Winter Jam

Last Sunday night I and several other adults took 17 teens from Wonder City to the Winter Jam concert. I don’t know if it was the mood I was in that night, or what. But I was disappointed for my teens. With the artist I knew would be there I was hopeful for an upbeat show that my teens could connect to. I knew going in the lineup was short on hip-hop style music, but Toby Mac looked promising. When we arrived, the youth ministers were asked to attend a “Youth Leader’s Reception” where we would be joined by some of the artist “to pray over the concert and your youth.” It was really a time for World Changers to get our mailing address and to give us some information about how they were going to do the “alter call” (their words). While we (the youth ministers) were in that “reception” the first act was on the stage. For me, it went downhill from there. Every time, there was some momentum built with the acts and music something would be done to kill it cold. The speaker came out and spoke 10 minutes about giving before a “love offering” was taken up. One of the members of Newsong came out and spoke 10 minutes about sponsoring orphaned and abandoned kids in foreign countries. And they had a 15 minute intermission. It appeared that my kids were just as disappointed and frustrated as I was. Many of them were up and down throughout the whole thing. Several asked me if we could leave at intermission (we stayed because we knew Toby Mac was up next). It was one of those events that as I left I said to myself, “Glad we came, but don’t think I will do it again.”

I don’t think I would have been frustrated by all that stuff had my teens not been there. During the fall I had taught a series of lessons on Wednesday night using holy hip-hop. We would listen to a song and talk about the themes in the song and look at appropriate texts. I wanted to show my teens that there is music that they would like to listen to other than the junk that secular hip-hop artist put out. Here was an opportunity to get my kids even more exposure to and excited about Christian music. However, it just didn’t work. Something like this may have worked for many more sub-urban churches and youth, but it just didn’t work with my urban kids. To top it all off we had taken three new teens with us that night (none of the three had been with us for more than 2 services).

At least, that was how I was feeling when I left the concert. When I dropped off six girls at the same house, they all said how much fun they had and the two new girls that had gone with us said they were going to start coming to Wonder City. Then, I was pleasantly surprised at Bible class on Wednesday night when I asked what they thought about it. Several indicated some of the same things that I mentioned. But at the same time, they all had something good to say about the concert. They all found one act they connected with. And some of them enjoyed watching me “rocking out” (one of my teen boy’s words). I am a little more hopeful as I write this than I was earlier. God can take something that looks like it fell on its face and totally work something out of it. Praise the Lord for that.