Lake County Youth Conference Recap

This past weekend we had 81 students from around the lake gathered in our sanctuary worshiping God and playing games as they were being equipped to go out into all the world and preach the Gospel. During this weekend the plan was to equip the students to go to their friends, family, and all of Lake County and beyond and tell of the good news of Jesus Christ. We had the opportunity to not only learn about the Great Commission and that which goes along with it but the opportunity to see people living it and the students even had a chance to put action to their faith and support a missionary. 

When my keynote speaker called me the week before the conference and told me he wouldn’t be able to make it because he would be in Hungary helping Ukrainian Refugees I started to worry about how this conference was going to go. By God’s divine will Andy, president of A Jesus Mission, wasn’t going to Hungary until the 15th so he would be able to take the place of our original speaker.

Throughout the weekend we hit 5 different topics that are pertinent to the Great Commission. The first topic was missions, followed by discipleship, putting action to our faith, following God’s commands, and that we are not alone. During these topics we learned a lot from the three different speakers Andy Ziesemer, Dany Benitez, and Michael Bentum. 

At the end of the conference we decided to take an offering to send with Andy to Hungary to help him and his team to spread the Gospel and help the refugees who were living there. I was amazed by the generosity of the students as many of them gave all that they had. I want to end with one story that seemed to be the heart of many of the students there. I had one young student run up to me as we were giving money, he reached into his pocket and pulled out one crumpled dollar bill and looked at me and said, “This is all I have, I'm sorry it’s not very much.” It was amazing to see the generosity of the students as we raised $761 to send with Andy.

Overall, it was a blessing to serve the students at the Commissioned conference. We pray that the encouraging results we saw there will be a genuine reflection of love those kids have for their Savior, and that the zeal in their hearts coupled with the instruction they have been given over the weekend will equip them to live out the great commission, the calling on all of us who call Jesus our Lord.

​-Pastor Josh Bridges