NCYC09 CONVERGE Bible Study INDEPTH

Following a few highlights I now have the info to post a little more detail of our 'experiental' Bible Study in Melbourne at our biennial youth event known as NCYC09 Converge!! It's for 16-30s with plenty of adult leaders and volunteers.
There were [3] levels in SURFING, snorkelling, scuba diving and three options from each level so we were always going to have between 150-200 punters from the younger or exploratory end of the spectrum and hopefully appreciative of the many mediums on offer and the attention to their context/s and culture/s.
I had pitched this idea to the NCYC Team and was very glad to be able to assemble a Team of young adults with the talent, insight and enthusiasm to carry this off.

The Team were:
Rah Bryan who is creative and kept us grounded
Tristan Davison with tech savvy and left field 'or we could... ' suggestions
Wes Champion and mob, with puppetry and robotics
Lenny Ohye embracing drama and logistics
Gregor Newton with early ideas, drama and doing all that was asked
Bradon French resident theologian, evangelist and puppetry
Sam Evans and Katie Evans providing brilliant live music
Angus Davison who made it all actually work flawlessly

After a few false starts, we did manage to get some planning time together and worked through a long list of brainstormed 'dreams' to match the themes, discipleship and eventually what we actually wanted participants to see, hear and experience of Jesus call for us 'to follow'!!

The NCYC09 day themes grew out of the CONVERGE motif of the great variety of people COMING TOGETHER!!

CONVERGE arriving and joining
MERGE shared experience and beginning to 'hear'
URGE the 'call' to get involved, to follow and to be who we could be
SUBMERGE a day of community action for justice, life and faith across Melbourne
EMERGE unpacking experiences and bringing life, action and faith together anew
VERGE AND DIVERGE standing at the edge, being empowered, being 'sent' and leaving

Our three DAY Themes were:
[MERGE] INVERTED or UPSIDE DOWN
[URGE] UGLY
[VERGE] BEAUTIFUL/NAKED
Our injoke was that despite printed material, at one point I was convinced there were four sessions, so our last two were collapsed together.

The Bible Study central thread was Mark's gospel and in particular a political reading of Mark [not out of step with the work of Ched Myers or others from the so-called 'radical discipleship' movement.
The sessions took place in the MLC School JT Auditorium [which was not ideal but offered some brilliant tech possibilities in return for not being a large rectangular room with a flat floor]. It worked but would have been better if we'd seen it and the courtyard outside a little sooner... The BS and Venues support teams did a great job of working with us/putting up with us so it could happen well.
They were especially gracious and fast acting when we discovered on day three that we had just tipped over an entire 5 litres of water based paint onto the storeroom carpet!! This was directly related to our less than ideal pack up on day two with a band hard on our heels in the program...

Following posts will detail:
THEME
BIBLE
RUN SHEET
INTERACTIVE STATIONS
DRAMA
MEDIA
SPOKEN and AUDIO_VISUAL INPUT for each day

All this will be collated more fully and produced as a resource after the Team party late February as it would be ideally suited to a weekend or three session Camp along similar lines.