Passion in Toronto (Part II)
E* and I left London at around 2:00 pm on Tuesday afternoon to go to Toronto for the one-day Passion worship concert. After one or two missed turns and a bit of wandering, we managed to find the right place. We arrived more than an hour early and found a group of fifty people already standing in front of the coliseum doors, waiting in the freezing cold.
E* and I hadn't eaten dinner yet, so we headed off for the giant KFC bucket that we saw a few blocks away. After a few more wrong turns down graffiti-ridden alley ways, we managed to get to the KFC building - only to discover that it was just advertising. We ended up eating a meal at a Williams-style coffee house in the middle of this commercial district. Good times.
We headed back to the line up outside of the coliseum and waited for another hour for the doors to open. Everyone was packed into together tightly to avoid the cold. Who needs personal space, eh? I later learned that my brother was in the initial group that we saw when we first arrived. I was actively looking for him so it's too bad that I missed him then.
The evening itself was great and exactly what I expected. There were two bands that performed two consecutive worship sets. The speaker had twenty minutes or so to talk and then the Dave Crowder Band played the final worship set. They mixed in plenty of small-group prayer for the young adults at the schools in the GTA area.
The speaker, Louie Giglio, was excellent. He kept a nice string of jokes going to keep our interest. His theme was about how big God is, how great His love for us is and how small we are - and yet he knows each of us. The giant screen that filled the back wall of the stage was used to show a long selection of astronomy shots from the Hubble telescope, hence the picture at the top of this post. If God could create all of that with just a few words...and yet would send His son to live with us and die for us...yeah, it had the impact you would expect.
The entire event was completely free because of an offering that was given at the previous Passion '05 conference. The Passion group likes to have one conference pay for another conference in another city. It's a novel approach. They also just started this new blog yesterday and the first post was about their first foray outside of the USA. Cool.
Related Links:
Part 1
Passion Web Site
268 Generation Blog
3 comments:
Yeah, in the beginning of my astronomy textbook is shows to scale things like the earth, the sun, the sun's plane, the galaxy and it's phenomenal to think just how big it all is and God created every single bit of it! Blows my mind.
Again, sorry I couldn't make it. With a major paper to write and having to return to Toronto the next day, it would have been too much. I tend to get distracted easily so I was just trying to be responsible. Glad you had a great time. ~L
Hey Jag,
I was there too... and believe you me, you're not the only one who missed the turn!
I was also blown away by the astonomy and how small we are really. But true, God knows each of us.
Just thought I'd say hello,
God bless,
Catherine (in Kitchener)
Post a Comment