Summer Events Roundup Part 1: Jesus Culture

I know, I know…we promised you more pictures and testimonies from Jesus Culture ’07, but we never got around to it. After many other events took place throughout August, I decided to blog about them all at once now that the last main summer event is over (although we have another surprise for you next weekend!). So here is Part One of the Summer Events Roundup….

Jared already talked about Lou Engle who was the speaker the first evening, so I’ll talk about other stuff, starting at the beginning. Our youth group gathered at the FoodMaxx parking lot (which is near our pastor’s house) in the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 1, and after talking about trip details we squeezed into two cars (there were ten of us and only two drivers) and “hit the road.” It was cool and cloudy in the morning, but by the time we reached the Central Valley it had become quite hot. Redding is perhaps hotter than the rest of the valley, and after four or five hours of driving we arrived in Redding where it was 105 degrees Fahrenheit. But it didn’t matter too much because the Holy Spirit is far hotter than Redding’s air, and we were already on fire for Jesus!

We had three crazy girls in the car with us! (Left to right: Noah, Noelle, Joy)

We couldn’t wait to get into the convention center! (Left to right: Noelle, Jared T., Noah)

Breathless with anticipation as we gather inside….

It has begun! Kim Walker is leading worship

Worshiping the Lord

Worshiping the Lord some more

The scope of it all

Kim Walker does prophetic singing and lets the Holy Spirit direct the worship.

Day 2

In the morning we gathered again for worship, and after getting pumped up with the Holy Spirit we were sent out in groups to various places in the city of Redding to pray for, and minister to, people. I and a couple others ended up at Home Depot where—I have to admit—nothing really interesting happened, but when we regrouped later we found that the other teams had been able to pray for a few people—and I think there might have been a couple of healings too!

I felt really ashamed that I had pretty much failed at doing City Ministry that day. In the afternoon we had a couple of workshops, more worship, and then a semi-quiet time when we were able to pray and connect with the Lord. During that time many of us were praying in tongues, including me, and God gave me a vision that He was taking me above the atmosphere and partway into Heaven with Him. I felt Him forgive me for messing up that morning, and I got a spiritual reboot, so when I came back to earth I felt ready to do anything He called me to do.

That night we were totally on fire for Jesus again. There was worship with Melissa Wise, but after a while it seemed that the audience—and God—was leading worship instead of the people on stage! After a while Banning Liebscher, who was the overall leader and speaker of the event, had this crazy idea that we should all just shout praises to God without any music. So we screamed and prayed and jumped up and down with love for Jesus until the whole building was shaking back and forth. This went on for TWENTY MINUTES or so. At one point I think the musicians wanted to get back to doing their thing, but we just couldn’t stop!

Who said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus?

Day 3

In the morning we were sent out again, this time to pray over college and school campuses. Our group was sent to Anderson Middle School, which is in the town of Anderson (you get an A+ if you figured that out yourself) located about ten miles south of Redding. It was in the middle of summer, of course, so it was out of session, and we pretty much had the place to ourselves (we were let onto the school grounds but not into the rooms).

We split up into teams of two or three to wander over the grounds and pray over the school. We had notebooks with us with which we were using to write down any prophetic words or words of knowledge that God might share with us regarding the school. This lasted about forty-five minutes or so. I was with a couple of kids from a Korean church in San Jose; there were about twenty-five or so people from the church’s youth group—I think their church must be quite large!

At one point I and the Korean kids were praying in front of a door leading to the administration office. A woman saw us through the door window and opened the door. She said, “Can I help you?” At first I thought she might be hostile to the idea of our praying over her school, but I blurted out: “No, we were just sent here to pray over the school. We’re with a group.” She replied: “Oh, that’s great! Keep doing it!” And she walked on. I felt that was very encouraging!

Gathering in front of the school

Afterwards we drove back to Redding. In the afternoon we had more workshops and teaching sessions. It was still hot, but every free moment we had we spent living at Jamba Juice and Starbucks to get Iced Anything.

In the evening Chris Hill was the speaker, although the word “speak” hardly does him justice. He was more energetic and charismatic than anyone else there—he practically had more energy than everyone else at the convention center put together! He excelled at stirring up the “troops” for Jesus—every time he tried to quiet down and actually teach his message, somehow the Holy Spirit stirred the pot and everyone burst out into praise and worship again. It got more and more wild until finally it was crazier than the previous night! After screaming our guts out for the Lord, he had us turn to each other and pray for one another, which of course is the best and most important thing you can do at an event like this. Then we burst out into worship again.

This isn’t a very good picture, but it shows Chris Hill rockin’ for the Lord!

Finally Banning had to come on stage and gently tell us that under the rules of the convention center, we had to be out of the building by midnight. So we all shuffled out and stayed around another hour outside still praising the Lord and praying for each other! We were totally running on spiritually-charged adrenaline by this time, but it didn’t matter.

We were quite tired after it was all over!

Going to JesusCulture gave us a good head start for the other things we were going to do for the rest of August, which I shall talk about in upcoming posts. Stay tuned….