CHIC 2006 No Ordinary Day

Exactly two weeks after our wedding, I boarded an airplane with 36 high schoolers and without my beloved new bride. Now what would drive me to such madness, such cruelty, and such utter buffoonery as a husband? The answer lies in 4 letters: CHIC.

No, it is not the French word meaning "fashionable". And no, it has nothing to do with "chicks", although some of the guys in our youth group may argue that point. CHIC is a week long conference that our denomination puts on every three years at the University of Tennessee. It stands for Covenant High In Christ, and while it may be one of the worst possible names imaginable... leading to an unending amount of confusion ("Can guys go to CHIC or is it only for girls?") wisecracks ("I hope I'll pick up a chick at CHIC!") and befuddlement ("Are the people who run CHIC aware of the connotations that the word 'high' can have?"), the camp itself really is a once-in-a-lifetime event. That is, unless you happen to be in youth ministry, in which case it could be a third-in-a-lifetime event, which it was for me. I attended once as a high schooler in 1991 when it was at Indiana University. We actually took Amtrak there and back that year and I almost got arrested in Denver for washing my hair in a fountain in the middle of a shopping mall. Good times. And then in 1997 I attended as a counselor, when it was at Colorado State just days after a massive flood devastated the campus. But it was during that week that I saw Five Iron Frenzy perform live for the first time. I am not much of a concert-goer, but they are the best live act EVER. Not just for their music and intensity, but for their jokes and crazy antics (I once saw the lead singer pick his nose and wipe it on the lead guitarist's arm during the middle of his guitar solo... the guy couldn't do anything to prevent it because he needed both hands to play his solo!) and for what they would do at the end of every show. After 1-2 hours of complete mayhem, involving a complete horn section a lot of skanking and quite often a cow suit, they would put down their instruments, and sing a worship song acapella with the audience before walking off the stage. They were also the most AVAILABLE band I have ever seen... always willing to sign autographs and hang out with fans after the show.

Anyways, this post is supposed to be about CHIC, not FIF (RIP). So this year's trip was pretty epic... around 7,000 youth and staff took over the UT campus for a week, staying in the dorms and eating the dorm food. The folks in charge of the whole event got a great lineup of bands to come including Hawk Nelson, Cross Movement, Salvador, GRITS, Family Force Five, Lost & Found and Bethany Dillon. The speakers were interesting in that instead of having one speaker go for like 45 minutes every night, they had 2 or 3 speakers talk on a subject, coming at it from different angles and adding new insights. This led to a little confusion at times, such as when Bart Campolo declared that "God is not in here, He is out there" while speaking on Matthew 25 and Jesus' call for us to serve the poor and needy around us. The problem was that we had just heard that "God was in this place" in reference to his Spirit being in there with us as we worshiped. I sort of liked the disparities, because it helped us hash things out with the students and talk about how different speakers might be wanting to emphasize different things, but I also agree with those who said, "Bart Campolo's statement was just plain false."

The students LOVED this trip. They had the freedom to choose what they wanted to do for free time every afternoon: river rafting, paintballing, going to the mall, hanging out by the pool, bowling, sports, you name it. Also, the times where all 7,000 of us were singing together at night were really powerful. Once in the middle of a worship song the band broken into "With or Without You" by U2 and everyone looked over at Nick Z and he had a look on his face that just said, "I'm in heaven right now." For me, heaven is probably more along the lines of a quiet night with my wife rather than a jam-packed concert but I must say that CHIC really was a once, I mean, thrice-in-a-lifetime event.