There was a rare sighting of some unlikely participants at Anaheim 07. Did any of you see what one student from Shafter M.B. (CA) caught on her cell phone?
Check out this clip and then leave a comment as to whether you saw this weirdness as well!
Several groups totaling about 100 students and leaders headed out from the Anaheim Hilton by vans and cars on Tuesday, April 3. They weren't going to the beach or Disneyland, they were on their way to Ensenada in Mexico. The five-day trip was organized by Mennonite Brethren Missions and Services International (MBMSI). Teens will put into practice what they learned at the conference by serving Mexican churches and leading vacation Bible school programs for children.
Another group, Parkview M.B. (KS), began a week of serving in inner-city Los Angeles with the Center for Student Missions. They will learn from urban church leaders, serve the poor, work with children and talk with the homeless. They too are taking seriously the challenges presented at Anaheim 07 to love and serve as a natural outcome of a healthy Christianity!
Both groups will return home on Saturday, April 7. Please pray for their safe journeys.
Above: Joe Brown and the Heritage Bible Church (Bakersfield, CA) leave the Hilton for Mexico
Brooke and Andi (from MBMSI) with the Harvey (North Dakota) group getting ready to depart for Ensenada
Please send the best digital group photo you have and I will create a photo album of the churches who attended Anaheim 07. Just attached the photo to an email and send it to anaheim07@sbcglobal.net. We all look forward to seeing your group online!
Iglesia La Roca from Sanger, CA
Tuesday morning had one activity: the general session. The theme for the morning was "We're going everywhere." The session was a commissioning service for students as they headed back into their normal lives. The morning started with several dramatic sketches by One Time Blind and some worship led by the Tabor worship team.
Above: The Tabor worship team, joined by a student choir, leads the crowd
What followed has become an important moment for the national youth conference: the offering. Chris Eides did a wonderful job describing how the last offering (taken at Estes 03) had supported the building of a gym for the North Carolina conference. This year's offering was taken to help relieve the burdens of the people and Churches of the central valley in California. This area was devastated by a freeze that destroyed the orange crops and took away the jobs and incomes of many farm workers. Maricela Chavez, a member of the Iglesia El Buen Pastor congregation in Orange Cove, CA, spoke passionately about the many needs that her church and others have in the area. The $5000 that was collected during this offering will be given to a special project of the Mennonite Central Committee working with the freeze victims.
Above: Maricela and Chris talk about the Anaheim 07 offering
Roy Crowne was up next with a challenge to take Jesus' words seriously and move into the world in His name. Though out the conference Roy has been emphasizing the need to not remove ourselves from the world, but to learn how to live in it and be a representative of Christ and his kingdom. This is one of the reasons the conference takes place in an urban center.
Above: Roy captured the hearts and attention of students and leaders alike
The final feature of the morning service has been a long-standing tradition of the national M.B. youth conference. We ended by sharing communion together in groups. Each church found a spot to celebrate the Lord's supper and to reflect on the things that they had learned while sharing the bread and cup. Groups scattered around the meeting room and in the hallways. After that, it was one more song and a prayer.
From there groups went back to their rooms and finished their packing. Those who were flying out on Tuesday quickly headed to the lobby and waited for the buses that would take them to the airport. Thanks to several PDC churches (Reedley, Dinuba and Bethany) who lent their buses for the transportation of hundreds of people to the Orange County airport. The lobby of the Hilton was filled with luggage, hugs and kisses, and good-byes.
The pool, along with four spas, has been open every night of the conference. There have been so many students in it you could almost walk across on the tops of their heads! As one youth pastor said, "This is the best late night option at the conference!"
After a busy day with Tourformation the evening meeting focused on the needs that we as Christians face everyday. The need is everywhere. The general session started with testimonies from two students who experienced God at the ministry sites they visited. These were just two of the stories that have been told all day - on the bus ride home, at dinner, in the elevator, in hotel rooms.
One Time Blind, the team that has been presenting dramas at Anaheim 07, followed with several vignettes focusing on what the Christian's response should be to the needs that are presented all around us. The theme of their skits was clear: If Christian's declare love for God, they MUST demonstrate that love through their actions. Here's a funny but poignant clip.
Next on the program was a testimony by Tim Peters. Twenty years ago, in 1987, Tim was a conferee at the national Mennonite Brethren youth conference at Glorietta. Tim, a member of the Parkview MB church in Hillsboro, KS, was challenged by Ridge Burns to make a commitment to go anywhere, at anytime, to any place that God would call him. Tim stood up to signal that he was ready to make that commitment. A few years later Ridge asked Tim to come visit the Center For Student Ministries in inner-city Los Angeles. Tim took up the offer and flew to L.A.
Ridge picked Tim up from the airport and drove to a downtown hotel - a hotel with rats, roaches, a room with a sink and broken mirror, a bathroom down the hall, and prostitutes roaming the corridors. The next day they drove to different ministry sites and did a prayer tour in the evening. Tim saw homeless people lining the roads, fires blazing in the street, with smells he had never encountered before. That weekend changed the course of his life. The farm boy from Kansas began a journey of living in the inner-city that has lasted nearly two decades. Today Tim manages a transitional home for homeless families, helping them off the streets and into a life of stability and faith.
Tim gave the same challenge to our students that Ridge gave to him twenty years ago: be willing to go anywhere, at anytime, to do anything. Hundreds responded by standing to their feet signifying that they too wanted to be used by God.
Above: Tim gives his testimony of moving from Hillsboro to inner-city L.A.
Above: Tim and Ridge (he made a surprise visit) after the meeting
Above: Door of Hope, the ministry that Tim directs
Tourformation was an amazing experience on Monday morning taking all 1100 conferees into inner-city Los Angeles and other surrounding communities. The goal was to expose students to urban ministry sites, help them understand the urban condition by listening to ministry leaders who live there, and serve the ministries they visited in some tangible way. Students experienced things like visiting World Impact, World Vision and the missions on skid row. They talked to, and in some cases ate with, homeless people in downtown L.A. They cleaned homes, offices and beaches, hacked out dead weeds, dead bushes and dead trees, painted walls, played with children, and more. One group of 70 spent four hours cleaning. That's 280 hours of labor, or as the director of the ministry said, four weeks of work for the full-time custodian! It was a long and tiring, but exciting day.
Above: Students prepare to leave for Tourformation
Above: Boarding the buses
Above: Orientation at World Impact
Above: Diggin' out the dead stuff
Above: Trimming bushes, or trimming hair?
Above: Pausing in downtown L.A. for a picture
Above: On the roof of the Union Mission
Above: A tour of Union Mission
Above: Praying for a homeless man
Tonight’s session was full and rich. The focus: we are from everywhere. The "we" refers to us as Mennonite Brethren and "everywhere" means from all over the U.S. and beyond. There were some exceptional features that focused this theme.
A special video featured interviews and snapshots of various youth groups from the five districts and 50+ churches that are represented at Anaheim 07. Names of states and churches scrolled across the screen as teens screamed and cheered for their respective territories.
Tabor professor Wendell Loewen gave the best, most concise, most youthful 10-minute history of the Mennonite Brethren church I’ve ever heard. He moved through a definition of Anabaptism, to Russia, to North America, to the five districts (Southern, Central, LAMB, North Carolina and Pacific). And a crowd of 1100 sat in silence, with complete attention – proof that this generation longs to connect with their roots.
Above: Wendell speaks to the students about the history of the Mennonite Brethren denomination
Another highlight of the evening (if not the entire conference) was a live 10-minute teleconference via internet with Saji and Bindu Oommen from New Deli, India. The Oommens gave an exciting account of their work in India and a passionate challenge for students to pursue a life of mission and service. They even invited all 1100 to come and visit. Catch the whole interview here. Be patient as it loads, it's 30mb (that's megabytes, not Mennonite Brethren), but it's worth the wait!
Finally, Roy Crowne spoke with conviction about the need to serve God everywhere. He called for a decision from those who believe that God has called them to service, possibly foreign service, in his kingdom. Students and leaders gathered together at the front of the room for a time of prayer and commitment.
Above: Roy challenges students to commit themselves to ministry
Sunday morning was full of Ministry Tracks. At a typical youth conference there is a predictable pattern for the morning schedule: general session, seminar 1, seminar 2, and then lunch.
At Anaheim 07 we have modified this by creating ministry tracks. Instead of going to a general session and two seminars, conferees attended a three-hour track that was focused specifically on a topic they chose. There were tracks covering worship, evangelism, film making, painting, photography, soccer, basketball and so much more! The goal of the experience was to help students think theologically about their topic of choice, enhance their skill, and challenge them to go back to their churches with a sense of mission.
I taught a guitar track. We spent an hour talking through some theology and philosophy of worship leading and then spent a couple of hours learning chords, strum patterns, and songs, and ended by breaking up into small groups based on skill level. I wish you could have heard it - 30 guitars strumming to God's glory!
A new feature for the national Mennonite Brethren youth conference is the prayer labyrinth (also known as a prayer path). Labyrinths were used in medieval times to help believers focus on God. The walk inward helps believers think about their own personal journey with God; the walk outward focuses on the world that Christians live in. Our prayer labyrinth has eleven stations of prayer and takes about one hour to complete. At the last station students journal and record some of their thoughts from the experience. Here are some excerpts from that journal:
God showed me that I need to quiet the noise in my mind and all the concerns and worries that go through my head….
The things we hold so close here on Earth are not what stay with us in eternity. We need to quiet down and let God be God.
I was very blessed by this experience because it has reiterated to me the fact that God is in control of everything in my life….
This experience has shown me all I have put in front of God, I can grow and change once I recognize it. I am ready to serve God with my whole life!
God has worked in my life through this. He has shown me that no matter what I go through he is there and where I go he is there and what I do he is there. He will hold me up through the rough time, cry with me through the sad time and laugh with me through the good times.
This was amazing and very cleansing. All the candles remind me of God’s warmth and light.
The Saturday evening session opened with the Pacific District Board of Youth Ministries energizing the crowd with handing out free stuff - they shot Anaheim T-shirts out of an air cannon! Everybody loves free stuff. Then the first of the iPods, which will be handed out at every general session, was won by a Troy Green from Dinuba M.B. in California.
Above: The Pacific District youth pastors shoot T-shirts out of their cannon
Troy Green wins an IPod!
Then the Emcees, Andi and Trent, welcomed the crowd with some important information for the conference. Amanda Falk, a musician from Canada, performed a song called "Beautiful." After she was done singing, the worship band from Fresno Pacific University led worship and ushered in the presence of God.
Above: the FPU worship team leads worship
Roy Crowne, National Director for Youth for Christ in Britain, presented an amazing message that caused hundreds of students to respond to God to transform the city and live differently. The theme for Anaheim 07 is "Everywhere," and Crowne was explaining that God is everywhere. He talked about an experience that he experienced as a 19-year old. An 11-year old who attended his youth club, challenged him to find God amidst the broken in the city, and he responded to the call. And he gave the same challenge to all the youth here at the conference. In the end five attendees accepted Christ!
Above: Roy Crowne calls the students to think about Christ
Story written by Amber Bailey, FPU contemorary Christian ministries student
It's almost midnight on day one and every church is here and accounted for! All 1100 students and leaders made it - we didn't lose one person (though the airlines lost more than a few pieces of luggage). Registration was fairly smooth with only a few minor glitches. Many groups were here early enough to explore the surrounding neighborhood, hang out in the spacious lobby or take a quick nap.
Each conferee received a backpack with a program booklet, a water bottle (given by Tabor and Fresno Pacific) and edible goodies from the Pacific District Board of Youth Ministries. The backpacks should work well to carry around bibles, notebooks, a light jacket or whatever.
It's been a great start to a great conference!
Above: the lobby - Welcome to Anaheim 07!
Above: Co-director Rick Bartlett orients 150 leaders
Yesterday (Thursday) Bustown, Post Oak and Bellview arrived safe and sound. Today we'll be seeing Pine Acres, Lincoln Glen, Bible MB, Corn, Kingwood, and Memorial Road. With almost 200 on site already, we'll see the majority of folks come in tomorrow on Saturday - nearly 1000 more!
These 1300 chairs will see plenty of life tomorrow night! The stage is still being built.
Important Information if you are driving to Anaheim 07:
This afternoon (Thursday): loading up the truck with boxes of backpacks, water bottles, program booklets, guitars, and so much more. Tim's son Daniel (4) almost snuck in the back as well!
This group is far more than a drama team – they use music, rhythms, sketches and other dramatic elements to make an audience laugh and think about God in a modern-day language. One Time Blind will be featured throughout the conference in sessions and late night venues.
The excitement doesn’t stop after the evening meeting. There will be numerous options for enjoying the late night with your friends, including venues for comedy, music and worship, drama and an open mic. You can also hang out in the lounge or take a walk on the contemplative prayer path.
New to Anaheim 07, ministry tracks take the place of seminars. In a typical conference setting each student attends a general session and then two seminars before lunch. In place of that scenario, we have created longer blocks of time called Ministry Tracks in which students can focus in on one subject of interest.
On Sunday conferees will engage in a topic to help serve the church, including worship leading, technology, the arts, sports, leadership and teaching. On Monday we will board buses to serve a city church and learn from local leaders. See the previous post for a better description of Monday's "Tourformation."
Our TourFormation event will have groups traveling to various ministry sites, churches or agencies in the LA area on April 2.
The purpose of TourFormation is to see the face of God in the city -- to recognize signs of hope. Two important bits of information: 1) Youth groups will remain intact so sponsors and other adult volunteers can keep track of their students, but also help students reflect on what they've seen and experienced; and 2) You'll be asked to bring lunch money on Monday. In some cases, lunch will be brought to you for a minimal cost. In other cases, participants will have the opportunity to experience a local (often ethnic) restaurant in the neighborhood. The idea is to infuse local communities with our resources, not to drain them of their resources.
You'll find out where you're going when your group gets to Anaheim. The five basic areas we'll be headed toward are:
We'll be using vans/buses of groups that are driving and we've contracted with Laidlaw (a school bus company) to help us get to our ministry locations.
The contact person for TourFormation is Glenn Balzer. He can be reached at Glenn@DoorNetwork.org.
Check out these topics for our general sessions...
Saturday night - God is Everywhere. Have you ever stopped to think that God is present everywhere and doing great things in all parts of this big globe?
Sunday night - We’re from Everywhere. We are urban, suburban and rural; African-American, Hispanic, Slavic, Anglo, and more; from Southern, Central, L.A.M.B., North Carolina and Pacific Districts; farmers, students, worship leaders, mentors and dreamers for the next generation of Mennonite Brethren!
Monday night - The Need is Everywhere. We will hear about the need for Christ around the world and particularly focus on how God is at work in the city of Los Angeles!
Tuesday morning - We’re going Everywhere. We will be commissioned through a special service of communion to live out God’s call on our lives where ever we go.
We have some exciting main sessions planned for Anaheim 07 and our speaker will keep you on the edge of your seat.
ROY CROWNE is the National Director of Youth for Christ in Britain.
Roy has written and edited a peer-to-peer evangelistic training course, called ‘The Art of Connecting’. He writes a regular feature in ‘Youthwork’, on the devotional life of a youth leader. He preaches and teaches extensively in the UK and abroad, and his passionate style of communication releases his evangelistic gift, and motivates to engage in the mission of Christ.
Roy is married to Florence and has two sons (John & Michael) in Rugby, where they attend a local church. Roy finds it a continual challenge to keep fit whilst enjoying curries and the fun that comes with working with young people.
The Christian Leader is sponsoring a photo contest at Anaheim 07. The winners of each category will get their photograph printed in the May edition of the magazine! Grab the cameras and get ready to shoot.
More info here.
Here are a number of pieces of information that might be helpful in planning your trip.
The biggest chunk of free time will happen on Sunday afternoon. Here are a few things you might consider doing:
Youth leaders, what are you doing for food? Leave some of your best ideas in the comments section of this post.
Here is a great map for the nearby eating options. Note: Downtown Disney has lots of fun places to eat and shop; the best time to go there will be on Sunday afternoon when we have the most free time.
Here are some more suggestions for food.
The official Anaheim 07 backpacks and water bottles just arrived. Every registered conferee will receive one at check-in (3-5 p.m. on Saturday).
The backpack is perfect for carrying the essentials: a Bible, conference notebook, camera, light jacket, water bottle and more!
Will you choose blue or will you choose red?
Welcome to the blog for Anaheim 07, the national youth convention of the U.S. Conference of the Mennonite Brethren. March 31-April 3 over 1100 high school students and leaders will gather together in Anaheim, CA, from all over the United States for meaningful worship, exciting Bible study and challenging ministry opportunities.
This blog will be used to feature important elements of the conference, to post updates and pictures once the convention has begun, and to allow feedback from participants of Anaheim 07.
Come back often... We'll try to keep the content current!
Download the Anaheim 07 brochure here.
Download a poster here.
