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“To Seek and Save the Lost”

Key verse Luke 19:10 “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

 This year Humber and Ryerson ministries from Toronto joined with Montreal UBF to have a Summer Bible Conference together at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Quebec from July 1-3, 2016. It was well served by a lot of young conference messengers, small but emerging worship teams from each ministry as well as the Montreal HBF Youth Orchestra. 

We learned that the greatest problem in the world today is human lostness. The lost are spiritually dead and unresponsive to God. Jesus came into the world, not only to seek lost people, but to rescue and save them.  To start the conference, s. Denise Guerrero from Montréal gave a moving opening message on this theme with a video. It had a powerful Bible narrative about the impossible condition that Jesus rescued us from. Also, on Friday Charles Kim Jr from Ryerson UBF gave us an excellent message about Jesus and Zacchaeus. Like Zacchaeus he could testify that Jesus also made him a son of Abraham, though he avoided Jesus during his teen and university years. S. Joseph Minielli from Humber UBF gave us the main message on Saturday morning based on Luke 15 called “The Lost Are Found” from the parable of the prodigal son. Usually Jesus spoke harshly to the Pharisees, but this time he gave them a tender-hearted story about how a wonderful father strove to restore his love and relationship with both his prodigal and elder son. On Saturday we also held the following track sessions:

• Dealing With Disappointment.
• Maintaining Long-Term Relationships in Christ.
• Biblical Principles for Economically Hard or Prosperous Times
• Overcoming Obstacles in Evangelism.

These Track Sessions were well attended and helped us to deal with sin and discouragement in life and ministry work that would otherwise linger in our lives. During the conference we did “Interactive Sharing” where we sat in groups and shared what we received from the messages. It was healing to our souls to honestly share our problems, sins and the way God has been working to rescue us from all kinds of problems in our lives. 

On Saturday night s. David Jumeau delivered a message on 1 Peter 1:4-9 called, “Rescued by Joy”.  We experienced new love, joy and faith in Christ as s. David compared transient human happiness with the Christian joy that is born in adversity. The rest of the evening we heard wonderful testimonials and reflections by Frank, Peter, Martine and Rita. Humber prepared 2 spirit special songs and the Montreal worship team led us in an epic worship time.  To close the conference s. Marcel Rodney gave us a message based on Romans 10 called, “How Beautiful are the Feet”. It was moving to hear how s. Marcel described apostle Paul`s greatest struggle with his conscience before God to deal the black hole of his own people`s rejection of the Messiah. In Canada we face more and more apathy and indifference from students, though we wish it were not true. Regardless of the situation, those who move to spread the good news are truly beautiful and part of the greatest mobilization operation in the history of the world.

Overall we thank and praise  God that through our conference we could experience God`s rescuing, restoring, and reassuring love and make new decisions to pray for students on our campuses and for God to raise holy nation people from young people we invite and serve.