Youth Conference 2011, Report from Mark

This year was a great year for us!  We had almost 1100 students and leaders from the road and off the road system.    Almost 1/3 of our students came from villages and from the South East which means that they had to fly to Anchorage (some had to take a ferry to get to the airport!). 

Highlights:
1100 in Attendance - on location
3564 individual computers logged on to watch our live production streamed
43 States!
41 Countries!

Speakers: 
Banning Liebscher / Jesus Culture, Redding, CA

Banning did a great job.  He spoke on holiness and intimacy.  Banning did a great job connecting with the students and leaders.  I love his passion for revival, however, what I loved even more was his clear and compelling call to live holy.  He was very clear that without holiness, we will never see the supernatural that many of us desire.  Banning will be back to Alaska!

Jay Mooney – National Youth Director
Jay spoke our Speed the Light service and a leaders session for us.  Jay hit it out of the park!  He spoke a powerful, compelling word on Jesus’ challenge to Peter about “taking” care of my little ones!  He set the stage for our STL offering.  We had just over $26,000.00 come in for our offering at the conference.   There are several things we did that I think will help us with sustaining STL giving!

We printed self-addressed, postage paid remittance envelopes that students/leaders could use, and take home with them.

The envelopes gave people 3 options to give:
1.  Cash
2.  Credit/Debit cards ($11,000 worth of the giving)

3.  Recurring automatic debit ( we have almost $1,000.00 of recurring [monthly] giving now)

We also asked students to make a 30 day STL goal and to send their offering in with the envelopes!  We are excited about what that will do long-term for STL awareness!

Jay also spoke to our leaders concerning campus ministry.  Many of my youth pastors came up and said..."WOW" Jay painted a picture for campus ministry that everyone in this room can get involved in.  Thanks Jay for your leadership!

We also recorded a live worship CD this year with a 60 voice youth choir!  It was epic!  Our worship leader was Adam Barta (www.iclv.com) who is on staff as the Worship/Creative Arts pastor at the International Church of Las Vegas!  He is super easy to work with and I believe is one of the top worship leaders in North America!  Super humble and amazingly anointed!  Our producer was from Seattle - Brandon Bee (brandonbeemusic.com). 

Lastly -- we launched a 30day Push manual that is a workbook companion to or Alaska Youth Ministries App (iTunes & Android).  It is a growth manual designed to help students deepen core spiritual habits 30 days following conference.   You can download this manual for free @ www.akyouth.org.

Blessings,

Mark