YC Alberta 2008 - Passion: recap of Friday night

Composed of speakers, concerts, seventeen thousand youth from across Canada, Rexall Place, the wave, tears, very large sandwiches, sore necks from rocking out during concerts, losing your voice, losing your hearing, and above all discovering that our God really IS an awesome God.

Friday, May 23
8:00 pm - YC Alberta kicks off. Dark stadium full of wired youth, and a video to start us off. The theme this year was passion - renewing our passion for sharing Christ and recommitting our lives to God.

Next was the start of our first General Session, which is all 17000 youth in the stadium, and worship led by Tim Hughes, who came all the way from London, England. He's pretty prolific, and has won awards for what (to quote my YC booklet) is 'arguably the biggest modern worship album ever, Here I Am To Worship'. In my personal opinion, he's very good at what he does, and he picked some perfect songs. You can't really have complicated stuff when you have to lead 17000 people in singing.

The speaker for Friday evening was John Bevere. I don't have all of his message in my notes, particularly the end, which was much more reflective than it was intellectual. From what I do have, his basic message was that friendship with God is reserved for those who fear Him. This statement struck me as incongruous, at first, but he did go into it more in-depth. To fear God does not mean to be scared of God. While He loves us with an everlasting love, He is - as one of the later speakers put it, I think - both King and Daddy. To fear God is to regard Him as holy and to hold Him in very high reverence. God will not allow His presence to be felt in a place where He is not highly venerated. The two men in the Old Testament regarded as friends of God were Abraham and Moses. God shared His secrets with them. But they were friends of God not only because God drew near to them, but because they drew near to God. God doesn't force us to draw near, but however close you are to Him, He'll be that close to you. We determine how close we are. Our goal as Christians should be to be friends of God.

10:00 pm - Skillet concert. For anyone who's not familiar with Skillet, they're compared in my booklet to Led Zeppelin. They've been around for a while, and they also are very good at what they do. I stayed for about the first three songs of this concert - I'd never been to a rock concert that big before (actually, I think this weekend included my first three actual concerts ever) and I couldn't handle the volume level or the crazy rate at which the lights were going. Deaf and blind, I tell you. I think that if they hadn't burst in with Skillet the first night and done maybe Hawk Nelson or Newsboys instead, I might have been able to ease into it, but it was a bit of a sensory overload. The sound in Rexall is also a bit fuzzy - I mean, it's a hockey arena. Not exactly built with excellent acoustics. Anyway, the many fans of Skillet enjoyed their appearance very much, and I wandered around outside until the concert was done.

11:00, evening conclusion. Slept like a rock Friday night. I am an introvert, yes. I adjusted better the next day.

(I was hoping to do this all in one post but it doesn't look like happening. Hopefully I have Saturday and Sunday up soon)