Jason began his talk with brutal honestly, describing how in high school he had one foot in the world and one foot in the ‘youth group world’. Two of his reasons for this, which might resonate with some of us, were that:

1. He had met some religious people that were weird, and he didn’t want to be weird.
2. He didn’t want to lose his personality.

He later found out, by the way, that those weird religious folks were probably weird before they became holy. Fair enough. And he has also discovered since that it’s sin that actually dulls our personality, while God helps us to be fully ourselves. Retweet.

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We want to introduce you to the 2018 interns of the Office of Youth Ministry for the Archdiocese of St. Louis— Joe, Katie, Sam, and Chris.

These amazing humans work all summer to make sure that both of our conferences go as planned! They have, collectively, been to 18 Steubenville Conferences! They have gone as teens, young adults, youth minister interns, chaperones, ushers, seminarians, and now as interns.

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How do you describe what seems indescribable?

This is my sixth experience of Saturday Night Adoration at a Steubenville conference, and every time I try to describe the time, and every time words fail me. After some reflection, I realize that this inability to voice my encounters with Christ are normal. I am human, of course I can’t properly communicate a non-human encounter. I believe that each and every person in this arena tonight will agree.

But this is the beauty of Christ. Where words fail, God speaks. He reveals Himself to us in a way that we can receive and whether or not we can understand the encounter at the time, we know He is there. He understands that we, in our finite human capacity, need to encounter Him on our own level. He comes to each and every one of us in our own unique way, whether He brings us to our knees in tears, or He calms the seemingly unending storms within our hearts. He knows our hearts better than we ever will know them, so he speaks to each one individually because He is all-loving AND all-powerful.

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Rachel loves movies, especially those epic movies in which our heroes lay down their lives so that others might live: Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, and even Inside Out (from which she showed us an awesome clip).

In John 3:16 we read:

“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

This powerful verse proclaims the most heroic story ever told; and though we never tire of seeing other versions of heroic self-sacrifice on the big screen, sometimes the most powerful version of all – that of God’s love revealed on the Cross – can lose its impact. Maybe because we’ve heard the story so many times, it seems like it’s not that big of a deal and we can learn nothing new about it. But God always wants to teach us more, and He is always willing to do something new within each one of us if we let Him.

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In his session this afternoon, Jimmy speaks on truth. In his talk he gives us permission to wrestle with the truth, but urges us not to settle for less than it. Jimmy Mitchell: Truth Revealed Jimmy is from Nashville and is founder of Love Good, a company which supports and invests in artists and songwriters with the goal of evangelizing culture with beauty that is rooted in truth. The logo for this company is a heart with an arrow through it. Beauty pierces the heart and, once wounded, the heart cannot help but want to trace that wound back to it’s source. The wound often in our culture is truth. The source? God.

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