For the last few years our Youth Group have gone to the annual KYCK camp, a weekend of messages, talks and worship for youth held at the Katoomba Christian Convention and this year was no different. After a few weeks of planning tents, food, transport and all the other logistics involved with looking after 35 youth for a weekend we were on our way
We had an advanced party head up Friday afternoon to pitch all the tents and set up camp for the weekend, I was part of this group and had the day off work so I didn’t need to rush home and fly up to make it in time for the evening session. Setting up tents when it is daylight is much better than in the dark as we found out the first time we went to KYCK (experience is different than school, you get the test first and the lesson afterwards).
What KYCK is about
The layout of the weekend is six talks, one on Friday evening, two Saturday morning, one Saturday evening and two on Sunday morning, each year has a different theme and is set around a particular book of the Bible, this year’s theme was ‘Out of this world’ from 1 Peter where we learnt that as Christians we should stand out as we live out a life that follows Jesus and while there is a cost to pursuing holiness, our witness and testimony will point our friends and family to Jesus, and there is nothing better than knowing and being known by our King.
Before and after each talk there is a time of singing as well as crowd games to get every going, we also had some free time after lunch on Saturday, we split into girls and boys, where the girls went on a bushwalk and the boys played footy. It was good fun having a run with the boys, tackling each other and throwing the football around.
KYCK Festival
There is also the KYCK Festival, which they run in the afternoon before dinner which had a whole bunch of games and stalls to visit and attractions to try like the inflatable ninja warrior course, a silent disco where everyone wears headphones and dances to music through it.
There were acoustic performances by some singers as well as school yard games like handball, skip rope and a game of cricket that grew to about 100+ people, not much room for sneaky singles and new batters coming out like a turnstile.
By Sunday afternoon it was time to pack up the tents, and fit them back into the smaller bag then when we took them out earlier, and head back home. It was a great weekend to spend time together as a youth group and im already looking forward to KYCK19
Christopher Archibald lives in Sydney and is a Youth Leader at New Life Christian Church in Blacktown. A voracious reader, he ploughs through many books in a calendar year, with a bookcase that is constantly being rearranged to accommodate new additions.
Christopher Archibald's previous articles may be viewed at
www.pressserviceinternational.org/christopher-archibald.html