Every December around Christmas it is my tradition to attend the Generation of Youth for Christ (GYC) conference. This year I was in a flurry of activity getting ready for the conference which was held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, December 19-23.
This conference reminded me a little of GYC 2003 in Ann Arbor, MI, because there was a lot of snow, and it was a little smaller and more intimate than it's been in recent years.
After taking a year off from major responsibilities (GYC 2006 - Baltimore), this year I stayed quite busy. This year some friends and I promoted a new website we launched days before GYC called Army of Youth. We had a lot of young people stop by our booth and enlist.
On Friday night we did a 15 minute presentation telling about the features of the website. This created quite a reaction, but I'll tell more about that in a future post.
Sabbath morning I became the moderator of a Sabbath School
panel discussion on the 1888 Minneapolis Convention -- a historic event in Adventist history where the subject of righteousness by faith was presented to church leaders. We took a fresh look at this event and looked at how the Bible says we can live by faith, experience God's righteousness in our lives, and live a life of victory over sin.
I had a terrific group to work with -- Eugene Prewitt, a history teacher from Ouachita Hills College; Steve Conway, pastor of the campus church at U of M; Allison Waters, a speaker for
Restoration International in Montana (and one of my best friends!); and Alan Parker, a religion professor at Southern Adventist University. Each had wonderful thoughts and insights to contribute. What I appreciated most about them was their burden to see this Sabbath School glorify God and explain the gospel in the simplest way that each young person could understand. We spent hours in preparation and prayer and God really blessed. I have had so many young people express their appreciation to me. Here is one email I got from a girl who attended GYC.
“I have attended GYC since 2005 and I just wanted to say I LOVED the Sabbath School discussion panel. To be honest, I always got a little tired during those, but either this year the Holy Spirit really spoke to me through you guys, or I just grew up a bit, or both! But it was a great blessing. It was wonderful! I remember finally understanding it a LITTLE better, from a different perspective.”
To view or listen to our Sabbath School discussion, go to:
- Download as a MP3 file - http://www.audioverse.org/displayspeaker/143/StacyOsterman
- View online video - http://www.yourvideos.net/hopevideo/GYC/2007/gyc07-ss.wmv
- AudioVerse MP3: http://www.audioverse.org/displaysponsor/26/GenerationOfYouthForChrist
- Videos Online (or to order) - http://www.hopevideo.com/media_with_gyc_2007.htm
On Sabbath afternoon I led one of the 25 buses filled with attendees eager to do some door-to-door outreach on the snowy streets of Minneapolis inviting people to take Bible studies. Our group of 53 knocked on 675 doors and enrolled 37 people in Bible studies, including our bus driver. All total -- 1378 individuals knocked on 12,820 doors, enrolling 478 people in Bible studies. I was so blessed to see the courage of these soldiers braving the cold to share Jesus with others!
Being at GYC is a blessing -- the messages, the opportunities to minister to others, the fellowship of friends. I highly recommend it. Please plan now to attend GYC 2008 in San Jose, California, December 18-22. To learn more visit www.gycweb.org.
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1 comment:
It was so good to see you at GYC!
Thanks for all the time you put into helping out.
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