The focus was on transformation, not transition, as 600 college students from across the U.S. spent the last week of 2005 at InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s National Black Collegiate Conference, at the Renaissance Atlanta Hotel Downtown.
This was InterVarsity’s fifth National Black Collegiate Conference and the theme was Identity Theft: Expose, Reclaim, Prevail. Speakers used the theme to examine the cultural identities that influence behavior, thoughts and personal interactions and to compare them with the identities that God desires.
“The reason that you are here at this place is so that you would have an encounter with Jesus,” said opening night speaker Harvey Cozart, “not just personally, but that we all would encounter Him as a community.” Harvey Cozart is an InterVarsity campus staff member at Eastern Kentucky University and the University of Kentucky.
Wednesday morning, the Reverend Dr. Cheryl Sanders, Senior Pastor of the Third Street Church of God in Washington, D.C. and Professor of Christian Ethics at the Howard University School of Divinity, focused on the cost of pursuing the identity that God desires for us. “When you tell the truth and live the truth about what God requires, then you are going to have some opposition,” she said. “Your cross is the consequence of the choice that you made to stand for God.”
Wednesday evening’s session featured a frank, high energy presentation by ministers Aberdeen and Roslyn Allen, of the Cathedral International Church in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Their presentation, entitled DNA, focused on male and female identity in the black community. “We don’t know who we are anymore [although] we pretend like we do,” Aberdeen said. “Christians are looking at the world and [thinking they] are missing something,” Roslyn said. “God has a better way for you.”
The Thursday evening plenary speaker was the Rev. Sam Pettagrue, senior pastor of Sardis Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. “Instead us of having our identity stolen, many of us are giving it up,” he said. “We’re giving our identity up for the latest fashions.”
Friday morning, the Rev. Byron Williams focused on using our identity to bring transformation. “We are called upon to continue what Jesus has started,” he said. “It’s not enough to be satisfied with individual redemption.”
The goal of InterVarsity for Atlanta 05 is to develop a new generation of leadership in the black community so that lives are transformed, campuses renewed, and world changers developed.
The audio from each plenary session is posted on the InterVarsity website audio page after each session.
