CU Houseparty

This past weekend I went on Warwick CU's "CU Houseparty". Perhaps the best way to describe it to those who don't know what this is is to quote the tag-line:
"it's a party - in a house, although not really..."
This sums it up pretty well as houseparty isn't exactly as it says on the tin - more accurately it's the CU's annual weekend away. The only time in the year that the whole of the CU get to go away together.

There were about 150 of us who went to a Christian conference centre called Quinta, which is in Shropshire (near Wales). Over the weekend there was the chance to listen to loads of talks (in main meetings and seminars), worship and pray loads (for campus, the persecuted church etc etc), discuss biblical issues in small groups and play loads of games and generally chill out with and get to know one another. It was a really fantastic weekend! I really enjoyed many aspects of it and left feeling really challenged, yet encouraged on many fronts. It definitely left me thinking why on earth didn't I go on either of the last two house-parties? It was one-of, if not the best weekend since I started at Warwick.

The speaker for the 4 main meetings that we had was a guy called Tim, who works for UCCF. He was helping us to explore the book of 2 Peter and I found a lot of the things that he was saying really useful, especially those about living with an eternal perspective.

On the Saturday, a good number of us went on a quite sublime walk which was highly enjoyable despite the constant rain. Some of the scenery local to Quinta is astounding (see my photo-page for pictures of this and other bits of house party). As the weekend was so packed with stuff to do I got little sleep, so arrived back at uni physically exhausted (before a lovely long recovery sleep), but spiritually refreshed.

One thing that someone said over the weekend that really struck a chord with me was about how weekends like houseparty need to be like an elastic band that is stretched so far that even a long time after the weekend it never returns to the shape it was before. We need to ask the Lord to help us to change permanently, not just to be in His presence for a weekend. This is definitley something that I've struggled with in the past after similar events and will be praying about this time around - that I remember things like living every day with an eternal perspective.

It really was a great weekend - I got to know a load of people a lot better and it was awesome to spend so much time worshipping and in prayer and to be challenged loads - but unless we'll able to let those challenges affect our lives then there will have been little point in going away. Hence the challenge of the elastic band ...