The Chronicles Of…

Just got back from Kyck this last weekend. It was a brilliant weekend for our youth group, and I think for others as well. We had about 8 of our kids declare publicly that they wanted to give their whole lives to following Jesus, and that’s always fantastic, even one. And as always, there was quality preaching of God’s Word by Graham Stanton and Steve Chong.

Here’s a critical reflection about the weekend.

Compared to last year (which I consider the best Kyck I’ve been to in terms of program), I don’t think the program was as smooth as last year, but was still pretty well arranged. The hosts for the in-between segments last year were awesome, and these new guys this year had big shoes to fill. There presentability was great, but the segments meant to tie in with the theme “something to live for” were a bit of a stretch… I could see where they were coming from, but not so convincing. The first night they played a youtube video of a japanese guy (who is a professional hotdog eater) competing against a bear to see who could eat the most hotdogs! The bear obviously won, and it was kinda entertaining, but the link to the theme was “the Japanese guy lives for hotdogs, what do you live for?”. Quite a tenuous link I think. The Japanese guy could be a Christian for all we know and still be a professional hotdog eater. I don’t believe the Bible would be against being a pro hotdog eater while you still follow Jesus…

The music was pretty flash as always, and the band managed to somehow weave secular song tunes in to some well known Christian songs (like the Jackson 5′s ABC tune into Highest Place… I don’t know how the did it? very funky). I always like a bit of creativity like that. But I must say I was slightly frustrated with not being able to sing along well as a congregation… This may be due to the fact that I didn’t know all the songs, or it could be the sound mixer’s fault, or it could be that the band was bit too creative… I don’t know. But i found it hard to see the songs together, and often I looked around and people weren’t singing.

I think it might even be a good idea to next year get the boys from Playjerise to come and lead the music next year with just their vocals and 2 acoustic guitars. It’d help everybody sing in unison, and I think the sound of the masses raising their voices together to God against the minimalist background of acoustic guitars would be quite powerful and encouraging.

When it comes to music, I like to think I’m quite generous with how it’s done because I think there’s a bit of a culture of complaining when it comes to church music, but I do think less is more sometimes in leading church singing… If the words are true to Jesus, and it’s singable, bring it on!

I’m looking forward to next year!