realife rocks.

Peeps.

Let me tell you.

Group1Crew: rocking. Even more rocking-er: Realife.

I went with my roomie to the junior high and high schools ministry's "One Big Party," which I guess is a big outreach opportunity for the ministry. And I've never seen anything like it.

Firstly, I really missed being in the church at those ages. I learned of Christ at 14, and had mostly washed out by 15. God packed a lot into that time, but I still really never experienced teenage-hood through the lens of a church community, or well-developed focus on Christ. So I'm kind of fascinated by seeing kids live out Christ now. I wonder what it's like to be raised in the church. If you've always known the story, does it get old sometimes? Do you get to junior high, and think that Christ is boring? What's it like to have your parents have these expectations on you about what God would want for your life, and then go to school and have an absolute crap-heap of sexuality and profanity and drugs and alcohol thrown at you? Just..what's it like to have known of Christ for so long? To have Him be such an integral part of your life and your family? Does He feel like an old friend? Or just a part of the background--something real only through repeated exposure, not through passionate love? What do you think and feel about that as you begin to differentiate from your family?

So anyway, we get to Realife, and I'm joking to my roommate that I'm 17 for the night, reliving the years I didn't have in the church. But this was nothing like anything I would have known at 17.

I'm too tired to give the full force of the 1,000 or so jumping youth, their cell phone screens brightly waving in the dark of the concert, the hissed prayers, and absolute incredible energy. It was intense, and amazing, and I spent five minutes just asking God, "Man, what did I do to deserve such coolness, God? How did I score all of this?" I was bowled over by the energy, and the love for God, and the flat-out fun of the night. It's like no high school youth group I ever went to.

I started to think that if people don't know how cool Realife is--they really ought to. We really all ought to know, and to be invested in it. See that's what got me. The logistics of production and security alone are staggering. But the theology of it. I turned to my roommate. "Nat, these kids are here for God--whether or not they realize it, or chose it, or want it--beneath all of this, it's about Christ." And that's intentional, and a gargantuan undertaking, and it knocked me over.

It'd be one thing if they were just running one heck of a youth-club. But this is about God. And the people who make all of it float are invested in helping these kids come to know, and continue to grow, in Christ. That's incredible to me. So many kids. Just a flabbergasting number of kids. Coming to know Christ. Or at the very least, being in a setting in which they have the opportunity to see Him at work.

I'd been inside Realife before, and had heard the numbers, and had an idea of what happened there, but did not at all understand the massive scope of the thing until tonight. I didn't feel just how cool it is--just how incredible that so many lives pass through there. Kids at what might be their most vulnerable. These are the people who will change the world. Who will take places at the top of science, politics, religion--at the top of it all. And this church has a hand in helping them walk with the only one who is Truth. Long before they change the world, they're learning to love God, which is more important than any of their achievements to come.

That's unbelievable. It's incredible. Exciting beyond reason.

Look, I know this is lame to say, but I feel...well, I feel blessed, I feel like it was a personal gift from God, just to have seen it in action.

Truly, praise God.