Text by Grace Tan
At the workshops at The Zone 2009 Youth Conference
The Zone 2009 Youth Conference started with a big bang right at the stroke of 12pm on the 25th of July. With snaking queues and faithful young hearts eagerly queuing up to have their ticket stubs torn and wrist bands and goodie bags collected, one could see that everyone had come with expectant hearts to receive a greater portion of God’s love for us. I was part of that snaking queue eagerly waiting to step into the zone of His grace and love.
The United Team!
The first of three workshops began at 1pm with Jad Gillies and seven other members of the United team. It was an informal setting with sharing from Jad and introduction of the United team members and the various roles of serving that they took up in church. Jad began the session by addressing the main goal of the United team which was to serve God and building His church in the process. Whilst hearing how each of these United team members stepped up as volunteers with a heart of service to the kingdom of Christ, I was filled with a revelation that God had empowered each of His children with gifts that can be used to build the church. I realised the servers or the ‘volunteers’ as the United team calls them forms the backbone of the church. I am encouraged that God sees and honours the sacrifices that a server has made. Anything given to Christ, will never return the same way again and that includes time, rest and many other sacrifices made.
Joel Houston
Joel Houston was the second speaker for the afternoon workshops. The title of his workshop was “From the Inside Out”. He began the workshop by telling us that “the church is part of something bigger than ourselves”. Church is not just about me or you. It is not about the gifts and talents that a few of us seemingly possess but the sacrifices of many. He expounded on many verses and one of them that particularly spoke to me was Romans 11:36 “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever! Amen” All of my life belongs to God and hence every part of my life shall be for His glory. Joel then defined the meaning of life in three aspects – truth, love and justice. To live a life in truth he quoted Mother Theresa, “Truth is Humility”. Truth is about being humble, to be who we are, just as we are. We do not need to put up a wall of pretense. Our lives are not about our own stories but God’s plan and His story lived out in our lives. A life defined by love is to realise that love is about coming to an end of ourselves. To die to our flesh and be anchored and rooted with a love for people that can only come from God because He is love. Lastly, a life defined by justice is to live a life pursuing justice on earth and not to be hardened and ignore the injustice that we see around us in the world. We are, after all, called to be the light of the world, and wherever we are in our daily lives, we can make a difference.
Pastor Judah Smith
Pastor Judah Smith rounded off the afternoon preaching about success and the story of Joseph. He began by shared that the Christian faith is nothing more than a continual response to God who is the initiator of our relationship with Him. He shared about Manasseh and Ephraim and how the first born blessings was intentionally given to Ephraim instead. Ephraim means “fruitful” and Manasseh means “make forgetful”. I can now be fruitful because God has made my sins forgetful. We, The Zone Ministry, are the generation of the right-handed blessings. And indeed there is nowhere we can run to escape from His blessings.
I am convinced that God has chosen to use each and everyone in The Zone Ministry for His story and His glory.
1 Peter 2:9 “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
