One of the most popular regular events we hold at the Creation Museum is our annual women’s conference. This past weekend, about 500 women turned out for this year’s conference we called “Embrace.” The women once again heard excellent speakers, including Dr. Rosaria Butterfield, who shared her thrilling testimony (find out more about her outreach), Stacia McKeever, and other superb presenters.
Dr. Georgia Purdom, also one of the speakers at the conference and its emcee—and the person who has been developing these yearly conferences for us—informs us that she has already set a date for next year’s women’s conference: April 15–16, 2016. The theme will be on how Christians can exercise discernment as they live in a secularized age.
Here are photos of the conference that just concluded, including a picture of one of the vendors—it’s a ministry that deals with the tragedy of global human trafficking, Destiny Rescue.
Also over the weekend, we had another great turnout at the Creation Museum. Even though we are not yet into our busy summer months, attendance continues to be strong—even after seven years of operation. (We’ve seen about 2.4 million total visitors.) I still scratch my head when I read blogs by some secularists who maintain that the museum is struggling with attendance and revenue; they have been making this false claim in an effort to try to undermine the Ark project, suggesting that the Ark Encounter will fail due to a lack of visitors.
Here is a photo of a section of one of our museum’s parking lots on Saturday (taken from the tower of our zip line), and it is virtually full. It gives you an idea how many people will visit during the spring. Attendance on Saturday was almost 1,600.
One of these anti-AiG secularists has been taking constant public shots at our overall ministry, including a claim that AiG is struggling with revenue—especially as he misrepresents our finances. In fact, he can’t avoid even getting into small things and making them into issues: one of his complaints is that the meals in our museum café are “overpriced.” Well, I had a staff member check the cost of comparable food at other popular tourist attractions in our region, and discovered that their full meals are more than ours! In Florida, lunch at Disneyworld could cost more than double. (By the way, our museum guests constantly tell us that they have been surprised at the low cost of the food—and have also praised the quality and quantity of the meals.)
Yes, we are thrilled with the continued interest in our Creation Museum and look forward to opening the Ark Encounter next year.
Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken
This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.
Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.