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Mike Durning, wrapping up here at the SGI conference.

I have to leave before the last plenary session so I can get back to my church for Prayer Meeting tonight, but I wanted to make a few comments in closing.

There is no way my blogging can do justice to this conference. This conference is far and away the best Missions Conference I have ever attended. The fact that it is geared toward young adults—the prime audience for missionary recruitment—is therefore all the more important.

Mike Durning reporting in from the SGI conference.

This workshop is entitled “The Antidote to Animism.” J.D. Crowley completes the discussion from yesterday’s workshop.

He recapped yesterday’s session, briefly.

He emphasized that submission of Satan to God’s power and authority—the fact that Satan cannot overcome God’s power is key. Animism puts God and demons on the same side of the great divide. Christianity puts the trandscendent Creator God on the other side, far and above Satan, demons, and all the other created beings. The Word and the gospel puts God on the other side of that divide. And this is the key to converting animists.

Mike Durning reporting in from the SGI Conference.

I missed the early morning plenary session (Dave Doran) and workshops because I was doing some interviews. They will appear somewhere on the web in the weeks ahead.

Mike Durning reporting in from the SGI conference.

After a powerful set of hymns, prayers, and Scripture reading, and a report from a European conference much like SGI, the night’s message was given by Dr. Mark Minnick, pastor from Greenville, South Carolina and professor from Bob Jones University.

He began by expressing how inspiring it has been to be at this conference and see a new generation motivated by missions.

Mike Durning again reporting from the SGI conference.

The workshop was titled “Animism,” and was led by J.D. Crowley, who has spent 15 years on the field in Cambodia.

He began by asserting that almost every missionary was probably going to serve in an animistic culture—even many of those that are nominally Buddhist, or Catholic, or Muslim, can be largely animistic with a veneer of these religions, applied via syncretism.

He gave examples from Cambodia. He said about 2 billion people are practitioners.

Mike Durning reporting in from SGI.

The next Plenary Session began with worship and prayer. A new song, written by Chris Anderson with music by Greg Habegger, was introduced in honor of this 10^th National Conference. “For the Sake of His Name” was beautiful.

J.D. Crowley was the speaker. He has been in Cambodia for 15 years doing church planting.

His text was Acts 1:8, but he introduced his topic by saying that Acts 1:8 is a hijacked verse in common use. The emphasis of many sermons on this verse is that we are called to identify our Jerusalem, our Samaria, and our uttermost parts for Evangelism.

Greg Linscott is also tweeting the conference here

Mike Durning here reporting from the first night of SGI’s 10^th national conference.

The blend of people in the auditorium is interesting. Of course, there are hundreds of young adults of college age here, and I look forward to talking to a few, to discern how many of them are from which churches or colleges or which arms of Fundamentalism. More on that later, as Tim (conference director) gets us some demographic data.

Tim Jordan (Calvary Baptist, Lansdale, PA) gave the first message in this plenary session, after a powerful time of simple worship to a blend of old hymns and a few of the contemporary worship songs with profound words, like “Before the Throne of God.”