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Mom, Daughter Share CHIC2K3 Experience
By Craig Pinley
KNOXVILLE, TN (August 5, 2003) - It has been nearly three decades since Bonnie
Sparrman attended a CHIC event sponsored by the Evangelical Covenant
Church.
Apart from the technological advances incorporated into this event and the
thousands of students who now participate, Sparrman sees many similarities
between the CHIC she attended as a high school student and the one her
15-year-old daughter, Johanna, is currently enjoying. Best of all, mom also
is involved in this week's CHIC2K3 - she is serving on the medical staff -
and she is pleased to support something that is so near and dear to her.
"I'm here because I believe CHIC is a fantastic opportunity for kids to see
the movement of Christ and the fellowship of Covenant students," said
Bonnie, who teaches cooking at a culinary school. "I knew that CHIC needed
help on the medical team and I'm a registered nurse."
Bonnie Bladel was 16 years old when she and her youth group from the
Evangelical Covenant Church in Hinsdale, Illinois, traveled on a Greyhound
bus to Estes Park, Colorado, for the 1976 CHIC event. At that time, CHIC
was known as Covenant High Congress and approximately 2,700 students and
staff listened to key speakers Wesley Nelson and Lloyd Ahlem and enjoyed
the music and mime performances of Bob Stromberg.
Bonnie did more than just enjoy the mountain scenery at her CHIC. She
spotted a guitar-playing high school student named Eric Sparrman, who had
come from Bowie, Maryland, with youth from the Church of the Redeemer. By
the end of the week, the two had become friends. A few years later, in
1982, after dating at North Park College, they married. Eric is now the
pastor at Harvest Ridge Covenant Church in Shawnee, Kansas.
"I walked into Alpen Lodge and Eric was playing his guitar and he was
leading about 25 kids in singing," said Bonnie, a mother of three. "I
joined in the singing and the crowd dwindled to just Eric and me. We had
supper together and I remember my youth pastor giving me the eye. When I
got home, I was wondering if I was going to get a letter from him.
"I left CHIC wanting to be bolder in my faith," she continued. "And I
wanted to try to explain to my friends who didn't go to CHIC about what I
had experienced, but it was difficult. But I was really pumped up and
wanted to study God's word. It was inspiring."
Many things have changed from the time Bonnie experienced CHIC as a
teenager, among them the broader scope of the event, the huge increase in
the number of people participating (2,600 in 1980 compared to 6,000-plus
this year) and the computerization and related technology. "I remember that
the registration materials were held in a shoe box. I still have the CHIC
record and the group photo - even to this day I find people I know in the
photo."
"The style of our worship is so fantastic and the staging - they've gone
all out. But as I'm walking around, the needs are the same - we all need
friends, we all need to find our way - and the messages and topics from our
Focus groups are the same. Three girls came to me before the Focus groups
and they couldn't get into a seminar on dating. I remember the same topic
being the hot topic in 1976 - it was called "You're 16, You're Beautiful
and Your Mine."
For Bonnie's daughter, the feeling of anticipation also was the same as
1976 - no surprise given the fact she has heard about CHIC and her mother's
experience for most of her life. "When the time came to head to CHIC2K3,
she (Johanna ) could hardly contain herself," Bonnie said. "She's just one
of those kids who loves to go to camp and she's on fire for Christ. She
knew that this was the mountaintop of spiritual experiences. When she got
on the plane to go to Knoxville she said, 'I've been waiting 10 years for
this.'"
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