From July 28-31, the Los Angeles church of Christ hosted the annual Southwest Singles Conference in Rancho Mirage, CA. The Singles Ministry of the Sacramento Metro church of Christ took it upon themselves through the Spirit's leading to go and learn from this conference to not only share within ourselves the changes we need to make, but to feed of different perspectives within our two congregations.
I arrived from Sacramento to the venue just as the starlight devotional began. People as far away as Toronto shared their visions and dreams about what they see happening within the Lord's Church. The official kickoff was a song devotional based on the Psalms of Ascent (Psalms 120-134), hence the theme "Elevate". Later, we went into breakout sections, and I attended a Christian evidences class entitled "Bones, Boxes, and Copper Coins". The speakers not only gave me a new insight on the Bible and the early church, especially the lives of women, but reminded the attendees that the best evidences of Jesus and His Church is found in Scripture.
Later, I attended a cl;ass entitled "Robots, Rambo, and Relationships", which exposed my biggest weakness of relating to the Body of Christ and learned some practicals on how to really build them (One start-be myself). After eating one of several meals from the women in the church, (which not only saved me a ton of money on meals, but blew my mind away), I heard the first keynote speech from AT Arneson of the Chicago church of Christ as he shared candidly about being a cancer survivor and losing his mother to cancer (she knew the Lord when she passed on).
The next two breakout sessions, the first one on worship, is simply about glorifying God and lifting Him up, not about music, lifting holy hands, or even praise. The last, and most challenging was an evangelism class entitled "Jesus and Chewbacca". The Star Wars analogy exposed how unrelatable I am on the mission field and how ineffective I am on winning the lost. Just as within the church, I must be myself to build stronger relationships. The Sunday Sermon by AT Arneson using Acts 27 about spiritual storms as well as the HOPE worldwide offering for the churches in the Ivory Coast and Honduras concluded the conference.
As I traveled home, I knew that the Spirit moved through each of the attendees. Now, it is time to make changes to glorify God. Look for my insights on the breakout classes on my blog in the coming week. To God be the glory!
Charles Linzie
