BWC 2011 Video

All the BWC Video is here: http://vimeo.com/cccnehq

Room Full? Get Full!

BWC veterans,

Room with three students that are new to the Boston Winter Conference and receive one of ten $50 gift cards to restaurants in the Prudential Center adjacent to the Sheraton. This means that you and your friends can enjoy dinner together while at BWC.

To enter the Room Full/Get Full promo: write a post on the wall of the Boston Winter Conference Fan Page saying that your room at BWC is full and tag 3 friends who have never been to BWC before but will room with you this year.

Tag friends by typing the “@” symbol and the first letters of the person’s name (e.g. @Amy) This should bring up a list if your friends.

The deadline for entry is 11:59pm on Christmas Eve. Their is a limited supply of gift cards so the sooner you post on Facebook the better your chance to win. When you go through registration with your three friends at BWC we will verify that you are a winner.

Hope you enjoy dinner with your friends. Thank you for helping your friends engage, equip and ignite their faith at BWC 2011.

BWC Prayer Journey Video

Prayer Journey 2011 from CCCNEHQ on Vimeo.

The Prayer Journey is designed to help you connect with God in a hands-on, interactive way. This is a place where you an experience God’s presence and hear from him about how to be FREE, in your life and in the world. Take the journey on your own or with your friends. Enter through a tabernacle experience where you can linger with the LORD or move on to the rest of the Prayer Journey.

What's it like at BWC?

Does God Exist? Is he real?

Men's and Women's Panel at BWC

After Ben Burns gave a riveting, frank and earthy talk about sex in the main session at BWC; I had the opportunity to be part of a men’s panel. The men’s panel answered questions from a room full of male students while the women’s panel answered questions from a room full of women.

Then after an hour, we switched.

It was scary.

What made it so terrifying was the pain and confusion embedded in the questions. It was clear that many students had been badly burned by poor sexual choices. It was clear that many students were confused about how to understand their desires, there experiences (some of tragic abuse) or their relationships with others. Looking into the face of this pain and confusion, and trying to answer it, was very difficult.

However, the hardest part of being on the panel was having such a short time to address questions of enormous significance. The best part of the panel was the honesty and transparency of the questions and the answers. At the very least we had the opportunity to recognize that deep issues of sexuality and life are appropriate to bring into the light of healthy community. Healthy Christians talk transparently about the deepest issues of life.

We tend to believe three lies:

1. I’m the only one who is dealing with this.
2. I can never change.
3. Not even God can forgive me.

All three of these lies were exposed and refuted by Ben’s talk and the panels. I have been praying ever since for the students here at BWC and on campuses everywhere, that they would experience the grace and truth of Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit, in the deepest areas of their lives.

What to bring for BWC After Hours

Don’t forget to bring your talent and beach wear!! AfterHours presents an impressive night of “BWC’s Got Talent” on Monday January 4th! Play instruments? Sing? Dance? Are you a magician? Comedian? Have other talents? We’d love to have you perform! Also, after a cold wintry time in Boston what better way to celebrate the last night of BWC than with a BEACH PARTY!! Throw on your flip flops and shorts and get ready for a night of games, dancing, and prizes!

Between You and…God

A lot of times I can get wrapped up in the music during times of worship at church or at my Campus Crusade ministry. I love singing and playing the
piano, and have been teaching myself to harmonize for the last several years. That was an exciting challenge – I love finding the gaps in the harmonies and creating my own melody line that will blend with the leader’s voice. But a lot of times this distracts from the real reason I am there.

Music is one of those things that speaks straight to our hearts. Musicians have created the heart music for every decade, crafting the soundtrack for entire generations. Music can pull us back to a specific moment in our past, or evoke an emotion that has remained hidden for years. It pulls us into a certain frame of mind, outside of ourselves, more powerfully than almost anything else we experience.

One of my favorite quotes is by T.S. Eliot, who talked about

        music heard so deeply
        That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
        While the music lasts.

Music can pull you in until you are unaware of what is going on around you. And that is how God created it to be. He wanted to give us a stage on which we can let everything else go, separate ourselves from the worries or other things in our minds, and just experience Him. We are meant to have the freedom of David, who danced before the Lord with such abandon that the people around him thought he was acting inappropriately. Don't be afraid to offend. Don't think about what you sound like or what you look like. This is your time to meet with God, unobstructed.

A Penny for Every Time I Said That

I always dream big. I have a few life goals I have yet to fulfill. Here are a few I thought I would share with you….

1. Be on a boat out of sight of shore (actually I am pretty sure I did this on a cruise last January, but I couldn’t really tell because the ships only travel during the night)
2. Live in a Spanish-speaking country and finally become fluent in Spanish
3. Have twins (I know, this one isn’t up to me. I just think they are so cute!)
4. Backpack…somewhere…. I just like the idea of living on as little as possible and experiencing life at its most basic.
5. See the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg
6. Eat Chinese food in China (though I think they eat some pretty weird stuff…)
7. Spend a year in full-time ministry

I always dream so big. But when it comes down to it, I never know if I am brave enough go through with what I’ve planned. There are some things in life, though, that are worth making sacrifices for. Think about people who have done truly amazing things – climbing Mount Everest, or discovering an ancient ruin. These people had to give up what could have been a comfortable life at home, but in the end they knew it was worthwhile. I realize going to Winter Conference is slightly less of an accomplishment, but just think of what might be holding you back from going. Is it seriously the 5 days at home, or the $200 that you wanted to spend on new clothes? Think about giving that up for Conference – an experience that may become a “lifetime achievement.”

You Are Not Your Own

I am 21 years old, and still asking myself what I want to do when I grow up. As a senior, I’m soon actually going to have to find (or ad lib) an answer to that question. I feel like my life journey has brought me to the edge of a cliff and left me wondering where exactly to go next. Right now the temptation is to just jump off the edge and hope I land somewhere soft. But there has to be a better way….

Sometimes I wish there was just a map to life. A big part of me has just always expected that at some point I will be handed all the answers. At first I thought it would be high school graduation – choose a college, choose a major, and then suddenly your life path appears on the horizon. Or maybe at some point in college I would suddenly know which lucky guy friend I will end up marrying. But as of now, this has not become a reality, and I am starting to realize that maybe God doesn’t work that way. Yes, He calls us to be obedient, and to follow Him, but He sometimes leaves us in doubt as to what exactly that means. Like for instance, now, when we are standing on the edge of that precipice, looking out on the Rest of Our Lives.

There have been times when it should have been clear. I feel like there are a lot of examples in my life where I can look back and see a fork in the road, one marked “God’s will,” and the other marked “Danger! Danger!” But it is never that clear when you are in the midst of it. There is a fog of selfishness and sin that obscures the road sign and leads us happily down the wrong path.

In my case it was thinking that a relationship with a boyfriend was the most important thing in my life – worth sacrificing relationships with others and my relationship with God for. The lie was perfect because, of course, relationships are a good thing. I still think so. But small compromises, physically and spiritually, made me hide things: first from the people in my campus ministry, then from my close friends, then from God. I fled, like Jonah, to the least secure of all the places I could hide: my own heart.

This is how I walked away from where I know God was calling me. I knew I should have been taking time for others in my campus ministry, where I was on leadership, but I felt like I was the one who needed to be ministered to. God has me at college to minister to my friends and to work hard in my classes, and to live out the freedom of the Gospel on a campus that sometimes seems to be all about rules, but I was trapped in fear and guilt.

I can’t say that this understanding of his will for me is something that God proclaimed to me through one of His people, or that He told me in a dream. It comes from the calling that we all have to live openly before Him, confessing our sin so that we can have fellowship with God. It comes from being open with others and learning how to live in deep, honest relationship. But this calling will lead us to where we are supposed to go later on in life. If you are living honestly with God, you can perhaps follow the wrong path. But when you realize it, you fix your mistake, confess it to Him, and move ahead. It doesn’t have to cripple you.

God may have specific plans for you, like going on the missions field, or going into a specific career. But what He wants from you right now is just you. Give up your past and future to live now for Him, and He will guide you. God’s will might come as a map for the life ahead of you, but most likely it will come in tiny, bit-by-bit steps. He asks us to trust Him and just look at His face as He places our feet on firm ground.

So right now, when you feel like you’re standing on the edge of a cliff, God is probably building a bridge for you to cross. It may not look like the straight, solid bridge you might hope for, but He won’t let you fall. Even though you can only take one step at a time, God knows where you’re going, and He will show you where to place your feet.

Winter Conference has been in my life a place to stand convicted, to let God show you where you have slipped – but also a safe place to learn how to listen to God’s voice. It offers four days free from distraction, and teaching that will help you begin to trust God, step by step.