Java Jam IX: Completed
30 minutes ago I turned off the final set of lights and locked the last set of doors at Chinese Baptist Church. It was close to midnight and exhausted as I was, there was a sense of profound gratitude. We had just completed our ninth Java Jam event. For those who don’t know the story and history...it started out as an idea to create a place to gather a few friends, listen to some music, and just have fun on a random Friday night. What started out as a dream back in 2000 now came to build out into a full-fledged event. But from the beginning there were a few distinctives that we’ve been trying to maintain all these years:
1. It was going to be youth ran and youth led. I wanted the youth group to really own this event. They were in charge of the main 4 sections of java jam - publicity, ambiance, music, and food. I wanted to give the youth full ownership and full responsibility. This led into the second distinctive...
2. We were going to serve the community. We wanted to make sure that it was all about our youth serving the church, the churches, and the community around us. We were going to host, pick up trash, do the hard work of serving till we’re exhausted.
3. We wanted to have fun. While there was a ton of work in the prep and planning. We wanted to make sure all parts of it were fun. We wanted to invite our friends and just chill and have a good time (even if we were serving them).
So nine years later i’d say we did a pretty good job sustaining that vision. It’s grown into this monstrous event that we are so grateful for. Honestly, what we’ve been saying to our people all night was “it’s awesome to sit back and watch something like this come together...but it’s even crazier that we get to put something like this on.” We are so humbled by the fact that the Lord continues to allow us to put this event on and have it run so well. Before we set up today our group devotion was out of Hebrews 11 and the theme was to remember that no matter what happened tonight, we would still remember that our identity was fixed on the fact that the Lord was “proud” to be called our Father. So our challenge to our people was to work hard...like really hard...but at the end of the day rest in the fact that no matter how good or bad Java Jam went, God was proud of us simply because we’re His.
I’m so proud of our people though. What most of you didn’t see were things happening in the background. It is one of the joyous things about being a pastor and overseeing things. God gives you small glimpses of awesomeness. So for example, what you didn’t see were our incoming sixth graders itching to join the youth group already step up and serve tonight. They were asking what they could do to help and they went ALL NIGHT LONG. What you didn’t see was the prep work that the kitchen had to do. It was awesome because you had full-time workers (dads and moms) come together, give up a Friday, and prep and work right alongside our youth...while bringing along some of their friends. What you probably didn’t see was our graduating seniors go non-stop by serving, picking up trash, taking orders, and garnishing your food. I’m so thankful that we have a beast of an admin team to can organize a silent auction and pull all these things together in order to give back to the youth group.
I hope you had fun at Java Jam. I hope you walked away a bit more blessed and a bit more full. I know I did. But more than that...I walked away from this one especially with a sense of awe of how great our God is that he continues to allow us to do things like this. #9...done. May God be gracious enough to give us another one.
