Defending the Truth

Every year our church, Woodland Park, has a Mission Conference to invite missionaries our church supports to come be refreshed, share what God is doing where they are at work, and to encourage the body to be missionaries wherever they are. Flags of all the countries where missionaries are sent out from our church are hung around the auditorium. It is incredible to see so many countries represented. I am truly humbled yet proud that our church places such a strong emphasis on missions. It is one of the many very unique things about Woodland Park.

While the worship services throughout the week are geared for the visiting missionaries, Bible fellowship classes invite the missionaries to share about what they do and how God is working. They share their needs and prayer requests. In addition, the children also learn about missions. In AWANA Cubbies the children learned about the apostle Paul and how he was a missionary. They learned what a missionary is and what they do. Throughout the week the children learned about a specific country where we have missionaries we support and what food they eat (and they even got to taste some if they wanted). They made a flag and pasted a map of the country with information about the missionaries there and a prayer request for them.

This year's conference had Ron Carlson from Christian Ministries International as its keynote speaker. The theme was "Defending the Truth". The unique thing about this year was that it focused more on equipping us in the church to defend the truth of Christianity. Sunday morning's sermon gave us an overview of different religions and cults and some of the basics of their beliefs, who they believe Jesus is, and what sets Christianity apart from them. His focus was their Jesus vs. our Jesus. They do not believe in the same Jesus we do nor the same God. Sunday night's sermon was about Evolution vs. Creationism and what science shows. Ron Carlson taught more in depth about the different Cults and what they believe on Monday night, about Mormonism on Tuesday night, and about Islam on Wednesday night. I had always wanted to learn about different religions and do a study on apologetics, and this was a great overview. I learned so much last week, and I was amazed at what some people believe. It is really sad that so many are misled.

I highly recommend listening to the sermons from last week's Mission Conference if you have never heard Ron Carlson speak. He is very intelligent, but he explains things in a way that the average peron can understand. Just click on the link above and you can download or just listen to the messages straight off of the website.

On a sidenote, I just realized that today marks the first anniversary of my blog. It's hard to believe that it has been a year already. It's been a great way to not only keep you informed on our lives, but it has been an outlet for journaling which I never would have done had it not been for my blog.