My kids just got back from 4 days at Creation East. For those of you who may not have ever heard of this, it’s a Christian music festival in Mt. Union, PA. A number of the kids that I taught in Sunday School, years ago, go up there every year. This past week they took about 20+ people from our church up. My kids say the music was awesome and my son came back with a stack of new CD’s raving about some of the new bands that he’s now interested in. While I’m a bit to old and stodgy now to appreciate 4 days of 90 degree heat, 90 decibel music and no showers (yuck) my kids had an absolute blast.

Usually at these festivals they have seminars going on all day so I asked the kids if they had attended any. Most of these seminars are “seeker sensitive” (boy I’m really starting to dislike that phrase) in nature. My son thought they “sucked”! When I asked what was wrong with them he said there was no real substance and that the message was so watered down as to not be recognizable. I’m actually happy to hear him feel this way, to me it means that my wife and I and our church have done a good job in teaching our kids (not just mine but all the kids at our church). Maybe kids like ours need to write to the promoters of Creation and remind them that the majority of the people at their festivals are already Christians and need a bit more “meat” to these seminars.

My daughter said the best thing about going up there was getting to really know the other kids from church. Even though they have all grown up in the church together, they only know each other within the context of church and youth activities. This outing gave them the opportunity to stay up to all ours and really share with each other and get to know who these kids are outside the walls of our church. As youth leaders we’ve always prayed that our kids would hook up with each other, but since they all go to different schools in the county it’s been hard for them to make that kind of connection with each other.

I’m so happy that God was able to do, what none of us leaders have been able to. While I initially had my reservations about the kids going, now I’m already planning for them to go again next year.