The day began with group prayer at 6:17am. Not exactly sure what the thinking behind the 17 after 6 is all about, but we met, read scripture, and prayed. We were pleasantly surprised by the turn out and the number of kids who actually participated in the prayers.
The slogan or theme of the conference is "Rise Up", referring to how the resurrection should impact our lives as Christians and the Church as a whole. So at 9:15am the workshops began. The first workshop was regarding how we should Rise Up in the Church. That is how we should recognize the true biblical identity of the Church and embrace that. The speaker had us look at the different ways in which the Scriptures describe the Church as the people of God, the Bride of Christ, and the Temple of the Holy Spirit.
The second workshop was regarding how we should Rise Up in the culture. The speaker went on to point out several ways that Christians deal with the culture. First is the retreat mindset where we outright reject everything that does not have specifically Christian content. Secondly was the infusion model where by we take secular things and pump in Christian content so that we can participate in it. Thirdly is the response of consumption and how this looks is that under the guise of trying to connect and relate with unbelievers to win them to Christ we embrace uncritically all that the world has to offer. Fourthly was the idea of being in the world but not of it and he will be speaking more on this fourth way in the upcoming workshops.
After lunch we met for the second of our daily "Grace Talks". Today's topic was Justification. We talked about double imputation and how God imputes to us Christ's righteousness and conversely how God imputes to Christ our sinfulness.
At 2:30pm we met for our team building exercises, we were blessed to have cloud cover almost the entire time which was nice since we were out in the open for over two hours. We broke up into our teams and had to go through six problem solving challenges. The challenges were just that, challenging, fun, and very exhausting; for me at least. I'm gonna be sore tomorrow.
Finally after some free time and dinner we moved on to our nightly worship time. We sang some worship songs and listen to a message about how the early church witnessed. Our speaker pointed out how the gospel message proclaimed by the early church was that Jesus was raised from the dead. He asked us to think about how that might affect how we witness.
Lastly we had a blessed time in our evening prayer meeting which is how we will be closing out every night while we are here. This again was a very fruitful time with a lot of participation on the part of the youth.
Erik
5 comments:
Erik: The speaker went on to point out several ways that Christians deal with the culture. First is the retreat mindset where we outright reject everything that does not have specifically Christian content. Secondly was the infusion model where by we take secular things and pump in Christian content so that we can participate in it. Thirdly is the response of consumption and how this looks is that under the guise of trying to connect and relate with unbelievers to win them to Christ we embrace uncritically all that the world has to offer. Fourthly was the idea of being in the world but not of it and he will be speaking more on this fourth way in the upcoming workshops.
Hmmm...I'm voting for door #4.
Erik: Our speaker pointed out how the gospel message proclaimed by the early church was that Jesus was raised from the dead. He asked us to think about how that might affect how we witness.
An outline from two of the Bible studies titled First Missionary Enterprise, Part 1 and Part 2 is on the website that talks about the early church proclaiming the gospel.
Speaking of proclaiming the gospel, maybe you'll get a chance to model EE with the teens! :=)
Sorry, I meant Part 2 and Part 3. We started posting only at Part 2.
Sounds like a GREAT trip so far! Very insightful info and I'm THRILLED about what's going on with the kids!
Sounds like some great stuff they're learning and getting to do!
Looks like everyone is having a GREAT time! It also sounds like they're about to learn how, as believers of the true gospel, they may want to respond to the world's enticements and snares.
I pray God would give them a depth of understanding that opens their eyes to the snares of this world around them, strengthens them to rebuke it, and trusts in His abounding grace to do it.
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