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.

Projects

The past months, we have been working on several projects and they are all about done.

Last week we had a video crew in for several days. I (Matt) was with the crew for a couple of days as we filmed the different aspects of our ministry. We got several testimonies of lives that have been changed by the Lord within our ministry, and we also filmed testimonies of all our missionaries. At the end of this project, each missionary will have their own video to show supporters, as well as a Wichita World Impact video. I am excited to see how they all turn out.

This weekend, we are having our first Encounter the City conference. I have been leading a team preparing for 60 college students coming Friday night the 9th through Saturday evening. We will have about 50 students from Barclay College in Haviland, and 8 students from Sterling College. Angie will lead a couple of worship times and we will have several different teaching sessions. The topics range from, "The Centrality of the Church in urban missions, The Poor in the Bible, a teaching on Culture, and Evangelism in the City." Then Saturday afternoon we will do a tour of our different sites, and then Pastor Jerry at Lighthouse will lead them in doing door to door evangelism in our old church plant neighborhood.

Through the teachings and exposure to the city, we hope to challenge them with the needs of the city and not to ignore the Biblical mandate Christians have for the poor. Also we will be sharing about the various opportunities to serve with World Impact and would love to have a couple of students consider internships with us.

I also have been working on our 2nd 100 hole golf tournament. This is a big fund raise for our local ministry. We will have over 20 golfers participating. The tournament is on April 19th.

I will be playing in the event and looking for sponsors. On the link above there are instructions if you would be interested in sponsoring me. All of the money that I raise will be doubled.

Please pray for us as we complete these projects. Pray for good leadership and energy to do them well.

TUMI Satellite Summit 2010

Two weeks ago Angie and I had the awesome opportunity in helping lead worship for the TUMI Summit. 75 people or so came in for the conference. They are all mentors for TUMI satellites around the country and world. You can read more about TUMI here and their satellites. Here is a sample of the worship time we were apart of.