The following is an update report I received on June 10th from the Director of the LT program in Virginia Beach:
"Our opening weekend had lots of energy. The students all are pursuing the word, prayer and evangelism strongly thru our biblical challenge system.
Evangelism was our initial focus and we have had 4 evangelism trainings alrerady: silent evangelism, bridge training, spiritual conversations, survey training and a bridge practice session. We've had one LT-wide survey time where every project saw at least one salvation. As of my knowledge today, we had 7 professions in week 2 and 6 during week 3. A good start!!
The talks have been good and the sessions are being run at a real high level of excellence. Worship is totally rocking!
Lives are changing! Stories are happening!"
Please keep praying for God to do great things in and through all the LT students this summer!
According to the US Department of Labor, the average American makes seven major decisions in their life. At least five of them begin in college.
Thanks to the generosity of some friends of ours giving us a couple tickets, we were able to spend the day at Seaworld on Tuesday, June 5th. It was a really fun day, one we were happy to spend with our dear friend Jenni Sternberg (Thanks, Jenni!).
There is a sampling of the photos we took in the photo gallery of this blog; but if you want to see all of them, click here.
These are a couple videos we took of the girls while there.
May 19th, we kicked off Leadership Training 2007. This is the day that students arrived at both the Virginia Beach and Wilmington, NC LT programs. The following week, more students checked in at Estes Park, CO. And finally, June 11th, the LT program in Columbus, OH will be kicked off. In all, there will be almost 220 students from 14 colleges and universities investing 8-12 weeks of their summer to grow deeper in their faith and learn how to effectively share it with others.
Overall, the mission of the LT programs are to make fully devoted followers of Christ out of college students.
Each LT, although nationally coordinated (by the National LT Director, and yours truly), is locally programmed. Here are the focuses, themes, or goals at the different locations (along with the Universities represented there):
Wilmington, NC - Focus: Helping the students develop a missional lifestyle. They've thought through what they would do if they had 10 weeks to train a missionary. [Virginia Tech & Ball State]
Virginia Beach, VA - Theme: A Heroic Generation: Truth, Justice and the Biblical Way. The main underlying theme is a challenge to live out a biblical life. They are mapping out challenges that push participants to elevate the Bible to a higher place in all that they do. [Univ. of Michigan, Michigan State, Univ. of Maryland]
Estes Park, CO - Goals:
- We want students to learn to submit to the Master in every area of their life. Stewardship of all time, all resources, relationships and gifts.
- We want students to walk in dynamic grace oriented relationship with their King. We will teach this relationship in all we do!
- We want students to live in cooperation with God for their entire life. We must prepare them for a lifetime of service to our King.
- We want students to learn to share their faith as a lifestyle. They must learn the message and how to share it! Evangelism training and practice is a must.
- Training in the spiritual disciplines is key. We will teach these practices and give opportunity to exercise them as well.
- We want to teach and uphold the Great Commission as beautifully as we can!
[Univ. of Missouri, Texas A&M, Univ. of Texas, Illinois State, Univ. of Illinois, Univ. of Wisconsin, Bowling Green State Univ.]
Columbus, OH - Focus: Personal growth, mentoring, developing ministry skills, and evangelism, while growing deeper with God and with one another. [Ohio State, Otterbein College]
Please join us as we pray that God would do amazing things both in and through these students this summer!
