SLC reflections

SLC - Student Leadership Conference - for 2005 has now been and gone. I've been surprised at just how long it's taken me to recover! It was an intense time. Good, encouraging, but still intense with a full programme. There were three major areas:
1. Soaking in the Psalms
2. Psalms talks in evening meetings
3. Streams according to years in student leadership.

So, one: Soaking in the Psalms. Graham and I had the privaledge of working with ten student leaders from CFs and OCFs from Auckland, Waikato, Suva, Massey and Victoria. Great stories of how they came to know Jesus, and great dedication to 'soak in the psalms'. This was manuscript study, a print-out of a Psalm (we looked at Ps 1, 23, 55, 110 - all very different) where we all circled key words, underlined joining phrases, highlighted repeated phrases - all to pull the Psalm apart and put it back together with a clearer understand of what God was saying. Good to see them all grappling with some of the harder Psalms (eg 55), reminded of the goodness of God in a familiar Psalm (eg 23), wonder at a Messianic Psalm pointing to Jesus (eg 110) and realise the reality of God's judgement (Ps 1). All in all, probably my favourite 90 minutes of the day.

2. Evening meetings - talk on Psalms. Great praise times with lots of variety from quiet reflection to 'normal' (?!) singing-with-key-and-guitar, to beautiful Fijian harmonies (PSFC in Fiji send a contingent over for SLC and it's always great to learn from them). THe talks were varied too, from staff - Nigel on Ps 1 to motivate for mission on campus, and Andy on Ps 92 and the MINTY (new intern scheme) verse (14-15) as an encouragement to persevere in the hard places of the campuses of NZ next year, and Val on Ps introduction; from Andrew Lim, a Malysian pastor of a church in Palmie North on the impractory Psalms (the ones all about wrath, very challenging talk); and from Andrew Becroft, TSCF President this year talking about leadership and Ps1 from his experiences as a judge in Wtgn.

3. Streams - I was helping with Stream2, for students on their second SLC. Working through the gospel from Ephesians and a tool for planning of mission. Great tool for Lincolnites, so glad Margo was there.

Yep, SLC was an encouraging time, but I look forward to it improving as well.