It grows little by little. This year, twenty-seven youth registered for our National Youth Conference during the Annual Meeting and Worship Conference. It was held in Greensboro, NC, at the beautiful Koury Convention Center. Our Theme was “Getting to Know God” with video teaching by David Nasser and a challenge from one of the teens present, 16-year-old Sam Cutshall, on the importance of growing in God.
There were wonderful times of worship, some of which we shared with the adult conference. On Thursday night, after a wonderful time of worship music led by One Family, we were challenged by Will Graham, the executive vice president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. He shared a powerful and sometimes comical message, challenging us to continue standing on the Word and being faithful in sharing it in the world. On Friday night, we enjoyed another time of powerful worship and a challenging message by Craig Alan Myers on Bearing Fruit for Jesus.
The group also shared times of dreaming about the future of our national youth ministries, played games, and presented a drama to the whole conference to the song “The Goodness of God” that had the whole conference on its feet.
The youth then started on their service project that had them packing the vast amount of material brought in by the conference attendees for Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes. Over 200 boxes were packed and prepared for shipping.
Thanks to the efforts of Ruth Swonger, Becky Lealand, Leslie Crissman, and Craig Howard, we witnessed a group that laughed, prayed, learned, and served, keeping Christ at the center of it all.. We hope to see our numbers double next year, and we already have some great ideas for that meeting. Come and join us!
Submitted by Craig Howard and Stafford Fredrick – Publications Committee
