Winter Jam

On Saturday night we took our youth to this massive Christian concert at Rupp Arena…it’s called WinterJam. It’s pretty nuts…over 20,000 people from all over Kentucky show up for this concert. It only cost $10 so I guess it’s the ultimate youth event…it lasts about four hours, all the entertainment is provided and it’s dirt-cheap. We arrived 30 minutes before the show and all the parking lots were full of church buses and vans. We saw this massive line of people that snaked its way all around the perimeter of the lower parking lot at Rupp Arena. It immediately became obvious that we were going to be sitting in the nosebleeds.

I’m always a bit skeptical of these types of events…massive productions, light shows, highly emotional speakers, etc. I can’t seem to figure out if I’m at a rock concert or a worship service. I guess it’s both, but that confuses me. My last post was about how simple things are usually the best…and WinterJam is not very simple.

However, I can see some merit to these events. We took eleven of our youth and none of them had ever been to something like this before. The bands did a good job and our youth were able to see that there are more Christians in this city than they might think. There are probably Christians at their schools but, if they are like I was at that age, they probably do not talk about their faith too much at school. We also love to expose our youth to new things…whether that is taking them hiking, to museums, line dancing in downtown Nashville, bowling, to serve at the Catholic Action Center, to summer camp, or to a big Christian concert downtown.

We warned them ahead of time that most of the music was “white people music.” We were right…there were two African Americans on the stage the entire evening and one white rapper. The white rapper’s job was to get the crowd hype in between bands. We would get a little urban flavor going for about two minutes and then the next band would start. However, I will say that since DC Talk’s former member, Michael Tait, became the front man for the Newsboys, their sound has a little more urban flair.

The youth seemed to have a good time…We goofed off, danced, sang…One of our boys plays bass guitar and told me I would have VIP passes to his first concert when his future band plays an event like WinterJam. It was a fun evening and I’m thankful that WinterJam only charges $10 so churches like mine can afford to participate.