Ministry Launching Live, Interactive Virtual Summits To Take On Youths' Most Challenging Faith Questions
Colorado-based Summit Ministries is taking its Christian worldview course online to answer some of American youths’ most challenging questions about God and culture.
Because of the coronavirus outbreak, it is unclear how many of the celebrated two-week long, in-person summer sessions will occur, hence the shift to the virtual format.
Normally, about eight sessions attended by 180-200 students each take place between Memorial Day and Labor Day, either at Summit Ministries headquarters at the base of the Rockies near Colorado Springs or at Covenant College near Lookout Mountain, Georgia.
Summit has canceled its first two in-person courses scheduled for June, but is hopeful the others will happen later in the summer.
The ministry will conduct multiple 5-day online events during the early weeks of summer.
“We have started a Summit Virtual,” Jeff Myers, president of Summit Ministries told The Western Journal. “So for the first time, Summit is wide open to lots of people. It usually sells out.”
“It’s live, interactive,” he explained and “gamified.”
“It’s a fast-paced kind of thing, where there are raffles and quizzes and questions, and quick transitions between one thing and another and surprise guests … [to] keep it as a very vibrant learning environment.”
The sessions, both in-person and online, are for young adults ages 16-to-25.
Olivia Brown, a recent college graduate, couldn’t say enough about her experience attending Summit’s summer sessions, when she was in high school.
“I enjoyed it so much that I went 2 years in a row … so that I could soak up as much knowledge as possible,” Brown told The Western Journal in a text message.
“I learned how world-views impact culture from a Christian-based perspective,” she added, “while we also had fun activities like going into local places in town.”
Myers affirmed the goal of Summit’s sessions is “to help equip and support young adults in embracing God’s truth and championing the biblical worldview.”
When asked the areas students get most challenged in their faith when they go off to college, Myers said there are really three.
“They come back from the classroom pretty sure, No. 1, that nobody really knows what is true. And No. 2, that God is not relevant to anything that’s important,” he explained.
The final issue, he said, is that their “Christian morality isolates them from their friends and from the kinds of things they would like to do.”
Summit takes on these and other issues with the help of top Christian apologists and speakers about faith and culture.
Sean McDowell explains that biblical faith goes beyond evidence, but that it is not opposed to evidence. https://t.co/R0qvDGfTlx pic.twitter.com/PBQYFvb4mX
— Summit Ministries (@summitmn) April 29, 2020
Myers said some of the questions addressed include, “How do we know there is a God? How do we know the Bible is true? Should I be pro-life or pro-abortion? What should I think about sexuality? Does the Bible say anything about marriage and man-woman, or man-man, or woman-woman? What does the Bible say about gender?”
“Is there anything in the Bible that can guide me in talking to my socialist friends?”
“It’s a wide range,” Myers said. “From sociology to economics to philosophy to theology.”
Students also engage in small group discussions to further dig into the material presented.
Summit Ministries will be conducting a Facebook Live online preview of the sessions on Thursday at 6 p.m. Mountain Time (8 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time).
“This will be the kind of thing that can give parents some hope for this summer and give students something productive to do,” Myers said of the virtual programs.
“If they begin the summer this way, then it could change the course of the rest of the summer, which will help them be better prepared to go back to school in the fall.”
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
