#nick hall

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Best of Jimmy’s Insults in Catsdown

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Panda

© Nick Hall / TNC

Giant panda at the Chengdu Panda Base in Sichuan Province, China.

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Nick Hall

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Nick Hall

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Fall Foliage

Photo © Nick Hall / The Nature Conservancy

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Magellanic Penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus)

Estancia Monte Dinerok, Argentina.

by Nick Hall

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Ed Stetzer & Nick Hall on Faith in the Next Generation, Part 2

Today I continue my conversation with Nick Hall, evangelist and Co-founder of the PULSE movement and President/CEO of Mission America Coalition (the U.S. arm of the Lausanne Movement). I recently had a chance to chat with Nick about what he has been up to. He’s doing some good things for Jesus.

Ed: Tell us more about Together 2018. What is it, and how can people get involved?

Nick: We believe there's a generation, with 18-20-year-olds at its center, that is experiencing a new movement of Jesus. So, we started to call Together the “Together Generation.”

Together ’16 was around the national mall. Together 2018 will be down in Dallas/Ft. Worth, and in 2020 it’s likely we’ll be back on the national mall. In and around these big events, there are these waves that happen. We believe the events are propelling this ongoing movement, bringing in voices and resources and tools, pushing it forwards until Together 2018. We expect Together 2018 to be a historic partnership with Cru, InterVarsity, YWAM, and other organizations.

The big emphasis of the event is evangelism and discipleship, and trying to equip a generation to move closer to Jesus. We’re trying to reinforce the idea that when I move closer to Jesus, it's always a step closer to people who need Jesus. They're not two different steps. God is always inviting us to take the next step towards him, and every step towards him is a step closer to our neighbor, because that's where Jesus is.

We're trying to get a generation to see that their lives are influenced by the gospel, and to encourage them be influencers for the gospel. So Together 2018 will be very focused on putting influencers and different versions and expressions of the Christian walk on the platform – business leaders, creative evangelists, missionaries, church planters, pastors – so that people can see themselves on the platforms.

We will also have digital resources. We're building out a discipleship platform for the purpose of trying to equip these kids to go peer to peer, face to face, one on one. We want to see each person equip somebody, go on multiplying, and then find somebody else to equip. We want to get the simple multiplications.

These big events are great, but we really see it as just for the fuel, and hopefully the catalyst to get us into the trenches—in our classrooms and our coffee shops, back on the university—seeing people going deep in their walk with Christ, committed to the Word of God, and unashamed of the gospel.

We’ve got great speakers again, but we're really hitting hard on justice and some of the hot button issues. We have people like Dr. John M. Perkins, Eric Mason, Tony Evans, and Priscilla Shirer to name a few, and then also a number of the different worship movements, such as Hillsong Worship, Lecrae, and Jesus Culture. So we're going to have worship and then some intentional tie-ins to evangelism and discipleship training.

The inspiration for us, even when we started 2016, was a gathering in 1972 where Billy Graham and Bill Bright rallied at an event called Explo to train and equip 100,000 teenagers and college kids. We're praying that this 2018 expression can re-dig those wells. We're in Dallas, which is where they were. We're trying to have a lot of the same expressions and are going to have a lot of similar voices, people like Paul Eshleman and Josh McDowell.

We want to equip a generation to use every avenue they have to be gospel influencers and lead others to Christ.

Ed: I love the connection between Together Generation and Explo ’72, which was a game changer for evangelicals. Is your hope that Together 2018 will be that very kind of thing?

Nick: When we did Together 2016, it was really about obedience. Even when we would pray, we would talk about this spiritual greenhouse effect. In science class, the greenhouse effect is that if you have all of these right variables, things are going to grow. In my mind, I wondered if we prioritize prayer, preaching of the word, and worship, and we really try to get young people there who are hungry and expectant, and if we try and download a vision for their life and ministry, what could God do?

That was our prayer. We wanted to promote God's word. And we saw those prayers answered. We had 80,000 people start and complete a Scripture engagement plan after that. The biggest thing that we were just hungry for was to see God marking a generation. I think all of us look back at our lives and have transformative moments where it's we think, That was when God spoke to me. That's when I had a glimpse that God's bigger than anything that I have ever experienced.

Click here to read more. Source: Christianity Today