1) Getting to worship in the same room as 16,000 people! During many of the songs, I would try to take a moment to look around the convention center and take it all in. There is something so powerful and moving about seeing thousands of people worshipping Jesus just like you.
2) Worship was incredibly high quality, polished, and well executed. As a musician, great music is like Chicken noodle soup to my soul and this was it! The worship team was so crazy talented. I knew one of the songs had a rap in it, and I figured that the Urbana worship team would skip the rap, but instead one of the vocalists learned it and delivered it flawlessly! (Probably better than the original in my opinion)
3) And this is probably the most important one: Worship was intentionally and strategically multiethnic. There were students from all over the world at this conference. There were students from Canada who spoke fluent French. There were Latino and Latina students whose first language is Spanish. There were black students who have grown up in black church. There were Asian American students who attend immigrant churches. And the worship team made each of these groups feel comfortable and welcome during the five days. We were singing in Spanish, dancing to some gospel, belting some French, Korean, Swahili, sprinkling in some Hillsong and Chris Tomlin, and it felt so deeply good knowing that the worship team was really trying to love everyone here by doing songs that were comfortable for them.
(Personal favorite moment: During one of the songs we could choose from four different languages to sing so I was singing Korean while the person behind me is singing English and my neighbor is singing Swahili! It was such a beautiful glimpse of what heaven will be like when we are all praising God in our first languages)
The other thing the worship team did which I also loved was that Erna sent vocalists in the worship team to a different country to learn a song that they had been singing there and bring it back to us. So we got to share in the song and culture of Jordan and sing in Arabic, of Hawaii to learn a Pacific Islander song, and of Mexico where missionary students urged us to "decir la verdad" (tell the Truth!) In singing these songs, it felt like in some very small way, I could support the missionaries in that place and what they were trying to do by learning their songs. I felt so transformed by each of the pieces in part because some cultures focus on different elements of God that I may not normally pay attention to, and being reminded of all of the characteristics of God was so nice! It definitely did change some of the ways that I see Him and made Him so much greater.
So worship was great! Some parts were uncomfortable, and I knew my pronunciation wasn't the best about 99% of the time, but it was enriching. Very enriching.
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