By Jenni Beaver—The first ever Elevate Conference went off without a hitch on the last weekend of February.
Although the crowd wasn’t the size of Winter Jam, it was a small group of college students who were excited to attend and worship God.
Morningside College sophomore, Tracy Oeltjenbruns, enjoyed many aspects of the conference. “The speakers really challenged me, the small groups were encouraging, and the comedians were hilarious.”
Between the worship and speakers, students were put into life groups, where they had the opportunity to talk in a non-judgmental setting comprised of a group of their peers.
Morningside College student, Desiree Ponce, said, “I loved the life groups because you were able to get in to a more intimate conversation with other brothers and sisters in Christ.”
On Saturday night, after all of the life groups were finished and the last speaker had completed his sermon, a popular Christian band took the stage. The Digital Age led students out of the conference, and they were happy to be involved.
Mark Waldrop said, “If we were to pick one group of people or one demographic of people to be around it’d be you guys [college students]… I feel like that moment is just so pivotal when you can decide, okay, here’s my vocation and here’s what I want to do with my life. Here’s how I can be a disciple for Christ.”
Mark and the band encouraged the students to look at college, not just as a place to do homework and find a career, but also a place to find their purpose for Christ. As students who go through the week putting in effort for future plans, Mark wanted to make sure they were all reminded why they were doing this work.
“It’s really easy to forget that the whole story of the Bible is telling people, hey, you’re called to be where you are… we want to empower people to really live out the gospel,” said Mark.
The Elevate Conference may have been small, but it brought together students from around the Siouxland area for one purpose, to worship God.
Oeltjenbruns summed it up by saying, “It was really neat during worship to look around and see all these students worshipping God together.”
The mission of the conference was to make a difference in the lives of college students, and make a difference it did.
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