Faith Camp 2009 - Part 4

This will be my last Blog entry about Faith Camp and my last Blog entry for two weeks as I'm off on my travels; next week I will be working at Soul Survivor (Week C) on their Soulnet Prophecy Team and then the following week down in Newquay surfing (hopefully).

This year's Faith Camp delivered some of the best youth and children's ministry I have seen for a long time. It is always a qualitative affair with substantive teaching, fun, games and opportunities for practical encounter with the Lord. As we heard during our testimony time last Sunday, God touched many of the children during the week and a supernatural move of the Holy Spirit in and through their lives was commonplace. I have noticed how parents become much more receptive and open to what is going on in their own adult meetings once they know their children are happy, content and meeting God themselves.

As always, The Move (14-18 year olds) did an excellent job and one evening I went to see what God was doing with this age group. I recognise that for many teens, 'basic' teaching, easy-to-access worship, a fairly non-confrontational style of preached message and a more social approach to conferences is essential and can be hugely useful. However, I have always had a huge respect for and commitment to the work of KF amongst young people and the Bible Week is no exception: they deliver a high quality, spiritually confrontational, Holy Spirit-anointed series of meetings which seek to inspire, equip and change every young person in attendance. This deposit is worked out during the rest of the year back here in Bristol both at home, in Church, at work and in school.

I visited The Move (unbeknown to ENERGY) and immediately noticed the huge cross-section of participation in the meeting. Some were sat at the back talking, texting their friends, giggling and generally taking a spectator role rather than a participator role. However, there was a 'hardcore' of young people at the front worshipping, getting stuck in and giving it all they've got. I love being with young people when they are fired up, pumped up and worshipping with passion!

You may remember that before Camp, John (Maskell) encouraged all of us to identify a few specific things we wanted God to do for us in the week. One of the things I asked for was to see a fresh passion for Jesus ignited in the lives of our wonderful teenagers; without this we can not expect them to survive the pull of the world and their own flesh. During that meeting in the Move, the Lord spoke to me really clearly. He said, 'Open your eyes and tell me what you see'. I did as He said and saw most of our teens fully engaged with what was going on. The Lord said, 'I have answered your prayer'.

Don't be cynical; of course this will ebb and flow and it is a challenge for all of us to maintain this all through the year and not just during a Bible Week but I have been speaking in faith over ENERGY, praying for them that this new passion will stay burning bright and believing that the world will not seduce them into a life of compromise, sin and hypocrisy. All of us need to hold onto the deposit God left in us at Faith Camp and not look back longingly at what God did but look forward to what He will continue to do as a result of that awesome week in August 2009.

Have a great summer and I will see you back here again for more BCC Blogging on Tuesday 1 September. I'm sure there'll be lots to say...

Faith Camp 2009 - Part 3

As a special treat you get two blog entries for the price of one today: consider it a credit-crunch busting deal! In the six years we have been attending Faith Camp, my revelation and understanding of worship has been totally transformed. In the early years of attending, I used to struggle with the long, un-interrupted worship times consisting of songs written 'in-house' by the K.F. Team. I arrogantly looked down on some of these compositions and could not understand why they did not use more familiar worship material. However, God was using this to really speak to me and challenge me about what worship really involved.

One year I saw an interview with Colin Urquhart on GODTV where he explained how and why they had adopted this particular modus operandi. It was an eye opener for me and helped me see that their revelation of worship is taken from Jesus' current position as seated at the right-hand of God in heaven, ruling and reigning over all the universe as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. It celebrates Jesus' blood victory over Satan/death and seeks to join in with the chorus of worship circulating Christ's throne in heaven right now.

It all slotted into place.

Since then I have grown to greatly respect, appreciate and passionately participate in Faith Camp worship. The songs are theologically strong and in this time of compromise and the watering down of biblical truth, worship such as this pushes back these last-day forces and ensures the people of God worship Him in Spirit and in truth. I have also found these worship times to be deeply moving; this year I was in tears on regular occasions; Christ drew near to me as I drew near to Him. Despite being in an auditorium of 3500-4000 people, I simply 'lost myself' in the worship and lived for the Audience of One: Jesus. It was one of the most powerful series of worship times I have ever been in.

In addition to this, the worship has a strong declaratory dynamic, often in stark contrast to the more petitionary nature of contemporary worship song writing; put simply we often ask God to do something rather than thank Him for what He's already done. This may sound like semantics but it makes a big difference in everyday living; we learn to take authority and live in a way that overcomes and defeats satanic activity rather than tolerate it and hope it goes away. God did so much work in me during the week but none of it ever involved going up for a ministry time. It was the truth that set me free as I worshipped using the truth of God's word, centred on Christ, the living Word.

You will be pleased to know that the sheet music for this year's CD is available FREE from KF's website and we have been greatly blessed in previous years as their songs have added something very important to our corporate times of worship and helped us go to new and more intimate places in the Lord. I also honour KF and the Team for the work they do; they could have charged people for the songbook but instead freely give it away on their website. Thanks so much for demonstrating such a generous spirit; God will surely bless you.

http://www.kingdomfaith.com/ResourceCentre/Champion_of_the_World-details.aspx

Faith Camp 2009 - Part 2

Is your glass half empty or half full? The Lord really challenged me about this attitude during Camp this year. Let me explain what I mean. There are some people in life who will always see a half empty glass; no matter what other good things may be going on they focus on the negative at the expense of the positive. It is important to have a 'half full' mentality sometimes; it causes us to seek change and generates positive forward momentum to get things done. However, continually adopting this 'half full' mentality can be highly destructive of your faith AND other people's.

To be perfectly frank, I can sometimes be a bit negative. I can look at something and see what is wrong rather than what is right. If we do not nip this attitude in the bud, it can grow and blossom into depression; something which has reared it's ugly head in my family in the past. It all starts in this simple shift in the way I/you think about a situation. During Camp there were a number of little 'tests' which God sent in my direction to help me develop this new way of thinking: cold showers, torrential rain, normal relationship challenges when living in close proximity to 100 people on one Unit (!) and so on.

Asking the Holy Spirit to help me, I began to choose to see things differently. It is not denying there are problems, hiding from conflict or pretending everything is 'fine' when it plainly isn't; instead this is an attitude of faith which chooses to see something different whilst trusting the rest to God. I have been meditating on 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 this week (it's my memory verse!) and verse 5 says love 'keeps no records of wrongs'. Philippians 4:8 (my emphasis) is another favourite at the moment "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is admirable or praiseworthy - think about such things." Again, you can see it all begins with what I choose to focus on; good stuff or bad stuff.

That is a half full mentality in a nutshell! It says 'I know there are things going on which are not a blessing to me but I choose to involve Christ in it and see the situation through His eyes and, if necessary, do what He says to deal with the problem." I know this seems very obvious but important truth often is! Faith Camp was a real encounter time for me and the Lord. He set me free from past issues and insecurities, he broke strongholds in my life and filled me up with a fresh love and passion to serve and love Him and His Bride.

Faith Camp 2009 - Part 1

What an amazing time we had at this year's Faith Camp. In fact, so much happened that I'm going to do a special 4-Part Blog this week taking a closer look at some of the highlights. Yesterday's meeting also enjoyed the overflow of all that God poured into us during the seven days; an hour of worship followed by an hour and twenty minutes of rich, exciting, high quality testimonies. So, where do I start? The whole week was totally different to any previous Camps as BCC is in a totally different place; the Unit unity was tangible! We had a number of people come along who had never been to Faith Camp as well as some of the 'regulars'. There was a great sense of peace and fun on the Unit and Dave and Nicky / Gerry and Fran did another outstanding job as Unit / Assistant Unit Leaders respectively.

Here are some words I associate with this year's event: chocolate ginger bread (I made some and it all got eaten within 48 hours!), cold showers BUT hot showers by the end of the week!, volleyball (we won the Volleyball Tournament beating all other competition on the site and doing the whole thing in camp (geddit?) retro style as the boys wore pink, luminous vests. Great work to the Team), psycho-wasps, 12-hours of solid rain followed by solid sun, Marmite cashew nuts (a rather serendipitous discovery whilst walking around Tescos one afternoon), Clive Urquhart (Colin announced he is relinquishing the leadership of Faith Camp to Clive freeing him up to concentrate on preaching and ministering), worship (this year's crop of songs are probably the best ever - we did one yesterday morning in the Church and it was awesome, I recommend the new album Champion of the World, available from their website), messages (the preached word was clear, inspiring and simple, so much of what we have been taught since last Camp came through from the platform this year - we are hearing God) and chats (it was so good to talk to lots of different people and build friendships).

That's a taster of my favourite moments, but what about you? Do leave a post if you want. More tomorrow....