“We did an interactive flash mob…which included planking”

This year, we tried something new. Often, we have had out winter conference be something that was a GTA-wide event; but this year we decided to try having our fall conference be GTA-wide. It was September 23-24 and held in city at Stone Church.

We decided to do something simple, compelling and fun; that could help us launch ministries on our campuses. We invited students to see a play performance of the gospel of Mark. The play was divided into 2 acts. The first was performed on the Friday evening of the retreat and the second act was performed on the Saturday evening. During the day on Saturday, we received some teaching on parables, and then applied some of our teaching in the city. We started by re-enacting the parable of the sower in Queen’s park, by scattering grass seed. We then went and did an interactive flash mob inspired by the story of Jairus’ daughter which included planking; which the students loved and were very creative in their positioning (look for the student planking on a bench and garbage can). The planked students were then “woken up” and then would interact with the people who had assembled around them while they planked and offer them a package of water and granola bar, to represent bread and living water. After these live parables we debriefed the experience with the students, and then sent them out to lunch with their campus groups with a few questions to engage people they come across in the city on their way back to the church. These conversations proved very fruitful and life-giving for the students as we discovered during the debrief of the afternoon. Following the debrief, we went into our second act of the play; and ended the retreat shortly after the play’s end.

I had a vested interest in this conference, as I was on the planning committee. The committee consisted of me, my supervisor Jamie, and my friend Dan, staff at York University. We had been meeting and planning this conference since the spring. Dan and I took on roles of emcees of the conference, while Jamie did the teaching. Having already experienced co-emceeing at SALI, I was comfortable taking on this role, but still had some unresolved feelings from my last experience emceeing. I also lead the students in an interactive art piece that we did in response to the first act of the play on the Friday evening. It was exciting to see the themes that came up for the students, as they processed through the questions we asked them. Another role I had as part of this conference was that of “stager”, as I set up the space to create ambience for the play. I really enjoyed this role, and marvelled at how most of the items I was using were revamping pieces from various conferences: I set up a road in the gym out of fabric used at out National Staff Conference, emulating what I saw at Senior Girls’ camp this summer; I flooded the room with sounds before the performance that I’d used for our Kingdom People events; and I used incense to fill the room with smells that I originally purchased for this past Campus Gathering. It was fun re-using these elements and remembering how God moved in the midst of these other events.

We hope to perform the play again in the winter semester, to help us recruit for city/script.

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