IALAC

The first ever (and only, I think!) Go For It! weekend took place in the Spring of 1987 at Ridgecrest Retreat Center near Asheville, NC.  This event, sponsored by North Carolina Yearly Meeting, brought together a number of youth pastors and youth for leadership training.  David Tebbs, Ray Luther, Terry Venable, Randy Quate and myself were among the leaders of the event, and there were around 40 youth (see picture above, with everyone doing the IALAC bull horns!) present as well.  Ken Hill, Todd Farlow, Jamie Robinson, Traci Whitaker, Robin Simmons and Amy Simmons would represent Springfield.  It would be a most memorable weekend.

Springfield had a bus in those days- sort of.  It was an old "short bus" that we used to pick up elementary kids from schools on Wednesday afternoons.  We weren't sure it could make the trip to the mountains (although later we almost DIED from heat in the same bus at Myrtle Beach!) so we arranged to ride up with Terry and the group from High Point Friends.  The trip was great, and over the next few years we would become close with Keith Anderson, Phil McDonald, Greg Venable, Holly Hayworth and others. We arrived at Ridgecrest and were surprised to find that it resembled a prison camp more that a Christian retreat center.  There were gated walls and guards and....well, you get the picture.  We ordered pizza one of the nights and they could not get past the guard to deliver it- we had to go to the gate!  It was so different from Quaker Lake...

The retreat itself was amazing.  We learned a lot about ourselves and about serving Jesus through serving others.  One of the highlights came when I taught everyone the I Am Lovable and Capable song that I had learned from Dave Stone years before.  The song consists of singing those words over and over with motions, followed by using your body to form the letters IALAC, YMCA style!  Then you just keep getting faster and faster!  We did that song over and over again as the retreat progressed, and I think we all felt lovable and capable.  The seven of us from Springfield grew closer and began to get a vision of what God had in mind for our group.

In reality, there is only one story from that weekend that matters.  I walked around to one of the rooms at Fort Ridgecrest and knocked on the door.  Jamie's voice asked me who it was, and when he found out panic set in.  I could hear other voices, and then basically I was told to go away.  They all showed up at my room a few moments later, and it was clear something had been going on.  But no one would talk.  I worried about all the usual youth issues, but decided I would find out eventually.  And I did.  Seven years later!  From April 1987 until sometime in 1994, those six students kept quiet about what I had interrupted that night.  Can you imagine?  Six youth, some of whom I would be with for hours and hours over that next few years, kept a secret for that long- out of loyalty to each other.  That is an amazing thing.  It was an indication of just how close our group would become in the years to follow.

What was the big secret?  I will only tell you this- they were playing a card game, and it wasn't Texas Hold 'Em.  I believe someone had already lost a pair of shoes when I knocked...  Looking back, it is truly amazing that they had enough respect for me to be worried that I would be upset about such a goofy incident.  The truth is, even before I knew what had happened, I knew those guys were special.  I would be proven correct over and over again in the years to come.  They were indeed lovable and capable.

Because of Jesus,