Conference challenges state’s youth to develop deeper relationships with God

Flying straight down at 180 miles per hour with only a parachute between him and the Montgomery Riverwalk Stadium, Sammy Gilbreath epitomized the meaning of risk.
   
Making a visual connection with the students attending the Alabama Baptist Youth Evangelism Conference July 23–24, Gilbreath skydived into the Montgomery stadium to kick off the theme, “There are always risks.”
   
Gilbreath, director of evangelism for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM), said he wanted students to know that there are always risks when they take a stand for Christ.
   
“People may make fun of you and ostracize you,” he said. “It is a whole lot easier to do what is politically correct than what is right.”
   
Teman Knight, an associate in the SBOM office of evangelism, said 458 decisions for Christ were made at the youth conference with 95 people professing Christ for the first time.
   
Knight also noted that 54 students surrendered their lives to full-time ministry.
    
“One of the purposes for this conference is to have kids more deeply involved in a relationship with God,” Knight said. “We want them to make commitments to live for Him, walk closer with Him and be more evangelistic.
   
“They have to get out on the edge and never settle for mediocrity.”
   
Rob Jackson, pastor of Central Baptist Church in Decatur, said the conference was a great opportunity to gather students together from across the state to worship God. He said the students he brought were taught that “Christ demands us to be radically different from the world.”
   
“With so many kids not living for Christ,” Jackson said, “to see thousands of kids who are living for Christ lets my kids know that there is a remnant all over the state.”
  
 Gilbreath said the conference was designed to provide for every possible worship style from a concert by Skillet to more traditional worship by Kimberly Perry to Brock Gill, an illusionist, sticking swords through a box with his wife in it.
“One of the greatest things about the conference was that there was a wide spectrum of different acts,” Gilbreath said.
  
“As I told the people up on stage, you may not like everything you see, but there is something for everyone.”
   
Gilbreath said every church should be setting aside any agendas or prejudices about worship styles in order to reach kids with Christ.
   
“We have to tolerate each other’s worship preferences, and I think the kids and the adults were willing to do that,” Gilbreath said.
   
“The bottom line here is the number of decisions we can get for Christ.”
   
John Marks Sr., director of missions for Central Association, said he learned from the variety of speakers and worship styles and saw the possibility of using the same concept in his association.
   
“The concept is that it doesn’t matter what your taste is,” he said. “It makes sense to set aside our own desires to bring people to Christ.”
   
Gilbreath said youth conferences help to inspire students by letting them know that they are not the only believers in their schools or in their communities.
   
“We wanted to give our students a sense of encouragement,” he said. “Sometimes, students may think they are the only ones in school who are believers, but when they come here and see that there are many more who are believers, it is encouraging for them.
   
He added, “Large groups help them all gain courage.”