So much happened over the weekend it is hard to know where to start. At the beginning of the weekend in the bus we did a Flow gauge, where (using pictures of a skater in various stages of performing a trick) we asked the young people to gauge where they were in their understanding of what flow was all about eg 1 if they were clueless and 9 if they thought they had is sussed. At the end of the weekend they again completed the gauge to see if their understanding had changed. What was most interesting was that the young people who we had the best conversations with either marked themselves the same or decreased, whilst the yp that didn’t engage so much increased or stayed the same.

We told the story of Abs which was great and some really good dialogue around it although I would not tell them what I thought the story meant. One guy was really anxiously trying to work it out, asking all sorts of questions trying to get a handle on what it meant he did not see how you could break your board and flow all the time or even experience Flow when not riding. The following day we get to this great skate park, that was too wet to ride and he is stoked and calls up from the bottom of the bowl “hey Rich I think I know what Abs was on about now I can feel Flow even though I’m not riding”. Yet on the gauge he marked his understanding as lower than at the start of the weekend.

I think this is something about God being beyond their paradigm of understanding, and blowing their concepts of Flow. It was real upside down kingdom stuff. Paul helpfully reflected on this with me earlier citing about how the disciples must have had preconceptions about the Messiah but Jesus quickly blew this out the water and they must have experienced the same confusion.