Fully Alive Conference

Dear All,

The FULLY ALIVE CONFERENCE will be taking place October 22-26 in Wheaton, Illinois, at Church of the Resurrection, which is the Cathedral of the Anglican Diocese of the Upper Midwest located in the western suburbs of Chicago. We are at a watershed moment for the Church, facing head-on the challenges of a secular society that seeks to redefine manhood, womanhood, marriage and family for the sake of individual self-actualization. The goal of secular humanism is to elevate the human person to take the place of the God it has rejected: each individual as the ultimate Judge of one’s own morality and Maker of one’s own identity by creating for one’s self a new reality simply by speaking it into existence. Fully Alive is a conference and retreat experience that seeks to address Christian Identity in the whole person, body and soul, through biblical teaching and Holy Spirit ministry. The core issue at the root of this crisis is not the redefinition of human sexuality, but rather the redefinition of human identity. Only by reclaiming our God-given identity as man and woman, wonderfully made in the image of God — even more wonderfully restored through Christ — only then can we present the beauty and the goodness of what we were created by God to be from the beginning. Be equipped and ministered to through core plenary teaching sessions interwoven with times of worship, Holy Spirit ministry, and individual prayer appointments.

Plenary sessions: Identity & Authority, Marriage, Celibacy, Identity & Bonding, Manhood, Womanhood, Gnosticism & the Demonic, Disordered Affections, Kingdom Culture Family, Your Story in God’s Story There will also be a number of beakout sessions designed to address specific challenges and barriers to living fully alive in Christ:

Breakout sessions (click on link for detailed description):

• Battle for Your Child’s Imagination with Katherine Fawcett Ruch
• Pornography In the Age of the Internetwith Fr. Brett Crull
• Loving your LGBTQA Neighbor with Robert Alexander Cager

• Listening Prayer: Ordinary Saints Building Up the Body in Love with Fr. Paul Calvin and John and Dawn Lundgren
• Fatherhood with Fr. Keith Hartsell
• Addiction and Attachment with Fr. Eirik Olsen

• Dealing with the Demonic in Discipleship and Healing with Bp. Todd Atkinson and Fr. Eirik Olsen
• Boundaries & Relationships with Fr. Alex and Tamara Cameron
• Married Sexuality with Fr. Brett and Julie Crull

• Unmarried Sexuality with Fr. Brett Crull
• Dysfunctional Families with Fr. Alex and Tamara Cameron
• Spiritual Disciplines to Sustain Healingwith Dcn. Valerie McIntyre
• God’s Design for Sex: Lifelong Sex Education in the Christian Home with Dr. Stan and Brenna Jones

• Natural Family Planning with Dawn Hartsell
• Understanding Transgenderism with Fr. Alex and Tamara Cameron
• Disordered Sexual Desires with Fr. Keith Hartsell
• Suffering Through the Valley Toward the Kingdom with Dcn. Margie Fawcett

There will also be ample time for personal ministry, worship, prayer and retreat time. Bp. Stewart Ruch and his wife Katherine have posted this 3-minute video with more information and a personal invitation to Fully Alive. Since I don’t know how to embed it in an e-mail and get it to work, you can click on the link or read the transcript:

+Stewart: Katherine and I would like to invite you to the Fully Alive Conference, a conference we will be leading and teaching together, something we’re really looking forward to. There are two key hopes I have for this time together. The first is that I am asking and praying that many will have life-changing encounter with Jesus at this conference. This hope comes out of my own personal testimony. As a son of parents who divorced many years ago, I was following Jesus, I believed and trusted in his word, but there were so many barriers in my life to living a life that is fully alive. I needed to be taught; I needed ministry to get to a place of greater and fuller life in Jesus. My second hope, as a spiritual father, is that I have a great hope for men to receive ministry into their manhood, for women to receive ministry into their womanhood, and for those tensions and anxieties that so often exist between male and female to be alleviated and for there to be a strengthening and an ability to bless one another as men and women. I think of St. Paul’s incredible question in 2 Corinthians, chapter 13. He says, “Do you not realize this, that Jesus Christ lives in you?” That is the heart of this conference: identity in Jesus, who lives in us.

Katherine: So why should I come to this conference — a multi-day conference? Why can’t I listed to the podcast, read books about it, even listen to the recordings after the conference? This is going to be conference that is more like a retreat. This is a place where your whole person is being fully addressed. You will receive good, clear teaching that may shift perspectives, or may help you in your Christian world view and strengthen things that you already know. It may bring some enlightenment. These are personal issues. These are ideas that affect our bodies; they’re not just about our minds. So we are crating an atmosphere like a retreat where you can receive prayer. We will receive corporate prayer. We will invite the Holy Spirit into these very personal issues, and it is our desire that you will be fed and nurtured as a whole person.

+Stewart: So who should come to Fully Alive? Honestly, the confusion and sometimes chaos in our culture is so intense that for any of us who are deeply trying to follow Jesus, we need a place of reminding. We need a place of remembering who God is and who the Bible says we are, in Jesus Christ. So I would invite any follower of Jesus to this time together. It may be, though, that there are certain barriers in your life as a husband, as a wife, as a single celibate, and you want to come and receive that ministry from God — and I would definitely invite you to this. Finally, if you have a heart to minister this transformation to others, you will be equipped, you will be trained, you will be ready for that ministry. The Early Church thinker Irenaeus said this: “The glory of God is Man fully alive, and the life of Man is the vision of God.” We are seeking the Lord for a vision of Jesus. We are seeking the Lord that we may live lives that are fully alive in him. So please, come be a part of the Fully Alive Conference. If you won’t be able to come, please pray earnestly for this conference-retreat, for those who will be presenting and for those coming to receive solid Biblical teaching, training, healing, encouragement and renewal to go forth into the world and proclaim with joy their testimony to the goodness of God and the transforming power of receiving our identity from Christ alone. Pray especially for the scores of young people, college students and beginning pastors who are coming to be equipped and empowered to bring biblical clarity and hope to those of their generation who have been so deceived and confused by the spirit of the secular age around us.

If you’d like to attend, you can get more information here. Location:

FULLY ALIVE
Church of the Resurrection (Anglican Diocese of the Upper Midwest)
935 W. Union Ave
Wheaton, IL 60187

Registration:

Standard (through 10/13): $190
Late Registration: (Oct 14-22): $240
Registration includes conference and six on-site meals.

You can also access previous teachings (February 2017) from Bp. Stewart and Katherine Ruch on manhood, womanhood and our identity in Christ here.

Barbara

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