The Way 2011

Jason Chaillou

This weekend, Starr and I had the opportunity to attend The Way 2011, a two-day conference at Mt. Zion UMC in Bel Air, geared toward young adults, loosely defined as “18 to 30-ish.”  The event was organized by Jason Chaillou, a friend of ours who also had the vision for The Firewall (that church’s Sunday night “modern worship service”), which Starr and I gladly attend as frequently as we’re able.

Friday’s program was a 90-minute session of worship with Medias in Res (The Firewall’s house band) and Keith Stewart, Chaillou’s friend from seminary who came up from Virginia to help lead worship for the weekend. This immersion into worship was a great way to start the weekend, and really helped to prepare our hearts for what God wanted to do in and through those of us who were in attendance. It’s unfortunate, but we don’t often have the opportunity to devote that much time to singing God’s praises; it’s important that sometimes that be the only thing on our agenda.

Keith Stewart

Saturday morning, the conference started bright and early at 9am, and Keith was joined by his wife Jamie; the two of them opened the day with some beautiful acoustic worship. Medias in Res also played several times throughout the day. Jason Chaillou and Chris Dather both offered teaching centered around John 3:16—specifically the application of Jesus’ statement that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; each of the three teaching sessions focused on one of those three aspects. The two interwove their messages seamlessly, and it was quite a surprise to learn later that they hadn’t done much collaboration or note-sharing beforehand. This was also one of Dather’s first times speaking in front of a crowd, but one wouldn’t know that simply from the delivery of his message.

The crowd was somewhat small, but Jason opened the weekend by reminding us that God repeatedly did great things with the remnants of the nation of Israel, and that He is doing great things today with the remnants of the Christian community that we represent. Overall, it was a welcome opportunity for us to be spiritually refreshed, encouraged, and to be ministered to, and Starr and I are looking forward to The Way 2012!

I took a couple of videos of Keith Stewart’s performances (one with his wife Jamie), which I’ve uploaded to YouTube. This was the first time I’d used the video capability of my Canon EOS 7D digital SLR, so I apologize for the occasional hazy focus. You can view them here and here.