I had the opportunity to lead two worship sets at the event with Deanna, Sam Roth, Ken Verheecke, and Mike Morgan.  Check out the raw footage from our 2nd set of the evening here.

I love our STUDENTS: they are authentic, passionate, real, and raw.  They are not perfect.  They have their shortcomings, just like anyone, but these guys are chasing hard after God and they’ve inspired me in more ways than I can recall.

I love our LEADERS: we’ve got a small team of commited leaders that can out-work, out-love, and flat out-show so many other larger-scale teams that I’ve seen in action.  I’m so proud to be able to watch these guys in action.  They generally want to hang out with, encourage, and equip this generation to another level in their relationship with God.  They are truly an amazing team!

God did so many truly incredible things in the lives of students in 2008.  Let’s take a walk down memory lane together:

* Students’ Prophetic Words going into 2008

* Remember the floods of early 2008?

* Watch the Teen Internet Workshop (for Parents)

*  Valapalooza: featuring the Backstreet Boys-inspired promo, my crazy Valentine’s dance (seriously, it’s crazy!), event pics, and the highlights video

* 10th Anniversary Celebration Testimonies

* Newsboys @ the Civic Center

*  Good Friday video highlights and pics

* Fire Conference Student Dance

* Baccalaureate Service

* Newbies’ Night: Michael Fugitt concert and bowling/welcome-rally highlight videos and pics

* 8th Annual Elevation Talent Show

* Camp videos: promo, day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, “Pduh”, and testimonies; also see the camp pics

* Car Wash Fundraiser

* Hills Alive Music Festival

* Praying through the Neighborhood

* Senior High IHOP Trip: pics, video, and Steph’s rose

* @ the end of summer, we got together for a backyard party at the Lombard’s residence, held our annual parent info-meeting, and started promoting next summer’s trip to Creel: “I Heart: Mexico”.

* See You @ the Pole

* Red Ribbon Event and Angel Dean Concert

* Snow-Inn 2008

* Youth-led Services

* Elevate Christmas Party

It’s almost hard to believe that we did all of THAT in just ONE year!  And… we’ve still got the New Year’s Eve Teen Blast coming next week!  2008 has been an absolutely incredible year for us; I can’t wait to see what happens in 2009.

I started this blog back in May of 2007 and, since then, I’ve somehow managed to average about 100 unique visitors a day this year (up from an average 20-a-day last year).  I’m so thankful for all of the friends and new connections I’ve made as a result.  I’m completely hooked!  I’ve had so much fun sharing links, memories, and life with students, parents, and youth workers.  Thanks for reading!  I hope you stick around for more “thoughts, links, and updates on youth ministry, life, and culture” in 2009.

I think it’s funny seeing what the top posts were for the year; check ‘em out:

1. “Jesus is My Friend” by Sonseed (with 6,399 views) – this post features a fun, Jesus-loving song from the 70′s and continues to be the blog’s most viewed post to this day
2. David Cook Singing “Billie Jean” – the show-winning performance (IMHO) from last year’s American Idol winner; I published this right after the show that evening
3. Ralph ’08 – the only candidate that had my FULL support! 
4. How to Be a Rebel - I’m guessing this post — about a student message series of the same title — got all the hits from the “Rebel Alliance” reference.
5. Hills Alive 2008 – a simple post featuring pics and links to the great line-up of artists at this year’s Hills Alive music festival — at least, the ones I was most excited to see

These probably wouldn’t have been my top pics for the year, but since most of my readers seem to come from a variety of backgrounds and geographic regions, I guess I can see how these rose to the top.

(click for full view)

I want to invite you to join us for the eleventh annual New Year’s Eve Teen Blast. We are joining in this multi-church event in Belle Fourche with the help of 97.9 The Point radio station.

Remedy Drive will be performing live as well as Dirk Helmling offering a challenge we all need to hear!

Attendees will participate in two live performances and several optional activities during the night. New activities this year include an equalizer inflatable challenge, a sports cage, bouncy boxing and the adrenaline run.

This will be an event you will not want to miss!

Group registration and transportation is now closed; tickets and transportation are not guaranteed if registering after Sunday, December 21.

UPDATE: View a Remedy Drive video and more.

Of course, for those of you that were there, you know that this video only highlights a handful of the speakers and artists that were at the convention.  Part of the greatness of the NYWC’s is that there is SO MUCH offered to you in a five-day period, it’s impossible to get it all captured on tape!

Okay, again, I’m going to bullet my thoughts…

* I know this is lame, and it’s totally not the REASON we go to convention, but the FOOD in downtown Nashville was EXCELLENT!  I’m craving some good southern-style BBQ right now. Here’s a pic of the crowd at Joe’s Crab Shack (where we always order the stuffed mushrooms)…

* The Sommet Center in Nashville created a really intimate setting for the general sessions… yes, even with over 5,000 of us.  It was bowl-shaped and it felt like everyone was in really close to the action.

* Live-blogging the event was so much fun for me!  YS really treated us like rock stars this week.  I’ve always felt that way at convention, but even more so this week.  Thanks YS!

* So many of the messages shared this weekend and the seminar material is worth chewing over again.  I’m going to go get some mp3′s and maybe a DVD or two at their media site: ysmp3andcddvd.com.

* The Skit Guys are always great, but they were OVER-THE-TOP hilarious this year.  One of our live-bloggers spit soda all over his Macbook, he was laughing so hard!

* On Sunday afternoon, I met with about 15 other tweets/bloggers at the Old Spaghetti Factory.  Met lots of people who I plan on following from now on.  Our kind has got to stick together (grin).

* I finally got to check out a Dan Kinball seminar for the first time.  The guy has CRAZY HAIR (love it)!  The siminar I went to was called “Creating Sacred Worship Spaces” (or something like that).  I got some great ideas!

(that’s Dan’s head, in case any were wondering)

* Daniel Strickland, a relatively unknown speaker for general session #6, blew us all out of the water!  Jars of Clay played the best set that I’ve seen them perform in years (I personally like old-school Jars).  I really enjoyed all the synth-pop elements they added this year.  Good stuff.

* Wishing I would have captured some video snippets of Starfield leading worship from this weekend.  Love those guys!

* Bummed that we weren’t able to attend the last general session on Monday.  Rapid City, SD has only so many flights that come in and we had to leave early to bypass another night at the hotel.

* Here I am on the way home.  I always look so tired with those circles under my eyes… oh… wait a minute.  I was really tired…

Here’s a few more extended video clips… first, the infamous Mark Yaconelli talk (the last bit) and his all-out disco-dance finale…

Here’s some worship-moments with the David Crowder Band…

… and lastly, worship with Lincoln Brewster…

Let me start with my journey from home in Rapid City on Thursday morning.  Here, I am saying good-bye to three of my lovely girls.  Kella, my youngest, started crying shortly after I took this pic.  So hard to leave them on trips like this one!  I love them so much…

My travel day was relatively painless to Nashville.  I boarded around 10-ish Mountain Time and arrived in Nashville at around 7-ish that evening, Central Time.  It was cold – much colder than I anticipated!  The thirty-minute wait for the hotel shuttle was almost unbearable.  BRRRR!  Here’s a few pics I took on my travel-day there… my orange sneakers, knots freshly tied after the security check, and my somewhat tired, travel-weary face, taken during the 3-hour layover in Denver…

That evening was a little lonely.  My lovely wife, Deanna, wasn’t to join me until the next day, so I was all by myself.  I met a few random youth workers and talked for a while in the lobby, but the hotel restaurant, where I chowed down a burger for dinner, was totally empty…

I was hoping to catch the late night concert that evening for the early birds at the convention center, but our hotel ended up being further away than we had originally thought.  That, and the shuttle driver told us that — at least for the first night — the shuttles would only run until 10:30 PM.  That didn’t work so well as the concert I was hoping to go to started at 10:15 PM (sigh).  I went back to the hotel room and watched the #nywc tweets pour in.  I finally fell asleep at around 1:00 AM, I believe.

The next morning, I got up early and headed over to the convention center via shuttle.  The drive ended up being about two-and-a-half miles.  Upon arriving, I walked the facilities and scouted out the classrooms, headquarters, exhibit hall, YS store, and registration area.  Here’s a shot of this year’s theme, Seriously Ridiculous, and the accompanying baby-graphic for this year’s event (this was in front of the registration area when I arrived)…

Here, I’m looking into the yet-to-be-opened (on Friday morning) exhibit hall — always fun to walk through with over 300 different companies that service youth workers, many of them with give-aways, contests, and free sample product…

That morning, I got to connect with Adam McLane for the first time.  Now, really, my time with the guy has probably been all of twenty/thirty minutes as he was giving me my all-access pass (sweet!), my USB cell-signal wireless thingy (sweet!), and a tour of the convention center, but I feel I know the guy that I’ve been following online since his transition to YS’s web 2.0 guy ealier this year.  I like him just as much in person as I did from afar.  And who wouldn’t want his job?!  I mean, he’s gets to hang out online all day and get paid for it!  (grin)  Seriously, though, I like Adam’s passion for life and for those in ministry.  Good folk; stop by his personal blog at adammclane.com and you’ll find out for yourself.

That morning, I also picked up registration materials for Deanna and myself.  I forgot my cell phone charger at home so I wasn’t taking much for pics, but I did manage to take a quick snapshot of the stylin’ shoulder-bags that YS gave us this year.  Check ‘em out!

Friday afternoon started our first day of live-blogging.  We gathered at 12-noon to get all of our stuff together, hooked up, and online before the first general session which started at 1:00 PM.  This was the first time that I met my new friends and co-bloggers, Andy, Ryan, and Jason.  I feel really fortunate to be hanging out with these guys and be a part of this team — such great people.  I hope you take the time to check out their various sites.

As always, YS hosts an incredibly top-notch, high caliber, quality event, including everything from the multimedia and sound to an incredible stage set…

Deanna’s plane landed in Nashville that afternoon and she joined me for the first time in the middle of the first general session with the David Crowder Band and Francis Chan.  I am so overjoyed for the time alone with her this weekend.  It’s not very often that we get to do that with a family of our size.

Anyhow, I think I’ll “bulletize” the rest of my thoughts into shorter, quick bite-size nuggets because there is so much that I’ve experienced and each could probably warrant a post of their own.  So… here we go…

* Mercy Me, Joe Castillo (a sand artist), and Amena Brown all added so much to an already good first session.  Ryan captured some video of the sand artist and posted it on his blog.

* Francis Chan shared a message about being flavorless salt that I’d already been hearing about from the other conventions.  Very challenging and inspiring at the same time.

* That afternoon, Deanna and I skipped the seminars to go get an early bite to eat.  She hadn’t eaten lunch yet. We invited Andy Thompson, a co-live blogger, to join us.  We went to Jack’s BBQ, a place that I’d been hearing about since my arrival.  Now I know why… so good!

* While there, we got to hear some of Andy’s story.  You can pick up on some of it at his blog so I won’t share it hear (especially without his permission), but he’s a guy that’s gone through a lot of transition and heartache over the past few years.  As I’ve been hanging out with him this weekend, I can tell you that this guy has such a servant’s heart.  Everything about this guy seems to be genuine.  I know for sure that I’ll want to stay connected with him after this is all over.

* Deanna and I walked over to a bookstore just down the road after lunch/dinner (whatever that was).  It was cold!  And yes, for all of our time here so far, it has been COLD!  I thought we were going south — isn’t it supposed to be warmer down here?  (grin)

* The 2nd general session that afternoon didn’t simmer down at all — it kept the momentum going from #1.  It featured short hot-button talks from Tony Campolo, Shane Claiborne, and Andrew Marin.  Each speaker then answered questions that were texted from the audience after their talks.

* I think I’ve discovered Crowder’s secret formula: straight kick and “la-la’s”… he uses the combination quite frequently. 

* YS without Crowder just wouldn’t be right.  That’s one of the big reasons that we picked Nashville this year.

* Deanna talked me into staying over for a late night session with two of the boys from Audio Adrenaline.  They did a concert and shared some very moving stories from their lives at a session they called AA Talks.  I’m so glad that we went.  The concert was so fun and Will McGinniss — Audio A’s bass player — actually remembered me from a gig I played with them many years ago.  Wow!

* General session 3 might end up being my favorite session of the convention… only because Mark Yaconelli’s disco ball-dance extravaganza at the end of his talk was so moving (and incredibly funny)!  Again, Ryan caught some footage of that for you here.  That’s Lincoln Brewster in the opening shot.

* Lincoln Brewster is an amazing worship leader.  I knew he was a great guitar player, but I’ve never worshiped with him until now.  It’s been great!

* That afternoon I attended Mark Matlock’s super-seminar on mentoring students.  Lots of great content.  I’m glad it was good because I was SO TIRED that afternoon.  After a few days all the activities of the weekend start catching up to you.

* The evening session was also challenging with Dr. Collins, the leader of the human genome project and a believer, discussing why he thinks evolution and Christianity don’t have to be enemies.  Very interesting, at least for me.  I think several just tuned him out (and some even left early) after they figured out that he believes in evolution.

* The shuttle system back and forth to our hotel is hit and miss.  We need, oh, only about two or three more shuttles to handle all of us.  Last night’s wait wasn’t too bad — only about thirty minutes.

There’s much more I could add, but it is Sunday morning now and I’m excited to dig in to all that God has for us today.  Whoopee!  Be sure to stop by the live-blog page and see all the other thoughts, pics, and video clips from the general sessions.  Laterz…

I’m so excited to be sitting in the Rapid City airport this morning about to take off for the National Youth Workers Convention in Nashville, TN.  This year, I am privileged to be one of the handful of live-bloggers that will be updating everyone on the event in real time at http://nywc.com/live.  Stop by and check out the action this week.  We’ll go live Friday afternoon and will be updating through Monday.  So fun!

This evening, I’m hoping to catch a worship time with the Robbie Seay Band band and Johnny Parks.  Tomorrow starts full days of amazing worship, inspiring general sessions, lots of laughs, intense training, and so much more.

Follow my updates on Twitter, too: http://twitter.com/shawnmichael.  If you’re at the convention, I hope to see you there!

Here’s the long story made short: we were all planning on going to the annual youth convention in Pierre this weekend with about a thousand other students from all over the region.  That didn’t happen because of a snow storm that swept through South Dakota leaving I-90 closed down for a good portion of Thursday and Friday.  On Friday evening we made the hard decision of canceling the trip and planning an alternative weekend with a few of the churches here on the West side (1st Assembly and Bethel Assembly of God).  As sort of a bad joke, we decided to call the event “Snow-Inn 2008″ (we booked the Quality Inn hotel for the overnighter).

Now this was no small feat!  I feel like we’ve been “on” since Thursday evening – watching the weather, pushing back the trip departure, sending out all the trip updates (no small task to get everyone informed), eventually canceling the trip, and then deciding to plan and execute an alternative event.  The student pastors gathered at 10:00 AM on Saturday morning to plan the next 24 hours.  Talk about God’s hand on this thing!  For the amount of time we had to plan, it was amazing to me how great everything played out.  What an amazing, impacting weekend!  Here’s our video highlights that we debuted at the service last night…

Last night our students shared about their weekend and what God did in their lives.  I sat there with tears in my eyes through the whole thing.  I was so overwhelmed (and probably just plain physically fatigued, too ) by how FAITHFUL God was to touch students live exactly where they needed it.  Several of our students were praying and fasting leading up to this event and God answered their prayers.  Several of them stated that they were glad that we DIDN’T make it to Pierre for the simple reason that what happened this weekend wouldn’t have been able to happen if we had.  Wow!

Now, I’m all about the cool effects, great worship band, the big dodgeball tournament at the aquatic center, and the wow/pizazz of youth convention in Pierre.  The AG youth district puts on a very excellent event in Pierre and that’s why we’ve made it a priority to be a part of it for several years now.  It’s impacted our students in HUGE ways.  I was a little bit concerned that this weekend was going to “fall short” of all of that expectation… but again… can I say it again?  God is so faithful!  I didn’t hear one student mention/complain that we didn’t get to go to Pierre this weekend.  That’s HUGE!

We went out and served our community through a two-hour “Impact Rapid City” event where we simply went around and shoveled in our comminty (sidewalks, driveways, and in one case shoveling out a truck).  We worshiped God through music and word in two services, we had some pool/hang-time at the hotel, some crazy late-night activities, and met with God.  Pretty simple but so powerful!  So thankful for our amazing students, leaders, and volunteers who helped make it what it was!

Watching this took me back to the last NYWC Deanna, Amy, and I attended back in 2005.  The location was Sacramento, CA and we had little-Mikella (less then a year old) with us for the trip.  So fun!  So many great memories…

Did I say that I can’t wait for Nashville?!  This year I have the added joy of being one of the event’s live-bloggers.  You’ll be able to join Deanna and I in real time at http://nywc.com/live (will go live during the convention).  Again – so fun!