Next Up...

Dallas Winter Conferece is on the horizon, January 2-7. I've been busy collecting checks, adjusting registrations, updating Quicken, and anticipating one of my favorite events of the year. This year the theme is simple: Sent.

Take a look around and you will see a thousand explanations as to why we’re here. Paths to health, wealth, and the successes of mankind. But these hopes are fleeting. Empty attempts of finding a home.

We’ve been displaced by our failures, by the dislike and mistrust of others, by the tragedies of a fallen world. We took our inheritance and set off for greener grass, only to realize that what we were really searching for was the place we had set out from. A bite of an apple began a long journey, filled with dusty trails but also with God’s providence with brief glimpses of home along the way.

You’ll only find one explanation as to why we’re here if home is really elsewhere. Our aimless wanderings have scattered us across the earth, but our redemption has left us where we are, for now. God aims to turn our wandering into opportunity. Having brought the light of the gospel into our lives, we become a light for others, pointing the way home.

We set out on our own accord, but redeemed, we are sent.

Dallas Winter Conference 2006 will be a time in which we explore our purpose of being on earth. Scripture is filled the picture of the gospel being brought to this earth so that God can be known. Just as Jesus was sent into this world to show the Father’s glory, so are we.

Our heart is that students will come away with a deeper understanding of our calling as believers. We hope that they will see that we are the carriers of the gospel into the world around us- whether that is in the states or overseas; college campus or corporate job; sports team or Starbucks friends. No matter where our path takes us we are compelled by the gospel to take it to those around us. It is a part of how we are wired- who we are made to be. We pray that students will surrender their lives to the Lord – trusting Jesus fully with their hopes, dreams, and desires- compelled by the urgency of getting the life-changing message of the gospel to their world as they know it today and wherever it takes them in the future.

We will be led this week by Todd Wagner, pastor of Watermark Community Church in Dallas and Cheryl Fletcher, director of Echo, the college ministry of First Evangelical Free Church in Austin. I am really excited about both of these speakers and would ask that you would be in prayer for them as they prepare to be with us for the week.

Here’s how to be praying:

1. Pray for Todd and Cheryl as they prepare to speak to us and pour their lives into our students.
2. That staff and students would leave DWC more surrendered to our calling as messengers of the gospel.
3. 1000+ Students will attend the conference (currently only 585 are registered)
4. Pray for partnerships with local churches for Day of Outreach.
5. Pray that DWC will be a great motivating place for students to go on Summer Project. (Specifically, we are praying for 400 from our Region)