Every year for the past five I have had the privilege of taking a group of young people to the Our Generation Summit in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee during the holiday break. My first acquaintance with this group was at a summer camp at Fort Bluff, TN. There a group of college-aged young people had gathered together for the cause of world missions. My daughter was one of those young people, and I, as an interested father, went to the camp to check it out.

What I encountered there surprised and thrilled me. Here, under the banner of Baptists Committed to World Evangelism (BCWE) and the leadership of missionary-pastor Austin Gardner, was a small group of young people who sincerely believed they could evangelize the world in this generation. Not only did they believe it, they had plans to do it. Not only did they have plans, they had resources and manpower. Mostly, though, they had the enthusiasm and optimism of youth. And it was clearly contagious. A worker with youth at the time, I clearly saw the advantage of getting young people under the influence of this amazing group of missionaries. So began our trips to the Summit.

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Message for the Summit ’10 from Jason Holt on Vimeo.

Looking over the set up and praying for the day!

Children’s Sunday School class on our first day in the new building!

Pictures from the morning service from the back corner.

God blessed Pastor Ronald Tubillas and the Spanish church greatly today. What a beautiful picture of beautiful people!

Our first Sunday evening prayer time in the new building. The first of the year! God has been so good to us giving us this building. Betty, my wife, said today that she was more excited about the church and the building right now than when we first started. God has been so good to us!

What a good crowd God gave us tonight. The excitement about what God is doing was all over the house. I really believe that God is pouring it out on us!

I love a Bible that is marked up as the person seeks God and studies His Word.

The ladies gather around Teri Snode to pray for her in the Blessing Service.

The men gather to pray for Travis Snode. This is a wonderful time as we express our love to our God, His work, and His missionaries.

What can I say, God has been very good to us. This was a wonderful day. I am looking forward to all that He is going to do in our lives over the next few weeks, months, and years.

The men gather around Travis Snode to pray for him and his ministry. The ladies also gather around Teri and pray for her. It is a beautiful evening of their home church just telling them how much we love them and how much we thank God for their surrender and service to Him.

The church presented Teri with a box of letters for their family. We hope it will be a box of memories to remember how much we love them and how much we care about them. The people are asked to write a letter to each of them. They are placed in the box then on a down day they can pull a letter and remember that someone loves them.

In this picture the men and women that will share a word of blessing with each of them are lining up. We then share kind words with Travis and Teri publicly. It is a wonderfully sweet time.

My beautiful wife, Betty, here shares some kind words with the couple.

The church presents Travis with a sword that is engraved with the words, “Has your sword tasted blood?” Those words come from a message I used to preach on the road in mission’s conferences. The sword is a symbol of the Word of God which is sharper than any two edged sword and should be used to draw spiritual blood, get souls saved, lives changed, people maturing in the faith.

God gave us 128 people in attendance for this great service!

The following comment just came in through email about the Summit. It is a wonderful testimony.

I know why it’s called the Summit now…

For weeks, we have been excited about taking a trip to NYC for our 5 year anniversary next week. While we were looking forward to the summit, we could not wait for our trip to NYC.  But, something really bad has happened, now that we have been to the “top” we don’t even want to go on our trip now.  Kinda seems like a waste of time to go look at a bunch of buildings and statues.  We want so badly to reach the world that anything else seems so wasteful.  Guess that’s the problem with going to the Summit!

Also I was talking to our two friends from Northern Ireland who came to the Summit. Stephen and Laura both said that it was exactly what they needed and that without a doubt God had sent them there.

At Vision, tonight, we had several testimonies about how much God used the Summit in their lives. It was a great time.

Also one of the pastors who had traveled from Louisiana told me that it had been wonderful. Another from South Carolina thanked me for the way God had worked in the lives of his people.

God gave us a wonderful Summit!