It turned out KYCK was an acronym for Katoomba Youth Convention, held annually in Autumn up at the Katoomba Christian Convention. It is a weekend long camp which challenges and equips youth groups across NSW with bible teachings, praise sessions, speakers from local ministry colleges. Held over three weekends, with over 5,000 attendees, it was an absolutely outstanding weekend, and one I am eagerly awaiting for KYCK 2014.
Our youth, decided upon sending an 'advanced party' Friday afternoon to set up camp so that it was not done during the middle of the night when most campers were arriving. This soon proved to be an exercise in frustration for most campers, me however used my Dad's retro 1970's popup tent that took all but two minutes to set up. The other tents with the 'fantastic, quick set up' had what seemed like a million clips, ropes, covers, pegs and tarps, that slowly got worse in constructing before it got better.
With the tents set up – eventually – Friday night had our first "praise session and talk" to kick off the weekend. The first talk of a series of six throughout the weekend had a central theme of "This is Love". The first talk was on "Know Love, Know Assurance", where we learnt about having the love of God is a blessed assurance for the current modern world.
Saturday morning gave us two talks, the first was on "Do not love the world", this talk focused on having our attention not on social media, music, t.v, video games to get out gratification in life but through God, with the second talk continuing this with "The Love of the Father". This was more of a different view to not loving the world but loving God as much as we do on other less important things discussed in the earlier talk that morning.
After lunch was free time, with a unanimous decision from our youth to head into Katoomba and enjoy the wonderful Saturday afternoon in the Blue Mountains - visiting the three sisters, a trip through the many lolly shops, playing in the parks with the autumn leaves, it was a picturesque afternoon before we had to head back to camp for the evening session.
Saturday evening
Once back at camp and after a BBQ provided by the KCC, we had our evening talk on "The Love of Jesus" and how much it means for a Christian to have this love in our lives. This was quite a powerful talk with the speaker leaving an open invitation at the end, to either re-commit yourself or become a Christian for the first time.
With 2,000 youths listening over 200 re-committed and over 75 became Christians for the first time. The atmosphere in the auditorium was electric, an indescribable experience with everyone singing 'Hosanna' truly to its highest as the night ended.
Sunday brought an end to the camp with the last two talks held in the morning. The first was 'The Life of Love' which focused on living the Christian life full of love for Christ and to get the utmost out of it. The last talk wrapped up the weekend with "The Love that Overcomes', this was the final and most special talk as it showed me that no matter how dark your life can get, we can take heart for God has overcome it all, his son Jesus brings us new life and that defeats all evil.
KYCK was a great weekend, the sad part was packing up our tents Sunday afternoon and trekking back down the mountain into routine life. I look forward to KYCK '14 and our youth are already counting down the days till it starts again
Christopher Archibald lives in Sydney and is an under-graduate student.
Christopher Archibald's previous articles may be viewed at www.pressserviceinternational.org/christopher-archibald.html
