Thank you for your partnership and prayers as we flew to Vancouver for BUILD – our conference for all Bridges staff from around the country. Our family was reunited on Sunday night and we had good quality time throughout the week. We all stayed healthy throughout the conference, and made it home as planned late last night.
BUILD covered a lot of great topics in-depth dealing with ministry to international students:
- How can we be a home away from home?
- How do we proclaim Christ early and often, in light of cultural barriers?
- What prevents us from taking risks in our ministry, and how do we push the boundaries?
- How can we give away leadership to students and volunteers?
With each conference session, there were several opportunities for rigorous round-table discussion. I’m still trying to digest quite a bit that we covered. Honestly my brain is still kind of full of technical production details!
What keeps running through my mind were the words of Dr. Jim Coffield, one of our guest speakers: “If you’re going to make it through the difficult seasons of ministry, you can’t just love the idea of Jesus. ‘Professional Christianity’ won’t get you through this. It has to be personal.” I can never be reminded enough of the importance of walking closely with my Savior! May we all draw closer to him this week.