Organizers and participants of previous Higher Calling Conferences gathered at a press conference on October 1 to prepare for the upcoming conference.
Korea Campus Crusade for Christ (KCCC), a para-church ministry that focuses on sharing the gospel and making disciples in university campuses, has been holding annual revival conferences for Korean American high school and college students for the past 11 years, and will be holding another conference this December, called Higher Calling 2014.
This year, the theme of the conference is "The Light,' and KCCC is preparing for Higher Calling Conference with hopes that young people will come and find in Jesus the true light in a dark world.
"This is a very dark world that we live in today," said Sam Koh from NexGen Pastor's Fellowship, a group which has been partnering with KCCC to prepare for Higher Calling Conference. "There's also lack of intimacy with the first generation in an immigrant context, and that lack of intimacy leads young people to search for it in different, darker places. That's why young people need to come to Higher Calling, and find that Jesus is their only solution."
"We're praying that Jesus' light will touch the young people and that they will be transformed and also become a light in this world as they live a missional life," said Young Lee, the director of KCCC Los Angeles.
The conference consists of plenary sessions, elective seminars, concerts, festivals, and mission booths, through which attendees have opportunities to be attentive to how God is speaking to them about His calling for their lives. Through these speakers, seminars, and other activities, the hope is that attendees would be convicted to live missional lives and live to expand God's kingdom wherever they are called to be.
A distinctive quality of Higher Calling Conferences is that attendees are split up into small groups, which are also the people with whom they stay in their hotel rooms. After the programs for each day are completed, attendees would go back to their hotel rooms and share their thoughts and convictions with each other in their small groups, with the facilitation of small group leaders. Many have been known to decide to accept Christ through the time of reflection and sharing with their small groups, according to testimonies that previous attendees have shared.
Higher Calling Conference organizers are also inviting pastors of English congregations (EM) to come to the conference, as there will be separate sessions for EM pastors and times in which they will be able to have fellowship with one another and share their experiences and thoughts about doing ministry in a Korean American church context.
Higher Calling Conference will be taking place from December 21 to 24 at the Town and Country Resort & Convention Center in San Diego. Speakers for the main plenary sessions of this year's conference include Jim-Bob Park, the senior pastor of Oriental Mission Church; Greg Stiers from Dare 2 Share Ministries; Eugene Cho, the senior pastor of Quest Church; and Dong Whan Kim, the national director of KCCC USA. Higher Calling Conference will also be taking place in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and Toronto in December.
For more information, visit www.gohighercalling.org.
