Catalyst 2008

Hello Everyone,

I'm writing at 12:30am from Windermere Camp and Conference Center in Missouri to ask you to pray for Catalyst 2008, our annual student leadership conference. I'm directing the conference for the third time, and wanted to both update you all and ask for your prayer!

So far, the conference is going great. We've been going for about 24 hours so far, and there's really a sweet spirit among the group so far. We talked about vision during the day today and then tonight, we had a celebration service where we commemorated over 50 students who had made decisions to start following Jesus over the last year. Part of the celebration included a video testimony of the "emails from God" story I posted last fall; I wish you all could have seen the faces of these women as they told the story of God's incredible pursuit.

On a more serious note, there were six different stories told tonight by students about God's intervention to actually save their lives or lives of their friends from suicide. Four of the students who gave their lives to Jesus this year were on the brink of taking their own life, but in each case, God intervened and not only rescued their physical lives, but breathed new spiritual life into them. Praise God for the way he finds, rescues, and saves!

Here's a few prayer points for the remainder of our time (we end on Friday at noon):

* You can be praying for my connections with male students. I've had some great conversations with guys from around Iowa so far, and God is growing a hunger in me to minister to men in a more tangible way...I'm curious as to what he's up to.
* You can pray that our students catch a vision of witness on campus. Often times witness can be a point of significant fear and anxiety for our students; our hope is to see this overcome by God's Spirit.
* You can pray for my preparation for Thursday night. I'm slotted to speak, but we purposely decide to plan the night "on site" to allow us the flexibility to discern what God is up to. While this is helpful, it also creates a bit of an urgent feel to the night, so I'd love prayer for clarity of thought and for the power and passion necessary to call for committment after a long week of ministry.

Thanks for your prayers!
Jon