'Jesus Is The Gospel'--Jeff Bogue

After the Momentum Youth Conference choir started the session with a song, Brent Saba from Urban Hope, told the story of how drug dealers helped send Urban Hope students to conference.

Jeff Bogue introduced the National Youth Offering. He said it would be divided 3 ways. Part of the money would go to the Urban Hope Training Center, part to We Care Pittsburgh expenses, and part to help discipleship happen the way it needs to. Dominique Perry sang while the offering was collected.

TK, Director of Operation Barnabas, talked about how students can get training through Operation Barnabas summer ministry teams. TK interviewed two former Operation Barnabas students who talked about what God taught them through their OB experience.

Ryan Johnson from Crucified Ministries in Johnstown, PA, introduced the Keystone OB team. The group performed a powerful pantomime to the song "Broken".

Steve Fee and his band took the stage to students rushing forward to join them in energetic worship to our God. After the time of singing, Ed Lewis paused for a word of prayer as students made their way back to their seats. Then Ed introduced Jeff Bogue, Lead Pastor of Grace Church, Norton, OH.

Jeff said up front he wanted to talk to the conference about what the Gospel is. He didn't mean when they accepted Christ, but knowing how Jesus is. His approach was a Bible study with 2,000 people and asked students to turn to the book of John in order to "meet Jesus."

By using passages in the book of John, Jeff described the person of Christ to the students. He went through the story of Jesus turning the water into wine to illustrate Jesus having tension with his mother and that He could have fun. Jeff went deeper into the book of John and talked about Jesus driving out the money changers in the temple illustrating how Jesus was a righteous, holy, perfect God.

To show how Jesus isn’t limited by time and space, Jeff turned to John 4 where Jesus healed the official’s son without going to the son.

To illustrate Jesus’ control over the heavens and earth, Jeff referred to the story of Jesus walking on the water. In John 11 Jesus healed Lazarus showing Jesus is the resurrection and the life.

"Jesus is a friend, Jesus can relate, Jesus is holy, Jesus is pure, Jesus can manipulate time and space, He can walk on water, He is the resurrection and the life," emphasized Jeff. "Jesus overcomes life and death because He is the son of God sent by His father. This is the Gospel. This is what we proclaim when we read the Word of God."

Jeff’s last illustration was from John 13 where Jesus washed His disciple’s feet declaring Himself to be the way for sins to be cleansed. Then Jeff described the crucifixion process that Jesus would have gone through. Hi death gave victory to sin. This gave a way to interact with the Gospel.

"Jesus isn’t a t-shirt, or a pop song, or a youth conference," Jeff summed up. "Jesus is the Good News. If you can’t tell people about Jesus, then you don’t know Him".

Jeff asked Steve Fee to just take the conference into a time of worship for students to fall on their faces before God--to make tonight all about the Gospel, the person, the power of Jesus Christ.

Steve closed the conference in worshipful songs while students solemnly dealt with God.