The GO Conference is a FREE three day event (July 30th – Aug. 1st), focusing on the missional message of Christ that we are to reach the world with the message of love. Registrants for the conference will have the opportunity, during the Saturday session, to participate in the “style your sole” event, during which time, they will decorate a pair of TOMS canvas shoes. For every pair of shoes purchased and decorated during the event, the TOMS Corporation will provide a new pair of shoes to a deserving child in need. During the Saturday Night session, all the decorated shoes and their owners will come together in a unified effort to show their support for the cause of children around the world.

“The premise of the style your sole event is simple” stated Danielle Cook, conference coordinator. “It is one to one ministry at its best, and we are looking forward to our partnership with TOMS and helping hundreds of children around the globe.” “We are asking all young adults in Jacksonville to join with us to make this event a success.”

Since its founding in 2006, the TOMS Corporation has provided approx 600,000 pairs of shoes children around the world with its “buy one, give one” approach.

“The heartbeat of the GO Conference is to instill in the next generation the desire to serve our world with the love of Christ” said Lead Pastor Charlie Campbell. “We could think of no better way to demonstrate this then hosting the ‘style your sole’ event. We believe this is a great opportunity for young adults in Jacksonville to express themselves for a worthy cause.”

Anyone interested in the GO conference and “style your sole” event can visit the website (
www.thegoconference.com) and register to attend the conference. Information can also be received by contacting the church by phone at 888-847-9013 or email at office@mybridgechurch.org.

About The Bridge Church
The Bridge is a youthful, diverse congregation looking to meet the needs of Jacksonville, FL. Centrally located at 8050 Lone Star Road in the heart of Arlington, the church is led by Charlie and Marissa Campbell. The mission of The Bridge is to reach those far from God with life in Christ.

Let’s look at the Bible in light of God’s heart for the world, and we will see that from Genesis to the Revelation He is beckoning you and I and all of His people to join Him in bringing every people group to His throne. The Bible is not a collection of separate books with no common theme or story. It is one book expressing God’s heart to have relationship with everyone on earth.
Genesis 1:28 “God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth …”

Wow, the very first words God ever spoke to mankind: be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Now why would he say the whole earth? Because God had this perfect relationship with Adam and Eve walking and talking the garden. God desired that type of relationship with more people and wanted them spread out through the whole earth. However, we know that by Genesis 3 sin had crept in and by chapter 8 the world was not looking good. So, as God floods the earth and starts over, listen to the command He gives Noah, just after he steps off the ark.
Genesis 9:1 “Then God blessed Noah and his sons saying to them, ” Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. ”

Sound familiar? “Hey Noah, don’t just populate a city, fill the earth.” There it is again, the command to multiply. So as we come to chapter 11 there should be one simple question on all of our minds: Does God get the earth filled? Lets keep reading,
Genesis 11: 1-4 “Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there …Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth .’”

Can’t you hear the talk of the town? “You know, we all look the same, act the same, talk the same, eat the same, and dress the same. Let’s just stay right here and make a name for ourselves. Do we really want to be scattered? We’re comfortable here! ” This does not exactly sound like they are excited about obeying God’s command. Because of man’s urge to settle, God is forced to step in and scatter, filling the earth just as He desired.
Genesis 11:7-8 “‘Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’ So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth , and they stopped building the city.”

So, as we end the introduction we see that God has a problem: people scattered all over the earth speaking many different languages. How is He going to reach all of them? What will He do? Who will He use? The plot begins.
Genesis 12:1-3 “The Lord had said to Abram, ‘ Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you…I will bless you… and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you .’”

Hey Abram, leave. Leave your country, your people, your family, your life, your dreams, your ambitions, your future as well as all that you know and are familiar with and go to the land I will show you. Now if you keep reading, something really weird happens…
Genesis 12:4 ” So Abram left , as the Lord had told him.”

He leaves. Man obeys God. This is a pretty weird concept especially in today’s world. So Abram is off to establish a nation that will bless all peoples. Interestingly, this command was not for Abram alone. Watch God continue to call succeeding generations to reach all nations. Next in line is Abraham’s son, Isaac.
Genesis 26:4 “I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed .”

And to Isaac’s son, Jacob:
Genesis 28:14 “Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring ”

The rest of the Old Testament is filled with God using Israel to make His name great among the nations. Here are just a few examples:

The 10 Commandments
Deuteronomy 4:5-6 “Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations , who will hear about all these decrees and say, ‘ Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people .’”

His reputation spread after parting the Red Sea
Joshua 2:9-10 “I (Rahab) know that the Lord has given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us… we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt…”

Solomon and his wisdom
1 Kings 4:34 ” Men of all nations came to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, sent by all the kings of the world, who had heard of his wisdom.”

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace
Daniel 3:29 “Therefore, I (Nebuchadnezzar) decree that the people of any nation or language who say anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego be cut into pieces… for no other God can save in this way.”

Daniel in the lions’ den
Daniel 6:26 ” I (Darius) issue a decree that in every part of my kingdom people must fear and reverence the God of Daniel…”

For further study see Psalm 33:13-14, 67:1-7, 86:9-10, 96:3; Isaiah 11:9-10, 49:6, 52:10, 61:11; Jonah 4:11, Habakkuk 1:5, Zephaniah 2:11, Haggai 2:7, Zechariah 8:20-23, Malachi 1:11

The fulfillment of the promise that God would bless all nations through Abraham as well as many OT prophecies was of course, Jesus. When he died on the cross, he did so to redeem people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. He died for the sins of all, but only those that call on the name of the Lord can be saved from those sins because there is salvation in no other name.

As we transition to the New Testament the plot only thickens. Now Christ, God in flesh, enters the scene and what do we see in the pattern of His life and ministry? Nothing different. Whether it is taking a longer route to reach a Samaritan women (John 4:1-42) or healing various Gentiles to teach His followers (Mark 5:1-20, 7:24-30). Christ in the New Testament maintained the pattern established in the Old Testament. He had a heart that people from all nations come in to relationship with him.

It is important to note here that the word “nation” in the Bible comes from the Greek word ethne meaning ethnic groups. When we think of a nation, we usually think of a country like Mexico. However, the Bible is talking about people groups when it uses the word nation. There are 24,000 people groups on the earth and almost 7,000 of them are still considered unreached with the gospel.

Mark 11:15-17 On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area designated for the Gentiles to worship and he found people buying and selling there. As He drove them out saying “Is it not written; ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations ‘?”

Why did Jesus get so angry in the temple? Because people were using it as a market rather than a place of prayer for all nations.
Matthew 24:14 “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations , and then the end will come.”

Jesus said this His gospel would be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all ethnic groups and then the end would come. We are supposed to live each day as if it could be the last, but Jesus himself said that His Word had to be preached to all nations before He would come back. Let’s reach the remaining people groups in our lifetime!
Matthew 28:18-20 “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Jesus’ very last commandment before leaving this earth was to take His gospel to all nations/people groups. We should dedicate ourselves to that task until he returns.
Acts 1:8 “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth .”

The main reason that the Lord has given us his Holy Spirit to dwell inside of us is so that we can be witnesses to the ends of the earth.
Revelation 7:9 “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb …”

It is important to connect what is happening in Revelation with what God started in Genesis 12 in the life of Abraham. God will do it. There will be a representative from every nation, tribe, people, and language bowing and worshipping at His feet. Heaven is multicultural. God is a missionary God, and from cover to cover He is showing us His mission. God doesn’t want any to perish, but all to come to repentance. Will you join Him in bringing a representative from every people group to His throne? It will happen, the only question is will you be a part? The question remains:
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?
And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’
Rom: 10:15,16

by William Hannaford
http://crossfaithministry.org

There is significant discussion today about oral cultures and how they learn and how they should be evangelized and built up in faith. The discussion ranges from pre-literate to post-literate—from cultures that have never had their languages written down to Western groups that no longer read but only watch images and listen to iPods. Of course, awareness of orality is not new, since virtually all cultures before the modern period and its printing press learned orally. Everywhere the church has gone in the history of missions, its initial task has mainly been oral, even where missionaries prized literacy and sought to translate the Bible as part of their church planting.

What’s new is 1) the development of more self-conscious strategies of adapting to the kinds of oral traditions in various cultures, and 2) the more rigorous application of the biblical history of redemption as oral story, and 3) the intention and attempt to develop means of communicating biblical truth to so-called post-literate Westerners who spend little time reading.

None of these developments is in itself bad and may be very good. 1) Orality will always be a huge and precious and inevitable part of human life, even in the most literate cultures, and it is wise to make the best use of this reality for Christ and his kingdom. 2) The Bible is history and interpretation—it is a story along with the inspired, authoritative explanation. It should be heralded in oral and written form for what it is. 3) Post-literate Westerners (and people who in every age have had difficulty with reading, or dislike for reading) should be both met where they are and encouraged and helped to advance in the benefits of Bible reading and meditation. So, it seems to me that these developments are expressions of love and common sense.

But I am not sure what convictions about the Bible lie beneath some of these developments. So I want to ask a few questions that I hope will help us make explicit the underlying assumptions about the function of the written word of God in these developments. My hope and expectation is that all who identify themselves as evangelicals will say a hearty No to question #1 below and a hearty Yes to the rest. Then let us do the mission with the wisest use of our voice and our Book.

1. Will we Westerners who have had the Bible in our languages for five centuries and who have access to Greek and Hebrew in which the Bible was verbally inspired keep this privileged position for ourselves?
2. Or will we humble ourselves and labor with all our might to help other peoples and cultures have the same access we have to a full and right understanding of the scriptures so that they do not have to depend on cultural outsiders telling them what God’s words say and what they mean and how they should be applied culturally and religiously and missiologically?
3. Will we tell pre-literate and less-literate peoples and cultures that all authoritative religious truth comes from God through a single inspired book, and that all oral communication about God and his ways, no matter where it happens anywhere in the world, depends for its final reliability on this book, the Bible?
4. Will we clarify for them that, although all other holy books may have some helpful religious insights, nevertheless they do not have any final authority from God, but only the Bible does?
5. Will we tell them that this Bible was first written in Greek and Hebrew, the languages that God used when centuries ago “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21)?
6. Will we make sure they understand that if they remain only oral and do not someday raise up a generation who can read this book and study it in the original languages, they will remain dependent on outsiders for the divine truth God has given only through the Book?
7. Will we joyfully concur that access to the words of God in the Bible in one’s own language is a blessing greater than health and life, and that the golden rule gives us the privilege and duty to give other people and peoples the blessing that has come to us without our deserving it or planning it?
8. Will we labor for the long-term strength of the church among all unreached and less-reached peoples, by empowering them with the ability to read and study the Bible in the original languages, in the desire that the Lord may come very soon, but in the sober possibility that he may delay his return for centuries?
9. Will we labor to reverse the Western cultural trend away from reading, in the conviction that, when one moves away from reading, one moves away from a precious, God-given, edifying, stabilizing connection with God’s written word?

For the Word and for the Mission,

William Hannaford
http://crossfaithministry.org