Growing faith

The 12th national youth convention (NYC) of the MB Conference was held in Toronto Dec. 27–30.

It was the smallest NYC so far, and the second held in a city instead of the resort town, Banff. Of 575 attendees, 278 came from Manitoba, 229 from Ontario, 33 from Quebec and 18 from Alberta. Saskatchewan and the United States were represented by 7 each, with 3 attending from B.C.

This NYC continued a shift begun with the 2001 event, said NYC’04 director Sherryl Koop, “away from recreation to intentionally defining and growing faith.” Workshops and mission experiences were key to this focus. “And the kids got it!” Koop said. The majority of students participated in one of the urban plunges and the workshops were packed.

The theme was “O4 Real?” (based on 2 Corinthians 4:18: “We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal”). Guest speaker Dave Overholt, pastor of Church on the Rock in Hamilton, Ont. “was so funny and interesting,” commented youth leader Rachel Boyce of Portage Ave. MB Church, Winnipeg, “you hardly realized how much deep theology he was teaching.”

An intimate feel

NYC’04 had an intimate feel about it, some participants said. The theatre-in-the-round setting of Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto, site of evening sessions, was one reason. Another was the fact that most attendees stayed at the same hotel. Gatherings like evening singalongs with members of the worship band, Starfield, happened easily and spontaneously.

The only major glitch of the event was the weather. Storms in several provinces delayed arrivals so that the 3-hour welcoming party hosted by Ontario happened mostly in the last hour. Hotel staff told organizers it was the best behaved youth group they had housed.

The sizeable Ontario and Quebec contingent was also significant to this year’s NYC. “You could have heard a pin drop” as several students talked about what it’s like to be a Christian teen in Quebec, Koop said. A video produced by Youth Mission International (YMI), stating that there are more Christians in the St. Catharines area or in Winnipeg than in all of Quebec, deepened the impact of their words.

Students responded heartily to an offering for youth leadership development in Quebec. They enthusiastically gave again in an offering for MCC for tsunami relief.

—Dora Dueck, from reports