Blogging Live-ish from KYCK #1

For the uninformed or literate, KYCK stands for Katoomba Youth Christian Konvention. KYCK is the convention for christian High School students in NSW, with 6000 attendees over the three different weekends. I'm here this weekend in my capacity as a youth leader. I'll be blogging nightly after I've been social for a bit, and before I continue working on my upcoming sermons (panic-stations!)

First up, I've worked out why music is always the first thing to be criticised by conference delegates. It's because music is always the first thing to occur at the conference, and in many ways it shapes our attitude for the rest of our time. Though this is my first KYCK, I've heard much generally unbalanced groaning about the musical direction the conference has taken in recent years, headed by the approval of Hillsongs (I'm up on my abbreviations at the moment because of all the essay writing I've been doing, and I'm fairly certain Hillsongs is the standard abbreviation for 'Hillsong songs').

So for the record, music was good, lyrics seemed fine, well performed. Almost too quiet, if anything. The traffic on our way to the conference ensured I missed the first bunch of songs, but what I caught was great. Evangelical muso's don't get told that enough. Thanks for serving well.

However, a peculiar introduction to 'All That Really Matters' gave rise to some confusion for me. The songleader asked the awaiting congregation, "You all know what really matters, right?" Well, I guess I do. "I'll give you three guesses" (general hum as answers are called out) "That's right", she says as the band starts up. Hang on a minute - what's right? Wait, I didn't get the answer. What is it that really matters?

I'll tell you what really matters to me - not assuming I know the answer to your question. 

I'm certain someone must have called out the right answer. I was going with "Love", but heading into the song I was none the wiser. Turns out it's Jesus. Which must be said is no great surprise in the end. However, the lyrics to the song itself aren't much clearer than the songleader's intro. The chorus says,

All that really matters/All that really counts is found in you/What else would we live for?/You're the way, the life, the truth/And all that really matters is you/(Jesus, it's you)

The strange thing was that the words contained in the parentheses* (Jesus, it's you) weren't actually sung. I know, bizarre. The answer to the lyrics was there, just in case you didn't get it. Which I didn't. But now I guess I do.

Also catching my eye was another song, that I didn't catch the title of, which must have had all of six lines of lyrics repeated ad nauseam. The strange thing was, as the copyright information showed up on the last powerpoint slide, the song had something like 5 co-authors. How could this possibly be? Perhaps it's a new writing style in the form of the old youth group game where you make up a story in a circle with each person saying a single word.

But in perspective, these quirks were minor blips on the radar.

*A quick shout-out of thanks to my first Moore College essay (and accompanying essay style guide) for almost teaching me more about the difference between parentheses and brackets than about Mark's Gospel.