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Road Trip!

What a cool weekend, spent with 200+ youth at the DE-MD Synod's senior high youth retreat, Road Trip.

The band Daniel's Window was there.  Holy buckets, do they rock.  Their versions of "On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand" and "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" (the latter played during Holy Communion) are just phenomenal.  My favorite tune of theirs, though, is "Trading My Sorrows."  For all you orthodox Lutherans out there, it's Luther's "happy exchange" in a contemporary worship song.  Much fun.  Great worship.

The theme was "against the current," and in large group presentations, compelling faith stories shared by folks, and small group Bible studies from the book of Acts, the theme of being called, transformed, empowered, and led by the Holy Spirit to go against the tide of our world was explored.  Video clips, stories, lively teaching, and small group conversation allowed the material to be presented in a wide variety of learning modalities.  Good Shepherd's youth got a ton out of it, had a blast, and also conducted themselves in an amazing way.  One of our kids has been going through very challenging times, and was only able to be with us for a fraction of the weekend.  But when he was there, I was so impressed by how the other guys (we only brought guys on this retreat; our high school group is overwhelmingly male, which is pretty unusual) reached out to him and made him feel welcome.  I'm pretty dang proud.

Nowhere near as proud, though, as I am of my wonderful wife, Paige.  She was the event's chaplain, meaning she was one of the main "up front" presenters, teachers, and worship leaders.  She rocked!  It was awesome.  She's got a great presence (even when some youth were being pretty disruptive during a key teaching time), she really connected the Scripture passages with the kids' lives, and kept the focus on what Jesus has done/ is doing/ will do for and through the youth, rather than on what the kids "have to do now."  Much Gospel was proclaimed.  And I got to spend the weekend saying, "I'm her husband!"  Yay!

Technorati tags: Lutheran Road Trip youth ministry Daniel's Window

So You're a Part of the Religious Right? Wrong!

Labels like "conservative" and "liberal" annoy the heck out of me, even as I sometimes use them as convenient, yet awkward, shorthand.  Let's face it; they have become nearly pointless.  Think about a standard evangelical church.  Doctrinally, they'll be "conservative."  But in terms of worship, they'll be very "liberal" - with a non-sacramental practice and a pattern of the service very different from the historic ordo of Christian worship.  Many of them will believe that they are being "conservative" in their worship, though, because, well, "we're conservative Christians."

And don't even try to sort out what "conservative" theology really means!  Is it "conservative" to insist on the essential centrality of a model of the atonement (vicarious satisfaction/ penal substitution) that was perhaps present, but certainly not prominent, for what, the first millennium of Christian theology?  Is it "conservative" to insist on claims about the Bible that are not found in the Bible itself?  Which is more "conservative:" strict TULIP Calvinism, Nicene Orthodoxy, or hard-core Gnesio-Lutheranism?