Root61 Weekend Away
23 Feb 2010
Last week we had what is now becoming our annual February weekend away. Picture the scene, a gaggle of teenagers highly excited at the prospect of being away from the normal rules of home life, a bunch of leaders tired at the end of a hectic half term, a farm called Coldblow (if there was ever a more fitting name), snow, and to top it all off, being away over Valentines weekend.
Why? I asked myself this more than once in the week building up to it. Enough to make anyone feel enervated (look it up if you are unsure).
And yet, as with previous years, the weekend itself was simply brilliant. Why? Many reasons really, it was more a case of pick your favourite moment. Friday night saw us finding out some of the leaders slightly weirder personal details – Rich voted most likely to be a hippy at school?! – creating and performing ‘dorm songs’ (recorded for future use on ‘Before there were famous’ of course), and the obligatory late night chats, well, more accurately, shouts, screams and giggles from the girls. A bleary eyed Saturday comes around and we launched into more candidates for moment of the weekend; the team building exercises that saw creativity beyond your dreams, and of course the now infamous big adventure in the afternoon. Seven teams, seven leaders, seven maps, seven lots of questions. After nearly three hours, only three teams had reappeared from the freezing fog, covered in mud and looking forward to a hot shower. The remaining four lost somewhere miles away, the person responsible shall not be named here(!) Finally they reappeared in good spirits – a point that surely marks these young people out as actually really quite special – and we head out for bowling and burgers. A classic youth group night out and lots of fun. More late night giggles turned into more fun on Sunday too.
So take your pick for highlight of the weekend. But for me, the fun stuff aside,
I enjoyed being away with a brilliant group of young people and spending time in God’s presence, getting into His word and challenging our youth with the theme of the weekend ‘Don’t waste your life’.
Through a series of talks, discussion groups and times of worship we investigated what it is to not waste your life, what the Bible says about teenagers (it doesn’t say anything by the way) and how we can live a life that has meaning, purpose and makes the most of every minute of every day for the glory of God. The weekend away reflected what Root61 is all about; a passion for the glory of God, a passion for adventure and a passion for life.
After all, life is meant for living, live is meant for Jesus.
Brilliant.
|