One Project Gathering in Chicago is Sold-out but Available Online
by AT News Team
By the first day of 2013, all 700 seats available at next week’s One Project gathering in Chicago were reserved. Adventists from across North America and overseas will be coming to the Westin Lombard Hotel in Yorktown Center about a mile from O’Hare Airport for the February 10-12 event.
“Celebrating the supremacy of Jesus in the Seventh-day Adventist Church,” the One Project has become an international network of pastors, youth workers and others who want to focus on “just Jesus,” a renewal of basic Christian faith. Its first gathering was in Atlanta two years ago in February 2011. Since then there have been One Project events in Finland, Seattle, Sydney and Denmark.
Nine preachers are scheduled over two days, three of them women. Emily Flottman, an associate pastor at the Walla Walla University Church, will speak Monday morning and Brandy Kirstien, a nurse and mother from Collegedale, Tennessee, who has served as a Bible worker as well as a chaplain at an Adventist secondary school, will speak Tuesday morning. Lisa Clark Diller, a historian who teaches at Southern Adventist University, will co-lead the closing communion service late Tuesday afternoon.
Perhaps the most provocative among the sermon titles is “Tebow and Sandusky Went to the Temple to Pray.” It focuses on Luke 18:9-14 and is scheduled for Tuesday at 2:40 p.m. (Central Time) by Karl Haffner, senior pastor of the Kettering Church in Dayton, Ohio.
Other speakers include Randy Roberts, senior pastor of the Loma Linda University Church; Stephan Sigg, youth director for the Inter-European Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church; Alex Bryan, senior pastor at the Walla Walla University Church in Washington state; Timothy Nixon, pastor of New Life Fellowship on the campus of Andrews University in Michigan; Sam Leonor, chaplain for La Sierra University in Riverside, California; and Tim Gillespie, young adult pastor at Loma Linda University Church.
New this time are small conversation groups that will meet after dinner on three evenings, each focused on one of 14 topics—authenticity, Christian faith in the urban context, cross-cultural ministry, following Jesus, intergenerational churches, worship, mentoring, prayer, preaching, relevance, Scripture, the Body of Christ, vision and young adult faith. Participants must pre-register and the groups are limited in size.
Also new this time is the possibility of listening in even if you are not among the 700 participating in Chicago. The Hope Channel web site will be live streaming the event. In order to access this connection, you will need to go to the One Project web site in advance – https://the1project.org/hopetv.html — and register with the One Project. Once you are in the member area, click on the Hope Channel icon and a special pass code will be Emailed to you. This code will be necessary to get into the live streaming on February 11 and 12 at www.hopetv.org/the1project.
“Our church has something unique to offer, and that is Jesus,” says Japhet De Oliveira, a One Project coordinator and chaplain at Andrews University. “We hope [participants in the event] use every moment to build community … that we stand, arms linked, together stretched across the globe with that first-love passion for Jesus in our lives. … That we work together to that end in our spheres of influence.”
One Project gatherings are planned for April 5-6 in Mjondalen, Norway; July 20-21 in Newcastle, Australia; and at Newbold College in England for November 1-3. It is a spiritual renewal movement emerging right where the Adventist movement is often seen as in decline; North America, Europe and Australia.
