I told her this is my biggest challenge yet, I have never organised a seminar or talk before and I still wanted Hope Journey to Organise one, not a normal seminar, something different from the regular inspirational seminars and workshops.
The idea of the Evangelism 101 started from a conversation with Ebo a Childhood friend who is more than a brother now. We were discussing the way forward for Hope Journey and the idea just popped up. It was an "aha" moment we felt like this event will be large and we envisioned it to become a worldwide Evangelist conference in future.
We pitched the idea to other Hope Board members who are the governing body and we all agreed to make it happen.
Everything was moving on well as planned until we all started our various final year projects and end of semester examinations. It became too much to handle publicity went down, organisers were not picking up calls and things were looking like we were on the verge of a flopped event.
Few days to the Event, Relationships were so frayed that I thought I might loose my friends which will affect the progress of Hope Journey. Some close relatives thought I have become too paranoid and I was over thinking about the Event. Well I was because personally I am a perfectionist and I hate flopped events, I rarely attend events and when I attend I want my expectations met and that is what I wanted for the attendees of Evangelism 101.
Getting funds for Christian non entertainment events are not easy and simple, nobody wanted to sponsor us, and its interesting we live a Christian majority country. We got a few support from startups and friends by God's grace.
The event day.
It was raining season and it rained on the D day of the event. Attendees were generally late and it was scary. An event that targeted 60 people was seeing 10-15 people around but in the end we had over 50 people attendees, 10 people more than those who registered online to attend.
The speakers delivered very inspiring talks on the subject of evangelism and soul winning. For the first time evangelism looked too cool to more people.
After the Event, pictures of the flooded social media of the various local Christian platforms, more people regretted not making it to the event so we are hopeful that next year the number of attendees will increase.
Personally, I think Evangelism 101 has the potential to become the "Ted Talk" of the Christian community one-day, some day.
I will close this blog post with an email I sent to members of the Hope Journey Community
Team,
Thank you for coming,
So it was Evangelism 101 Seminar.
Every once in a while, a revolutionary something comes along that changes everything in Christ's Church and Missionary work. And Hope Journey has been – well, first of all, one’s very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your lifetime for Christ.
In 1800s the Missionaries came, it didn't only introduce Christ to us but it also enlightened us.
The 1900s were the era of Scripture Union, Full Gospel, Gideons International who were full of young people like us. It didn't just introduce sweet fellowship in interdenominational unity it pushed the Gospel forward.
Who knows what Hope Journey is up to next?
I am not saying we are big or larger and everything is perfect with us, we have to attempt to do greater things for God with a big vision.Proverbs 29:18
Yes, We have challenges, because this is a group of college students and young people who are tinkering around an idea, juggling between studies and winning souls for christ through show of love. We won't play blame game but rather we will continue to find solutions to our challenges till we get better.
Thank you all for your commitment to this dream, it's a God dream.
God bless you.
With Regards,
Ikay.
