Desert Journal: The Invitation
Apr 24, 2012
"How many of you would offer your life as a sacrifice to the Lord?"
This was the last question Dr. Chappell asked thousands of young people gathered for the last service of the 2012 West Coast Baptist Youth Conference. Before the song of invitation even began, they started to come down the aisles. The choir loft behind the platform quickly filled with teens and counselors praying together and verbalizing their decision to serve Christ. Some were giving up a worldly lifestyle. Many answered the call to full-time Christian service. Others finally yielded to God's Spirit and were saved.
And they kept coming. Rapidly, teens were flooding the back hallway and spilling into adjacent buildings. Pastor asked college upper classmen to come and pray with those that had come forward. The response was powerful, overwhelming, and attributable only to the work of the Spirit through the preaching of God's Word. While each year the Youth Conference has been blessed, this year was different. For many youth groups, this conference sparked the fire of revival in their church.
We are thankful to the Lord for all that took place during Youth Conference—like Spirit-filled speakers and attentive youth groups. But it was a special joy to see the large number of WCBC graduates who were here as pastors and youth pastors, bringing their teenagers with a prayer that God would do something great. They walked through the doors on Wednesday with hope and anticipation, and they left rejoicing. Years of teaching, prayers, and tears for teens in their group were rewarded in that final invitation. We look forward to seeing what God will do in the lives of the hundreds of teenagers who made the choice to be a courageous follower of Christ.
Seeing God change lives is what we pray for. During our recent Bus Them In weekend, WCBC students labored with several of our church bus captains and drivers. Each route saw a dramatic increase in riders, and four rallies were held in Lancaster, Rosamond, and Lake LA. As the weekend concluded, over one hundred children, teens, and adults had received Christ as their Saviour.
In one way, an invitation is like a college commencement—it's the beginning of a fresh chapter with a lot of blank pages. So many of our graduates are living great stories of service and faith. They are examples of disciples making other disciples, but their work isn't done when young people make decisions for Christ. With each invitation, the work to help a child of God grow in grace begins anew.
Some days, the ministry is hard toil with few apparent results. But some weeks, it is filled with rewards both immediate and eternal. We never know what will happen when the next invitation begins, but we see His faithful hand each time someone responds to the moving of the Holy Spirit of God.
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"How many of you would offer your life as a sacrifice to the Lord?"
This was the last question Dr. Chappell asked thousands of young people gathered for the last service of the 2012 West Coast Baptist Youth Conference. Before the song of invitation even began, they started to come down the aisles. The choir loft behind the platform quickly filled with teens and counselors praying together and verbalizing their decision to serve Christ. Some were giving up a worldly lifestyle. Many answered the call to full-time Christian service. Others finally yielded to God's Spirit and were saved.
And they kept coming. Rapidly, teens were flooding the back hallway and spilling into adjacent buildings. Pastor asked college upper classmen to come and pray with those that had come forward. The response was powerful, overwhelming, and attributable only to the work of the Spirit through the preaching of God's Word. While each year the Youth Conference has been blessed, this year was different. For many youth groups, this conference sparked the fire of revival in their church.
We are thankful to the Lord for all that took place during Youth Conference—like Spirit-filled speakers and attentive youth groups. But it was a special joy to see the large number of WCBC graduates who were here as pastors and youth pastors, bringing their teenagers with a prayer that God would do something great. They walked through the doors on Wednesday with hope and anticipation, and they left rejoicing. Years of teaching, prayers, and tears for teens in their group were rewarded in that final invitation. We look forward to seeing what God will do in the lives of the hundreds of teenagers who made the choice to be a courageous follower of Christ.
Seeing God change lives is what we pray for. During our recent Bus Them In weekend, WCBC students labored with several of our church bus captains and drivers. Each route saw a dramatic increase in riders, and four rallies were held in Lancaster, Rosamond, and Lake LA. As the weekend concluded, over one hundred children, teens, and adults had received Christ as their Saviour.
In one way, an invitation is like a college commencement—it's the beginning of a fresh chapter with a lot of blank pages. So many of our graduates are living great stories of service and faith. They are examples of disciples making other disciples, but their work isn't done when young people make decisions for Christ. With each invitation, the work to help a child of God grow in grace begins anew.
Some days, the ministry is hard toil with few apparent results. But some weeks, it is filled with rewards both immediate and eternal. We never know what will happen when the next invitation begins, but we see His faithful hand each time someone responds to the moving of the Holy Spirit of God.
