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VOL. 15, NO. 12

NEWS

1,000 youth attend ROCK reunion

By Melissa Lauber
UMCONNECTION STAFF

The praise music blared and nearly 1,000 youth and their adult leaders shook the balcony of the Knott Arena at Mount St. Marys University in Emmitsburg. They jumped, danced, rushed toward the stage, shouted out a favorite song and then bowed their heads in a shockingly silent prayer.

Some cried. One girl dropped to her knees, swept away, her friends said, by the fact that Jesus loved her.

And this was all before the dinner break.

The ROCK 2004 Reunion, the first of its kind, held June 13, was just getting started.

MELISSA LAUBER / UMCONNECTION

Youth from throughout the Baltimore-Washington Conference gathered for a revival at the ROCK 2004 Reunion June 13 in Emmitsburg.

The ROCK experience, explained Baltimore-Washington Conference Youth Director Tom Price, is designed to take kids out of the ordinary, provide experiences in which they can worship with their whole selves using all their senses, and open themselves to the movement of the Holy Spirit.

'Its experiential,' he said. 'It cant be quantified or intellectualized. It is bigger than our attempts to explain or categorize it.'

But lives are transformed in unexpected ways. Thats the point of ROCK.

More than 4,000 youth and their leaders attended the event last January in Ocean City, the 10th ROCK experience held by the Baltimore-Washington Conference.

Bishop Felton Edwin May didnt want the youth to wait a whole year before gathering again, Price said. The bishop wanted to build on what ROCK created in the lives of these young people.

At the reunion the youth were called upon to deepen their relationship with Christ by becoming disciples and reaching out in Jesus name to those in need.

Evangelist Reggie Dabbs and singer Jeff Deyo told the youth, who gathered from 65 churches around the conference, that being a Christian requires a change of heart.

MELISSA LAUBER / UMCONNECTION

Jeff Deyo performs at the ROCK Reunion.

Deyo shared with the youth how, since their time together in January, he had released a new compact disc, 'Light,' and become the father of a second son.

'We may not know whats next for us,' he said, 'but God does. Search your heart, and well find out together what God is calling us to do.'

Dabbs, who has a reputation as an outstanding motivational speaker for youth, shared pieces of his life as the son of a prostitute. He told the youth Bible stories and asked them to relinquish their pasts and the things that separated them from God.

In this room of 1,000 people, Dabbs said, citing statistical norms, 20 girls and 12 boys have been sexually molested.

'Eight girls are thinking about the possibility that they might be pregnant,' he said, '45 boys, if they only had the courage, would put a gun to their head and commit suicide. Four out of five kids here are from some kind of broken home...'

'Its not what you think of yourself, its what God thinks of you. God loves you,' Dabbs told them. 'And nothing can separate you from the love of Jesus Christ.'

Sara Wilson-Ybarra of Graceland UMC in Baltimore was one of the youth that was visibly moved by Dabbs words.

'Because I love Jesus, I went to ROCK,' she said. 'Tonight Reggie touched my heart. I know God loves me.'

'There is a spiritual hunger in this nation and in our churches,' Price said. 'ROCK is an opportunity to address that hunger in a way that opens us up to the working of the Holy Spirit.'

MELISSA LAUBER / UMCONNECTION

Several hundred youth from 65 churches came forward for an altar call at ROCK.

John Harrell, a youth from Faith UMC in Rockville who helped emcee the ROCK event, was not surprised to see the large number of youth respond to the altar call that was issued.

'I see God at work all over the place,' he said. 'Every second Im alive, everywhere I look, God is at work.'

It is that active presence of God, spoken in a way that youth will care about, said Price, that is the essence of ROCK.