even a Vision.\u00a0 I mean … if there had been a shaft of sunlight and Baptist dancers flying through the air I’d be a Blues Brother now.\u00a0 It was a really weird experience.<\/p>\n I’ve been skeptical of those who claim to have visions or have other divinely-inspired events in their lives.\u00a0 Not anymore.\u00a0 I think I get it now.\u00a0 A later discussion with a family member produced that person’s story of a similar experience.<\/p>\n At the time that this happened, I had no idea what it meant.\u00a0 I’m still not sure that I do. Later in the week I might have gotten some idea of the meaning behind this.<\/p>\n All youth and adults participating in small groups were assigned to a Small Group of about 30 people.\u00a0 Those groups were broken down into smaller “Threshold” groups of about 6.\u00a0 I got an opportunity to talk about this experience with my Threshold Group, but due to time constraints I barely got through the story before we had to move onto something else.<\/p>\n The theme for the week was “Throw Open the Doors”.\u00a0 There were door metaphors tossed around during all activities.\u00a0 On Friday (the last day of the conference), our Small Group leader asked “what doors have opened for you this week?”\u00a0 I had a few ideas in my head, and the one that I chose was:\u00a0 Don’t let the experiences of the past (meaning negative ones) color your view of your experiences of the present.\u00a0 When I said that the Small Group said things like, “Dude.\u00a0 That’s not just a door – that’s like a big gate or something.”<\/p>\n Later that evening we had the closing worship.\u00a0 The preacher was Michelle Thomas-Bush (who I met through this blog).\u00a0 She told a story about her 20th high school reunion.\u00a0 At the reunion she met a man who had been in school with her.\u00a0 He explained that he couldn’t remember anything about his high school experience at all.\u00a0 He was being abused by his parents at the time, and all of his memories of that period are one big black mess.\u00a0 He came to the reunion in order to rediscover his high school memories.\u00a0 He was the life of the party, talked to everybody, and learned a few things.\u00a0 At the end of the evening he talked to Michelle again.\u00a0 She asked him if he’d learned anything.\u00a0 He reported a few memories of good times and stupid high school tricks, but his main message was that this night was his New High School Memory.<\/p>\n Sound familiar?\u00a0 Yeah, I thought so too.<\/p>\n I’m still working on how to apply these revelations to my life, though the implications for my church life are pretty obvious.\u00a0 Back in December, I wrote this<\/a> about how those once hurt by the church may keep looking over their shoulder for trouble to come again.\u00a0 I think that part of the message is clear – stop looking over your shoulder.\u00a0 We’ll see.\u00a0 Being a Christian is hard.<\/p>\n As for the rest, that is not quite apparent yet.\u00a0 More in the next post on the conference.
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\nThe first thing that I did was ask my youth director to join me at The Huck for some ice cream so that I could talk about this (and another youth joined us for “Introvert Time”).\u00a0 On the way we met Jorge Gonzales who was doing music for the week and I got a chance to thank him.<\/p>\n