Looks Like A Festival, Feels Like A Retreat
YQ is much more than your average youth retreat. With 1800+ attendees from all over the country, this event explodes with energy. The festivities include: concerts from diverse genres, professional light shows, tons of crazy activities, and most importantly, world-class preaching and teaching. The sessions throughout the weekend will have one speaker, one worship band, and one focus for teaching. Youth groups will eat together and stay in the same dorms. After each main session, there will be "Youth Group Time" where your youth can talk with their leaders and discuss the main message and what that means for their lives. This makes YQ the best of both worlds: Looks like a festival, feels like a retreat. There is nothing else like it.
THEME: FOCUS
Where do you give your focus to?
You know that moment when you're at a concert and the band begins the big song that everyone's been waiting for? We all immediately reach for our phones, eager to capture the moment we've anticipated. We pull it out, open the camera, only to realize we have no storage space. So we start deleting apps, photos, and videos to free up enough space. Eventually we open the camera again and try to get the focus right. Finally, we hit record… just in time for the crowd's cheer as the song comes to an end. We missed the moment. We waited the whole concert and when it came, we gave our focus to the phone in our pocket.
When Jesus approached the boat of disciples in Matthew 14, walking on the water, Peter is quick to jump out of the boat and walk out to Jesus. While Peter's eyes are focused on Jesus, he is doing the impossible; he's following Jesus and realizing that Jesus' power is the real thing. As Peter's focus is given to fear, insecurity, and doubt, he starts to sink into the water. In the midst of an incredible moment, Peter's eyes drift from Jesus and he almost loses it all.
We are all like Peter. We have things around us every day competing for our focus and we get to decide where we give it to. We often don't realize that in the midst of an incredible moment, we are focused on something that is making us miss the most important thing. When our eyes are focused on Jesus, we too can be involved in the impossible and live the purpose we were created for. When we give our focus to the competing forces around us, we end up missing the moment and risk losing it all.
At YQ18 we will be talking about our focus—where we are giving it and the power of focusing our eyes on Jesus.
AJ Crocker
YQ Director
