McDowell boosts

all-church gathering

for Clark County

By JOHN FORTMEYER
CNNW publisher
     VANCOUVER, Wash. — A local lay ministry’s ongoing efforts to encourage Christian unity and outreach in one of Washington’s fastest-growing counties got a helpful boost last month from a well-known name.
       Josh McDowell, famed Christian author and apologist, spoke at a pastor’s appreciation breakfast June 24 that also sought to promote Detour Ministries’ third annual Clark County All-Church Picnic later this month.
       While McDowell’s comments to the approximately 150 pastors and ministry leaders at the Heathman Lodge didn’t directly address the July 31 event at Pearson Air Museum, his presence at the breakfast helped draw attention not only to Detour Ministries’ efforts but also to the role Clark County’s churches and ministries play in touching a spiritually needy region.
    “Thank you for what you do,” Mc-Dowell said. “If you don’t do it, it won’t be done.”
      In opening remarks, Ryan Hurley of Detour said his ministry seeks to complement what is already going on in Clark County.
      “Our heart at Detour is advancement of the Gospel, just like every one of your ministries,” he said.
      “Detour” in the title indicates men and women taking a special heavenbound path of discovering God’s great work for their lives. Detour Ministries launched the countywide picnic event in 2009 to encourage churches in their work and celebrate what God is doing in the community.
       The free-admission picnic runs from 1 to 6 p.m. Sunday, July 31, at the Pearson Air Museum, 1115 E. Fifth St., in Vancouver. It includes live music, bouncy inflatables, airplane rides and more. Those attending are asked to bring a picnic lunch, blankets and park toys. For more information on the event, go to www.allchurchpicnic.com.
       In his brief talk, McDowell touched upon some of the same themes that he shared earlier this year in a Portland luncheon promoting the annual Mission ConneXion Northwest event. Now in his 50th year of ministry (“When I started out, the Dead Sea was only sick,” he quipped), McDowell analyzed troubling trends regarding youth in the Church today. He said surveys show that a shocking 91 percent of “born again, evangelical Christian kids” now state there is no such thing as absolute — or as McDowell prefers to call it, universal — truth. This is only 5 percent less than non-Christians, he said.
       Furthermore, only a very small percentage of Christian young people today worldwide seek to hold to core Biblical values. This all has happened in a very short time, McDowell said, because young people no longer see truth as something objective that must be discovered. Instead, they find their own version of truth within themselves, under pressure from today’s “tolerance” and “multiculturalism” trends that are only “one click away” through the pervasive influence of the Internet, he said.
    “But folks, where I get so excited, is that we (Christians) have the truth .... and we are only ‘one click away’ too,” said McDowell. He called on churches and ministries to use the Internet and other contemporary technologies to help young people know there is indeed real truth that can make a huge difference in their lives.
      “We can no longer run ministry the way we have the last 25 years,” McDowell said.