Harmony Free Will Baptist to host week-long conference on Jesus’s life

Published 8:40 am Thursday, May 23, 2019

Harmony Free Will Baptist Church is hosting a week-long conference, bringing Carter County a different perspective on a religious message people may not have heard before.

Pastor Brandon Young said this is the first year they have done this conference, which they called Go Radical.

“We are going to look at the life of Christ, […] get information on what he did and what he really looked like,” Young said.

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The week-long conference is a collaboration between Young, Harmony Free Will Assistant Pastor Hunter Greene and Assistant Pastor from Valley Forge Free Will Baptist David Odom. The three pastors will each focus on one different topic with which to narrow conversations: trust, sacrifice and obedience.

Young said he got the idea to hold a conference like this after reading a book called “Radical” by David Platt.

“We have all read the book,” Young said. “In it, he mentions a ‘suburban’ Jesus. We have made him look like ourselves.”

He said this distortion of the Gospel has led many Christians to reject or not show love towards people who are different from them, which he said stands in contrast to Jesus’s message.

“Christ was inclusive,” Young said. “You can love everyone without agreeing with them.”

Yet, Young said the church is repeatedly making the mistake of excluding people who do not fit with the Gospel’s supposed message, so he said the only way to fix that is to “make the church more like Christ.”

The conference will take place over a period of five days, from the morning of Sunday, May 26, to the block party Friday, May 31.

May 26 will have a 10:45 a.m. session with Greene and a 6 p.m. session with Young, while May 27 will feature Odom. Each will focus on one of the three points. For May 28-30, the three pastors will each take a look at a passage in Mark through a different lens each time.

“I am excited to see what God is going to do,” Young said of the conference. “[Participants] can go out and make a real difference in their communities.”

All sessions will take place at Harmony Free Will Baptist Church, located at 3405 Gap Creek Road in Hampton. The sessions are free to the public.