“I Can Now Do It on My Own . . .”

Those somewhat surprising words were uttered by one of the 575 attendees at the just-finished, first-ever “Creation College” hosted by AiG in West Harrison, Indiana, USA, 21–25 July. The “college” was actually an intensive workshop designed to better equip creation speakers in their outreaches, and also to help those whom the Lord may be leading as future speakers on the book of Genesis.

Why those words, then, from a man who attended the meeting? He actually meant them in a highly positive way. He admitted that, as a creation speaker, he had traveled 1,000 miles to the conference (by the way, continents were represented, too, with participants coming from Asia [Japan, Korea and the Philippines], South America [Peru and Brazil], and Europe [Spain and England]) in an attempt to convince us that he should be brought on board as a speaker for the AiG ministry. But he had now changed his mind, and for a good reason (and he still believes that AiG is a vital ministry in these days). So what happened in his thinking?

You see, after 4 1/2 days of learning how to develop an effective “relevance” talk (i.e. how to design a general talk on the importance of upholding the authority of Genesis in an increasingly compromising church and a decaying society), employing presentation tools like PowerPoint and also discovering how to better promote a creation seminar, a light bulb went on in his head. This man ultimately decided that he now had the information and tools that could help advance his own creation speaking ministry in his area and connect with people that AiG might not be able to reach.

In fact, that was AiG’s goal in hosting the “Creation College”: to help make creation ministries (and there are hundreds of creation speakers across the USA now) become more effective in their outreach. While AiG certainly hopes to identify additional prospective speakers that could lead to some formal affiliation with AiG (as part-time or full-time lecturers, or simply as a speaker that AiG could recommend), there are so many opportunities to present the life-changing creation/gospel message in so many areas that AiG wanted to help existing (often fledgling) ministries with what AiG had learned in over 25 years of ministry. College participants benefited from the expertise of many creation experts, both within and outside AiG, who brought their cutting-edge information and technology to this unique training event.

The host of the college, AiG–US president Ken Ham, believes the meeting was a watershed event in the 40-year history of the modern creation movement. He observed: “There have been a few turning-point events in the creation/evolution debate, like the publication of important books such as The Genesis Flood in the “60s, and the start of the Institute for Creation Research and AiG in the “70s. I believe that the ‘Creation College’ and its potential ‘ripple effect’ nationwide—and even overseas—will eventually be seen by historians as another turning point in the battle for biblical authority and inerrancy as it relates to Genesis.”

The comment that the “Creation College” had revitalized ministries was a frequently made one, including when participants were given the opportunity to share their thoughts before a microphone at the end of the college on Sunday.

Some college participants took a plane ride over the Creation Museum construction site. (Photo by Dick Krol.)

As a bonus, almost all of the participants visited the Creation Museum construction site in Northern Kentucky on Saturday afternoon (only 25 minutes away), and this led to another show of enthusiasm: a generous love offering was received from them later that day, and it brought in over $255,000 in cash and faith-promise gifts for the museum! It was a remarkable show of support for AiG’s national apologetics center, a place where “Creation College” participants will, we trust, eventually be sending the people they’ll be reaching through their ministries.

AiG is looking into the possibility of hosting another “Creation College” (perhaps in 2006) to help creation speakers who were unable to attend this inaugural event. For the moment, AiG wants to let you know of two major national meetings it has planned for 2005 in America:

1. a conference on general apologetics (i.e. not just about Genesis, but the entire Bible) called “Defending the Faith,” to be held in sunny Ft Lauderdale, Florida early next year (at the church pastored by well-known TV and radio speaker Dr James Kennedy)

2. a large meeting specifically on defending the book of Genesis, called “Creation 2005,” to be co-hosted by Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia next July—details will be posted soon on this site.

If you can’t wait for the next “Creation College” to come around, consider attending one of these conferences to better equip you to defend the Christian faith.