Saturate: The Present Need

I opened this blog in December with a post concerning the Sr. High Conference entitled Saturate that will be held in Wichita, Kansas at Friends University this summer. The original post listed the statement of faith provided by the camp director and can be found here. The following posts entitled Saturate...will be random musings and thoughts regarding the small group material and main session talks. Please pray for us as we pray for discernment as to what God would have us say to his people this summer. Any insights and/or resources would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

The Gospel will shine with new brilliance during Sr. High Conference 2007. The name of Jesus Christ will be proclaimed. The glory of God will be the centerpiece and framework for all that we do.

Brothers and Sisters, the doctrines of grace articulated in the pages of Scripture have taken a hold of us and will not let go. We wrestle with them all night long, as Jacob with the angel, and in the morning we are changed. Our very lives are being reoriented by the blessing of seeing anew what it means that God has come to us in Jesus Christ. Our very lives have become saturated with the treasure that Incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, has revealed himself to us and we have all we need in him!

The Present Need

The Church in the West is drowning. The tidal rush of secular culture has long ago washed away the fortress that was Christendom. We no longer speak with authority, nor anything like a unified voice, and what whispers we do utter to our age are lost in the roar of its media sea. Prosperity unimaginable in earlier years has come to the west and to its Christians. But the very mass of our wealth threatens to push us under. We have all the resources for a vigorous Church: books, buildings, education, and enormous technology for communication. But like the culture, we are swept along by the power of a consumerist age. We can’t seem to find our feet.

If we could brace ourselves against the Rock, of course, the Church could rise against the tide, speaking with words of truth and shining the light of Christ’s love to those who are adrift. But far too often, we have built our ministries upon shifting sand. We have allowed the issues of the moment to undermine us.

Jesus’ question remains the supreme concern of the Church in every age, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter’s answer is the word we must speak, freshly and vitally to each generation: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Such bedrock, deceptively simple truth eludes us, however, if we are to recover our vision and voice for the new century, we must treasure these words and live lives saturated in the truth that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God.