Grad Conference comments from student Ben Perrot

I thought you may be interested in hearing how Ben enjoyed and was challenged by the conference last weekend. Thanks to you all for praying.

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This year’s Great Lakes West InterVarsity Graduate Conference, “Advancing the Kingdom: Evangelism and the University,” provided students from universities across the Midwest to learn about what it truly means to be part of the Kingdom of God and the implications this might hold for evangelism. Allen Wakabayashi, the keynote speaker, challenged a commonly held distillation of the Gospel message as he argued that the central theme of the Gospels is actually not the salvation of individuals through Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection; rather, the Scriptures emphasize Jesus’ establishment of the Kingdom of God here on earth. The promise of redemption and our passage from death into life consequently affect not only our lives beyond this world, but also our lives here and now within it. The Kingdom of God continues to battle the fallen order of sin and death, until it will defeat the latter for good at the Second Coming. As members of God’s Kingdom who live in this “in-between” space of spiritual warfare, therefore, our call to evangelism is critical. It is only by following Jesus’ example in awakening the lost from darkness into light that we will be able to continue His establishment of the Father’s Kingdom.

This weekend provided me with the awesome and humbling privilege of learning and worshipping with my brothers and sisters in Christ who originally hail from all parts of the globe, and it was precisely in worshipping with such a diverse community that the notion of the “here-and-now-ness” of God’s Kingdom was most powerfully impressed upon my heart. I realized that our God—our God Whose eye knows when every little sparrow falls, Who knows the number of hairs on every head, Who leaves the ninety-nine sheep to find the one that has gone astray and rejoices at that one’s finding—that our God is not just a God for individuals, but also a God Who through the sacrifice of His Son has redeemed and reclaimed from evil the entirety of His glorious creation. In response to this, I have come to realize that no three-minute reduction of Christ’s message can be sufficient to spread the Good News of His transformation of a broken and sinful world order which encompasses and threatens all of humanity. Mere words cannot adequately express the full implications of life within the Kingdom of God; rather, our very lives themselves must serve as ceaseless examples of Christ’s transforming power as we seek to conform our hearts to His will and follow the godly principles of His Kingdom. In short: Our walk must be our witness.

- Ben Parrot