One Voice Student Missions Hosts Vision Casting Valley Summit

One Voice Student Missions is inviting pastors, youth leaders, business partners and anyone who has a heart for sowing into the next generation to Together: The Valley Summit, a vision casting gathering planned for Saturday (9/16).Organizers say those in attendance will hear how high schools are being impacted and be given a chance to "be a part of the history making.""By the grace of God, One Voice Student Missions has existed in Los Angeles for the last four years, impacting the high schools and working closely with the local church here in the city where so much culture and influence flow in and out of," Valley Summit organizers said.In a Together LA interview with founder Brian Barcelona earlier this year (See video below), he explained how One Voice Student Missions has successfully established lunchtime Bible studies at more than 70 high schools in Los Angeles, other areas of California, and in other states.“This generation faces a unique hurdle that no other generation has faced and that is social media,” Barcelona said. “Adding to their own problems, people are now going through other people’s feeds and seeing what’s going on in their lives. Studies have shown that this is the ‘loneliest generation’ ever but no one feels lonely because everyone is connected...If that makes sense. The relationships are not really that deep. That’s what I see going on at schools.”When asked by TLA how he approaches high schools for the first time, considering that the current political climate includes a large adversarial component, he said, “I don’t think that there is as much hostility towards the gospel as there is towards religion. I think defining those two (gospel and religion) and separating them from the beginning and realizing that a religious agenda is not the same as living out the gospel.“What we find in going into a campus is that we bring the Good News of the Kingdom,” he continued. “The Good News at its core is that we don’t have to be bound and linked the same as we once did. There is freedom in Christ. That’s not just modeled in a sermon or ‘Let me do worship in your school’ or ‘Let me go preach to all your kids.’ That’s modeled first in my response to how I will serve an administrator or my willingness to obey even some of the laws that already exist.“Sometimes, it’s not even [about] laws, but confusion about what separation of church and state really means. When we go into a campus we are there to serve… whether they let me preach the first week or let me preach in 5 months, I’ll do whatever I can to serve that campus and to bring the love of Jesus onto that school.”For more information, go to One Voice Student Missions' page about Together: The Valley Summit.