Friday, December 30, 2011

Winter Ramp: Day 1

We're with 37 people from RooTs for The Ramp's big youth conference in Delton, Georgia at the Northwest Georgia Convention Center! So many people enjoyed my Jesus Culture Awakening recaps that I'm writing a recap for this event too.

This event was completely free for anyone that wanted to come! They had 5000 free tickets that they gave away. Registration had a deadline, and after that deadline, if you backed out, they charged you 50 dollars for every ticket you didn't use. They also collected a love offering to cover the cost of the ministry, and they have partners that give monthly as well. (We found out they get the good parking, and quick day-of registration as well)

There were about 500 seats available, and a football field's worth of standing room for the other 4500 people. (My brother won a bet with my grandpa who thought there would have to be seats for everybody.) Duct tape on the floor marked where the aisles were supposed to be, but the crowd was told to ignore them during the worship parts of the service.

Before the service, my brother recognized Bear, the drummer from World Harvest Church, and we got to meet him. (By charging up to him and asking, "Hey! Are you Bear? Can we take your picture?" Classy.)

Worship started with Bryn Waddell, one of the Ramp's primary worship leaders, singing these songs:

You Are Holy
You Could Never Be Praised Enough
Heaven On Earth

The solid hour of worship was intense, let me tell you! They have their entire "Chosen" ministry team of 25-30 college-age interns on stage with them, lifting up exuberant and expressive worship. They had about ten people come up to the microphone and speak out impassioned, Biblical, faith-filled prayers.

After worship Chosen performed a drama/dance, similar to the human videos that WorshipArts has done. They had much more dance involved though, but it was the same idea: telling a story with drama to a recorded track.

Afterwards Rick Peno came up and sang "Abba, I belong to You" and prayed against the orphan spirit by asking God to show Himself to individuals as the Father.

Damon Thompson brought a word calling for repentance on the first night. "You'll never go a day in dominion without going through the process of repentance." He portrayed repentance as the key to everything else they were going to do this weekend.

He told to story in John 8 of the adulterous woman that was caught by the Pharisees. He said that the point of the story wasn't what Jesus was writing in the sand, but that he kneeled down, ignored the religious leaders, and caught the woman's eye. He stooped down into the sin and the situation that the woman was in to give her forgiveness. "He who knew no sin became sin."

He says that all the stories centering around women in the Bible represent the church as the bride of Christ. This story represents the church giving it's affections to lesser lovers, and that God plans on forgiving and redeeming her. He says that God will continue to put His finger in your dirt, no matter how deep you've gone in your sin, no matter how low your eyes are due to your shame.

Apparently this story was taken out of many early church manuscripts because it was thought that it would encourage people to continue to sin. Damon said that it's the church's recurring mistake to think that the threat of eternal torment in hell is the biggest motivator for holiness. The kindness of God draws men to repentance. Extravagant undeserved mercy will always trump the fear of eternal torment.

The service ended with an alter call facilitated by Bryn Waddell, who played Seventh Day Slumber's version of "Nothing but the Blood" and "Hallelujah" by Planetshakers.

Super excited for tomorrow's three services! Stay tuned and I'll give you a recap tomorrow night! My brother took some video as well: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150464144589563


WINTER RAMP DAY 2
WINTER RAMP DAY 3

4 comments:

  1. Hey, Jerry! You're welcome! Thanks for the comment!! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds awesome Peter! Unfortunately I'm getting an error message when trying to see the video :(
    Do I have to be his friend on Facebook?

    "The page you requested cannot be displayed right now. It may be temporarily unavailable, the link you clicked on may have expired, or you may not have permission to view this page."

    Dawn from GPC

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey Dawn, he's going to put it on youtube soon. I think he's going to add footage from other days as well. When it's up I'll replace it on this page.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks so much for the feedback!!

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