HT...those days I skimped on...

Ok, so this is how this is going to roll: I'm going to divide this post by day so you can just read what you want when you want if you don't have time to read about three days all at once :) Have fun, and good luck! (P.S. - I'm still non-functional as far as society is concerned...therefore, this might not be all that coherent, but I'm going to do my best!)

HT Day 4

Day 2 of the conference was busy, but good...this is a running theme, praise the Lord ;) We opened our day with a fantastic Matins and dove right into the second plenary session, led again by Pastor Kind. He dug deeper into what the Lutheran worship service is and why it has the elements it has - it was a nice reminder of why the liturgy is so important and how it is structured to bring us into a closer communion/fellowship with God. The liturgy is a gift to us: it leads us to Christ, proclaims the Gospel, teaches us to speak, lends us to worship, protects us from error, protects our unity, connects us to Christians throughout the ages, unites us with the Church in Heaven.

So the breakaways...these were really good! The majority of the group went to Pastor Cwirla's session called, "Answering the Atheist." Dynamite. I might do an entire entry on this at a later date. But basically, he squeezed an entire plenary talk into a breakaway...impressive. A lot of us also attended Pastor Tiews' session on evolution. It was really good. Especially since Pastor Tiews was an educated evolutionist (he was geologist) up until the last 13 or so years (the point at which he became a Christian), so he knows what evolutionists base everything on, why, and where they get their information from. This session was very important to me as I currently run in the evolution circle, especially once I start my graduate work in the fall. Since I've studied life/earth/biological sciences for the last few years I've learned a lot about what macro-evolutionists believe and how they present their "facts." I've already a number of evolution debates with some friends/colleagues and it's usually ended with both parties somewhat stuck talking in circles, or else I've been totally stumped on how to present a well grounded counter-argument for whatever point was brought up. So, getting to hear and learn from Pastor Tiews about where macro-evolution crumbles and the majority of evolutionists agree are wonky was extremely helpful for me. Bring it, grad school! You can access his slides through his church's website, here, under the Higher Things sidebar on the right. The kiddos raved about this session...most of them could not wait to go to his second session the next day...that says something, I think. They even asked for paper so they could take notes! They were into it, to say the least.

We closed our day with the evening prayer service and then the kiddos went to the Wildhorse Saloon for a private HT party - they had a really fun time and enjoyed visiting with a lot of the other youths attending. While they were all tearing up the dance floor and playing pool, etc. I was afforded to opportunity to visit with one of my old college roommates who now lives in Nashville. It was really great to catch up with her for a little bit. Blessings, blessings everywhere :)

Because we got back so late from the party we didn't do much of a devo...we were all exhausted to say the least.

Overall, another fantastic day of diving into the Word.


HT Day 5

Day 5...wow, talk about a full day. The plenary speaker was pretty off the chain. Oh, Pastor Sell. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak/preach, take it - you will not be disappointed. Not that a sermon needs to be entertaining, but he had those kids (and adults, too...shhh, don't tell!) roll-ing! His talk was on the topic of understanding God's call for your life... As this was day one of his run as plenary speaker, there was a bit of background/foundational info that he started us out with. It was full of wonderful reminders of how we are as the renewed Body of Christ - Baptized eyes see everything differently.

A few of the kids and I went to day two of Pastor Tiews' talk on how to debunk evolutionists and that was another really good session. Lots of notes...oh, and just in case you weren't aware: Lutheran's preach, teach, and believe in 6 day creation. Something that was nice and kind of out of the ordinary when it comes to discussing the belief of macro-evolution was Pastor Tiews' addressing the issue of macro-evolution Christians, or, non-6-day Christians. I hadn't really ever thought about the fact that saying God could have used macro-evolution as a means to form the earth would have required suffering and death before sin ever entered the world...woops! That doesn't jive with what God tells us about the beginning and the fall of man. Very thought provoking and informative. Everyone who went to this one got a lot out of it.

Some of the girls went to a breakaway on the topic of what marriage looks like as it is to be a reflection of Christ and His Bride. They really enjoyed it and seemed to get a lot out of it, from learning about what it means to submit to our husbands as wives, to what it means for men to die for their bride. It's always a joy to hear young people, especially young women in this day, understanding and really hashing-out what it means to engage in a Christian marriage. So many people much older than these precious youth still don't have a clue, even those who are members of a body of believers - heartbreaking. I am very thankful and blessed that these ladies went into this session with open hearts, ears, and minds to what God's Word says about this issue.

A few others went to a breakaway on prayer and seemed to really enjoy it - I didn't get to go into too much detail about it with them, but they seemed happy that they went.

The day closed again with the evening prayer service and the groups were dismissed to go off and basically do whatever... the girls started out at the HT talent show - they loved this. A few of them went off to try some karaoke and most of the boys hit up the rec center...you know, had to go pump some iron ;) There was also rumor of swimming with Cwirla!! Doubt any of those swim trunks will be washed again..!

At the very close of the day I got to spend some more time with the girls and talk about some of the things God's word tells us about...we focused mainly on the great commission, here. It was really neat to hear about what scenarios make them clam-up about God and what scenarios are easy for them to witness in. How different the world is for these kids, even from when I was their age - if you ask them, that was a long time ago...come on, I'm just shy of being a decade older than a few of them...I can't be that old... Haha...they made me feel old this week, let me tell you: I am not made to function off of an average of 3-3.5hrs of sleep per night...ah, well, such is life with teenagers. We not only talked about witnessing in our everyday lives, but we also talked about going and sending. Even though we were all exhausted it was another really sweet time in the Lord.

HT Day 6

Whew! The laaaast day...wow. How the week flew...I'm pretty sure it was going at warpspeed - I think I even heard a few "Beam me up, Scotty!"s along the way. Wait, whaaaa...? Yup.

Another morning of Matins followed by Pastor Sell's 2nd and final plenary session of the week. He continued on with his theme from Day 5 of discerning your vocation. He prefaced this with running through the 2 different kinds of worship: church/corporate and the "other" worship, your vocation(s). Your vocation is daily worship (Duh! Why didn't I think of saying it that way...?). But, how do you determine what your vocation is? Pray for wisdom, research, study, learn, ask questions, seek council - NEVER UNDERESTIMATE SIN (as a muddler of hearing your calls from God). On that note, as well, if you don't understand sin, you will have a disappointing life (Rom. 3:10-12).

There were no breakaway sessions this day, but we did have our 3rd and final in-depth session. As I believe I said before, I chose to go to Cwirla's in-depth, covering Isaiah: Who Would Name Their Kid Maher-shalal-hash-bash? I decided to go ahead and wait to tell you about the in-depth until we were all finished with it, rather than giving you bits and pieces that may or may not have made sense on their own. So, without further ado, let me tell you what we covered! We started with a brief history of what Isaiah even means. Did you know that it is the equivalent of "YHWH saves"?? What a cool name!! We then progressed through Isaiah's life history. Cool random fact: Isaiah's wife was called a "prophetess," not because she herself was a prophesying, but because she was married to a prophet, it was a title of honor - neat-o! Did you know that Isaiah was part of the upper class and so had connections to the royals?? OK, I've read a lot of Isaiah, but I had no idea that he was so incredibly legit! He even had his own circle of disciples who, most likely, wrote the different parts of the book for him - sort of like having a bunch of personal secretaries who write down everything you ever say or do. That's pretty neat, I'm just sayin'. This book does something really cool in that it reveals to us God's use and possession of time in kairos and chronos. Kairos is basically all time compressed into "now." Chronos is simply chronological time. So God is awesome and gets to use and fully understand both aspects of time, whereas we can sort of live in kairos when we read the prophecies and all that, but we can't really grasp all of it like God does...we're pretty much stuck with "getting" chronos. I don't know about you, but I'm totally OK with just having to deal with chronos :) An example of a kairos event is Christ's death: He died for everyone once and for all...past, present, future. How freaking awesome is that?! God rocks, y'all, like really. If you ever get the chance to do a study on Isaiah, DO IT!! I mean, we powered through this book in three hours over the course of three days, and I learned SO much...I can't wait to find a study on this book that I can do over more than 3 days. And the major themes, hoh...wow...wow. We ended our last session with this, Cwirla's summary sentence of the entire book: God's Anointed One, the Shoot/Branch of David Immanuel - God with us, the Servant who suffers for the sin of the world will lead His Bride - the Church in procession down His Holy Highway to Zion - His Holy City on His Holy Mountain to which all nations will come to the Marriage Feast in a New Creation on the ultimate Day of the Lord, the Mouth of the Lord has spoken it. Yeah, soak that one in for a few minutes. And then, Cwirla started playing his ipod on shuffle while we asked questions and such...what was the first song that came on?? One Week - Barenaked Ladies. Cwirla = legiiiiiit.

We closed our day and the week with one of the most amazing Divine Services I have ever experienced. The Lord's Supper is always a beautiful thing, but add in the fact that we were communing with over 1105 brothers and sisters in Christ, and then the hymnody...oh my goodness - the goosebumps I got during that service were ridiculous! Our theme hymn for the week was "O God, O Lord of Heaven and Hearth." That hymn paired with those 1105 voices and that wicked mad organist...you could hear the angels singing that day - I'm pretty sure there were tears in my eyes at numerous moments throughout the service...it really was one of the most beautiful times of worship I've ever had. We also sang "At the Lamb's High Feast We Sing" and, of course, "Thy Strong Word," amongst others, but those three rocked the boat. I can't wait to get to Heaven and party like that with all the saints and angels!!

After that amazing service I scurried back to the dorm with kids while Dad/Pastor ran to get the van and meet us at the dorm. We loaded up our junk and hit the road for Little Rock. We had a nice closing devo with the kiddos and hit the hay - we were all beyond exhausted, to say the least. Getting those kiddos up the next morning was fuuuuun. Let me just tell you. But we did it and we made home to A-town just a little after 1...impressive, if I do say so myself - I mean, I didn't do anything, but it was still impressive.

Unfortunately, the picture uploader is not cooperating at the moment, so I'll have to add those in at a later date.

I'm sure I have forgotten to mention loads of things, for you BSLC-ers, talk with the kiddos who went - I'm sure they would be more than happy to share with you some of their experiences. Some pictures will be up soon!!

Thank you all so much for all of your prayers - they were most certainly felt.

To God be glory forever and ever. Amen.

Shalom!
~MW