Monday, April 12, 2010

Encounter the City

Praise the Lord for a great Encounter the City conference! We had 45 students from Barclay College and 5 from Sterling College. The point of the conference was to expose students to the city and to urban missions.

Here were a few of the highlights:

Media Presentations - I have a had an intern from WSU working with me for the past 4 months. She created 4 media presentations that went along with the themes of the weekend. They showed great pictures of the city and our ministry to the accompaniment of urban music.

Teachings - On Friday night Don Davis gave an amazing talk on the centrality of the church in urban missions. Sadly, for our American evangelical culture, the church is sometimes seen as an option for our spirituality. Don made it absolutely crystal clear that the church is not an option for a believer but that God has always been drawing people to Himself. He stated that the Church is the only institution that has empowered the urban poor.

Saturday morning we had three teachings on the poor in the Bible, on culture, and on evangelism in the city.

Here is one cool story. We have a new volunteer here in Wichita that is doing all of our cooking for conferences and volunteer groups. He is feeling that God might be calling him to work with us full time. On Friday night as he heard Don teach on the church, he said to his wife, "I wish that I could get a full list of verses on the poor in the Bible" (not knowing that we had provided that in our booklet). So Saturday morning as Ryan started teaching he said, "I am going to go through various verses in Psalms and Proverbs on the poor and in your booklet there are 5 pages of verses." As this volunteer heard this, his mouth just dropped open as he knew God has just answered his prayer.

Worship Times - This generation loves to worship God. That was so evident during our worship times. Angie did a great job of leading worship. In addition to two sessions she led, we also had a late night worship time. About 20 students stayed and it was a powerful time.

Cultural Game - Friday night we had a cultural game. The students were broken into several groups and each group had a different characteristic. They had to act out their new culture and figure out the characteristics of the other groups. The students really got into it.

Evangelism in Oaklawn - A highlight for all of them was going out in the community of Oaklawn (our old church plant area) on Saturday afternoon. The students went door to door with flyers about the Mobile clinic and a survey. The students shared the gospel with many people and prayed with lots of people. It was exciting to see them apply the teachings from the weekend out in the community. It was clear that God was moving in their hearts.

Thanks for your prayers for this conference. It was evident that God met us all in a special way.







No comments:

Post a Comment