DCLA officially kicked off last night with a roaring session from 7:45-11:30! It was intensely insane and amazing fun! There’s probably more like 5k students here rather than the initial assumption I had of 9k but that’s still nothing to balk at. My initial reaction to Youth Specialties: THEY GET IT!
3 stages set up through the middle of the auditorium where speakers, bands, comedians, and painters are constantly changing between!
Huge video screens on the side wall so you don’t miss a beat!
Various communication forms! We’re roaring through the story of the Bible and we went from: Spoken word- worship- speaker- video- speaker- special song- on repeat like every 10 or 15 minutes or so! 3 hours of info packed and packaged in a way that had us remembering and talking about it all night long!
Not only are large group sessions intense but they understand the value of small groups. The other learning sessions are labs in which students get mixed up into groups of 8ish, have a student facilitator and an adult who shepherds 4-5 groups.
And the quality! Francis Chan? Yes please! Starfield? Ok cool! Kendall Payne? OMG! The videos? Like Jib Jab meets Apple! HI-LARIOUS! And 3 words: The Skit Guys! Man my cheeks hurt from laughing so hard! And those are just the ppl I knew. The rest of the group is just as dynamic.

Last night had us cruising from Genesis up to the Minor Prophets. Seems like the theme is Creation-Redemption-Restoration this year that goes hand in hand with the DCLA DNA of Be. Love. Serve. REPEAT. I’m so excited to get this grand overarching theme of the Bible! Even more so for the students. I know I didn’t get a grand sense of a Biblical theme until much later than high school!

So far I’ve met one fellow Twitterer, Jeff, and have 2 more on the agenda
If you’re out there hit me up. Pics coming soon! Pray for us, this has the potential to be an incredible experience for these students, maybe the most memorable of this year…their high school experience.
Amen and WOOHOO!

(Disclaimer: Mobile uploaded post from my iPhone so don’t bash my grammar! Haha)