A blog summary of an event
On October 4-6, we had a small group of six youth pastors come to Camp Kwasind for our annual Youth Pastors Retreat. In light of the 18+ months of adapting (and readapting) youth ministry in our current times, many felt tired and weary. Together, we took time to rest. Our schedule was slow-paced. We had time to be renewed personally and sharpened in our ministries. Matt led the group
Last Saturday, Today's Teens Conference (hosted by Youth Unlimited and involves many volunteers within our CBOQ family) went completely online. Over 1300 guests joined from all province and territories of Canada, several US states, UK, Australia and other nations. The aim: to reimagine what God continues to do in reaching the next generation with the person and message of Jesus. Through our four main session speakers, we rooted ourselves in
AVALANCHE 2021 REVIEW Avalanche this year was unlike any we've ever hosted. Given the pandemic and most recent state of emergency "stay at home" orders, so many of our churches had to stay at home (and our Avalanche team as well). That didn't stop us from delving into our theme "ONE: One God. One Life. Together". Meisha Watson led us through a biblical understand of how God is wanting
Youth Pastors Retreat 2020: Reloaded Follow-Up Download the Focus Group Questions
Last Saturday, over 1000 youth workers and student leaders converged at the Meeting House in Oakville for Ontario's largest and longest running youth ministry conference, hosted by Youth Unlimited. All were encouraged and inspired that, with all that's happening in the world, THERE IS HOPE BECAUSE OF JESUS; all were challenged to bring that hope to their spheres of influence. Some key reminders from some of the plenary speakers: Mark
This past weekend, over 550 students and leaders descended on Muskoka Woods for a weekend to explore our identity in Christ. Mike Gordon walked through John 4 (Jesus and the Samaritan woman) in seeing how the woman wanted to project her identity, how Jesus saw behind it and who Jesus really said she was. Mix in some personal stories (including surgery) and students were drawn into considering who Jesus says
Last Saturday, CBOQ Kids (with support from CBOQ Youth) hosted the 4th Faith and Family event with Raptors 905 (the G-League team of the Toronto Raptors). Over 120 joined together for a Raptors 905 victory and a fun-filled post-game program. One key highlight was Raptors 905 forward Nicholas Baer sharing his faith story. As a rookie from Iowa, he shared how his relationship began with Jesus at age 10, and
Last night, we hosted our 20th+ Centre Court event. Not only did the Raptors come away with a convincing victory, almost 700 of us got to hang back after the game for our own program. This year's speaker was Stormin' Norman Powell. He shared how his faith has continued to shape him (he previously shared at Centre Court about three years ago), especially after last summer's NBA championship. More importantly,
Last Monday to Wednesday (October 7-9, 2019), 12 youth pastors came to Camp Kwasind to tackle Renegotiating Faith (RF). We were honoured to have Rick Hiemstra (Director of Research with the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and principal author of RF). Rick led our group through some key insights from RF and other thoughts on attention, social media and its impact on youth. This led to some great in-depth conversations as
Last Saturday, we had high school grads, upper year students and campus staff from 18 schools across Ontario at Wycliffe College. Our goal: to connect the class of 2019 to future "older siblings" going to the same campus in September. Grads had an opportunity to connect personally with those upper year students. They asked questions, gained the inside 411 about their specific campus. Parents had their own track to better
