Summit Ministries

When you are at the Summit you are in a constant state of learning which is as it should be. Summit is a conference where they are training Christian leaders for tomorrow, and a leader should always be teachable and willing to learn. Well, sometimes here it's information overload!
Today we heard from Dr. Noebel in Bible hour about why we should study the Bible. Doc believes that before we can learn how to study the Bible, we need to know of it's credibility and why we should study it. Continuing our 12 point study, today he focused on the Bible's influence on Western Civilization. Unfortunately, many people believe that Christians poorly impacted the Western World; consider the slave trade as an example. Doc disputed many of the myths. He admitted that Christians have made mistakes, but showed that overall Christians have positively impacted our civilization. He then went on to show that studying the Bible is a mark of an educated man, moral man, spiritual man, and free man. His final point of the session, "Study the Bible because it is not unscientific", led perfectly to our next speaker.
Dr. Michael Buratovich discussed the foundations of science, and how modern science was founded by dozens of famous men who were also men of faith. After this Dr. Buratovich took on the controversial issue of stem-cell research. Dr. Buratovich has personal experience in this issue, working with somatic cells and studying embryonic, and fetal cell research. He explained the way stem-cell research works and showed us how scientifically using embryonic stem-cells is not effective. After our break for lunch the information load lightened ever so slightly as we heard from the cartoonist Chuck Asay. Mr. Asay shared with us how to deal with many modern issues while entertaining us with his cartoons and drawings of some of the students in our session.
Tonight our "Worldviews in Collision" was continued with Dr. Noebel as he began the indivdual study of each of the six different worldviews. Afterwards my small group and another boys small group went down to the Mate Factory, a coffee shop down in Manitou Springs that is owned and operated by a community that calls themselves The 12 Tribes. We talked with them, learning more about what they believe and in our small group we discussed witnessing to not only strangers, but the people in our lives.
Finally, since the beginning of the sessions I have written down humorous and meaningful quotes from students and speakers and I'd like to share some of my favorite here.
"I think this is planet discrimination! If I was on Pluto, I'd file a lawsuit." - Frank Turek discussing God's specific design of our solar system. July 10th.
"Sometimes the scenes we desire the least, are the most important to the story being told." -Stubs in devotions. July 11th.
" Those who want to win the world for Christ, must have the courage to come into conflict with it." - Mark Cahill. July 11th.
"They'll sue you...and you'll have enough excitement for the rest of your life! But you're poor, tell 'em to go ahead and sue you. You don't even have a 'Jesus loves the little children' pencil." - Dr. Noebel