Sat Supper

I tried to go to Gladys Knight's chicken and waffles tonight. I heard about it on Man vs. Food. I walked the mile to the restaurant only to find the line wrapped around the building. If you teenagers do not know who Gladys Knight is just watch the video below. (I always wanted to be a pip.)

I ended up at Buffalo Teds. It is the steakhouse owned by Ted Turner. it was good, but I wish I could have ridden the midnight train. This what they call the chicken and waffle combo. The fad was started in Harlem back in the 60s. The entertainers went get out of the clubs at 3 AM and hit the restaurants. They would want a combo of supper and breakfast. This started the chicken and waffle craze.

Big Room 1

My preconference continued this morning. This morning session focused on the message. How to be accurate to the text, how to keep teenagers attention, and using media and humor with the message.

Nothing special for lunch today. Just Taco Bell. I did try the black jack taco for the first time. I give it 2 stars. Nothing special, Very disappointing.

The conference is made up of what they call Big Room and labs. Big room is where the whole conference meets together. It looks like there is about 6000 youth ministers here. Labs are smaller and topic oriented.

Our first big room featured Andy Stanley. He is a pastor of Northpoint Community Church in Atlanta. It is a mega church which he planted 14 years ago. Some of you older people might know his dad, Charles Stanley. Andy talked about the pitfalls of leadership. He talked about how leaders do not know all the answers. When we do not know the answers we still need to have clarity and flexibility.

Even if we do not have a answer for a problem, we still need to have clarity in our purpose. We need to project this clarity to the people following us. He gave the example of Joshua. Joshua was taught by Moses about how to survive in the dessert. How to be a nomad. But now God wants Joshua to be a warrior and fight for the Holy Land. Joshua did not know how to fight. It wasn’t his training. So when it confused the Israeli dessert nomads, Joshua just kept reassuring them with the clarity that we are going to take the promised land. He did not know how he was going to do it, all he knew was that God had given him this purpose. He did not have all the answers but he had clarity in his purpose.

We also need flexibility in our ministry. Clarity in purpose, but flexibility in programming. Sometimes things just fail and we try to launch something to help it. But it fails too. We shouldn’t be afraid to start new things, but we also shouldn’t hesitate to kill something that is not working.

During the first big session, Youth Specialties and Zondervan took the time to tell us that Tic and Marko have left YS. I will miss them. I didn’t always agree with them, but I liked their ministry. They were never afraid to try to push the envelope. YS has always been kind of dangerous for Zondervan, even when Mike Yaconelli started it. The new head of YS looks like he will be a play it safe kind of guy. I will miss these guys (Marco and Tic) pushing the boundaries and I hope that YS does not lose its edge.

National Youth Workers Convention

I am now sitting in a seminar at the National Youth Worker’s Convention (NYWC.) I am going to blog about my sessions here (1) to let you know what is going on and (2) to process and think out loud to see what I am learning here and how it applies to the student ministry at FBC. So here we go:

Day 1

After a pleasantly uneventful drive down, I made it to Atlanta on time. (Thanks to my Garmin, I did get to try Firehouse Subs for the first time. I have always wanted to try the hook and ladder sub after hearing the commercial on the radio for the last 10 months. I would give it 5 stars. They even had cherry limeade. (To add a sidenote to my sidenote: I will be talking a lot about my food experiences during this blog. I love food and I love trying new things. So if you are not hungry or on a low carb diet (pastor) , please bear with me.) I ate at Firehouse in Cleveland, TN and my Garmin had me go down a two lane road for 25 miles. I did not get back on 75 until I was in Georgia. It was actually a nice break from the interstate and I missed all the Chattanooga traffic.) I had signed up for a pre-conference. I took Speaking to Teenagers: Thinking, Creating, and Delivering effective messages by Duffy Robbins. I read the book about two years ago, but at the time I was not talking to teenagers every week. So this class was a good refresher of what I had read earlier. This class met for two 3 hour sessions. I did three hours Thursday and three on Friday. The first night was good. It was about the thinking that goes on behind the message like understanding your audience and gaining trust so they will listen to what you have to say. So it was all about the audience and the speaker.

I am staying at the Omni Hotel which is in the CNN building which is in downtown Atlanta. (I watched Fox news in my room just to spite them.) I choose a perfect location. It is right across from the Georgia World Congress Center which is where the conference is being held. I can walk to all the conferences and leave my car in the parking garage. There is a food court in the lobby and I got to eat supper at Moe’s Southwest Grill. I had one where I lived in Virginia and I had missed my Billy Baroo which is basically chicken nachos.