This past weekend students from the CO Minneapolis region took part in the CO Sent conference. This conference focuses on the three areas students are ‘sent’ to after graduation— City, Campus, and World. We had a chance to hear from Wayne Grudem on viewing business as mission, Paul Poteat on what it’s like to be on staff with Campus Outreach in Minneapolis, and Laura Watkins’ experience in international missions.
City
Wayne made the point that business in and of itself is good and glorifying to God. When God created the world, He created humans to flourish(Genesis 1:26-31)and business is a means for us to do that. Business is a way for humans to create value out of things that didn’t have value before;a way to love our neighbors by creating something that brings them joy, convenience, support, or benefit. Businesses allows people to be reached in closed countries for the gospel as well as creating job opportunities through sustainable businesses in an effort to end poverty in developing countries.
Campus
Paul talked about the value of college ministry, which being an audience of all college students, made a lot of sense. We have all seen the impact that college can have on our walks with God, and seen the way that God works in the lost hearts on our campuses. Paul talked about what a strategic time college is in life to reach people with the gospel. College is a time when a lot of big life questions can come up as we figure out what it is like to live on our own. A lot of those questions can be answered as we grow deeper in our relationship with God and we see what our true reason for life is— to glorify him.
World
Laura told a little bit of her story of how she got from a college student who was not very interested in CO, to going on staff in for CO Minneapolis for 5 years, to going across the world to be on staff with CO Thailand. God’s desire is that people from all nations will one day worship him (Revelation 7:9, 1 Timothy 2:4) and Laura’s story was a small glimpse into what that looks like. God uses average people that don’t necessarily have a strong calling to the world to draw people to himself.