Last weekend was the Epic East-coast Conference in Philadelphia, a meeting of many of the Epic movements from schools along the east coast. This year’s conference was extended by a day, taking advantage of Martin Luther King Jr. day when the students had no classes.
Pastor Kenji Adachi of Ambassador Bible Church in Virginia gave our main session talks, exploring how we can share the gospel of Christ not just with the Bible and through what we say but throughout all the areas of our lives.
A highlight of the weekend was the day of outreach, a day where staff and students went out into the city of Philadelphia and used various conversation starters to share their faith with whoever might listen. My group of eight paired up and used questionnaires designed to help us understand the spiritual climate of our location (in our case, the University of Pennsylvania campus) and the specific person we were interviewing. After we finished the questionnaire with someone, we’d ask them if we could share what we believe. Many are open to at least hearing about this. For some students, it was a new experience to share their faith in this way; others have done this kind of outreach many times.
We had a record turnout to the conference this year from Penn State with 55 students and staff attending. Praise God for this! Thank you for your prayer and financial support that helped pay for scholarships for all of our attendees.