Updates

Cecil's been having some more adventures and we've got a whole lot of pix from him on the UK leg of his world tour up. Cecil's UK Adventures start here!

We'd also love you to help us choose a winner for the Caption Competition, and enter the current competition! Click here to be part of the fun...

Feel free to have a look around the rest of the site, too. You never know what you might find! We've added some copies of the Edge for you to download in PDF format and there are some other extras hidden around the site.

Oh, and remember, if you feel the desire to write for the Edge, let us know! There's always a place for new writers and we love getting manuscripts!

3 New Polls Installed.

We have 3 new polls installed. Not only will this mean your roof is less likely to cave in but you can put in your vote and we’ll see who the majority is. We’ve started with some ‘fluffier’ polls (unless you seriously, really really love Mangoes and cant stop talking about them, then the poll is much more critical from your viewpoint, definitely!) but we’ll move into some deeper, and even mischievous, polls along the way. Go to our Poll site via our Edge Interactive page here.

GC Session Youth Dept Report

Here's a report made at the Session from the General Conference Youth Department here.

Let's Talk World Session

On Friday, July 8th, 2005, the Let’s Talk…World Session 2005 will be broadcast on the Hope Channel as part of the Friday night General Conference Session program.

Pastor Jan Paulsen, who has recently been re-elected world church president, will be answering questions from a number of the world session delegates who are under the age of 30. 

The program will be broadcast on Hope Channel. For local times, see GC Session events, you'll need to click here

more site updates!

Well, we're slowly getting more and more stuff onto the site, particularly with the great adventures that Cecil has been having lately. If you want to find out more about what he's been up to at the General Conference, check out Cecil click here

There's some cool photos of Cecil and some GC VIPs, as well as a story that tells us what it's like to be one of the younger delegates to the session (and no, it's not from Cecil—it's about one of the South Pacific Division's delegates named Simone, but you'll have to find out more for yourself by reading all about it!).

Go figure...

Some General Conference figures:

# More than 70% of the Adventist world membership is under 30 years of age.
# Nearly 2000 delegates are in attendance at the GC session in St Louis, Missouri.
# About 35 of those delegates are under the age of 30 (less than 2% of the delegate population).

Hmmm... it seems unfortunate that there aren't more young people there at the GC. However, one thing that Pastor Jan Paulsen, GC president, has always been strong on is supporting young people in the church. Hurrah for Pastor Paulsen!

In his opening address to the GC session, Pastor Paulsen said to young people, "I want you to come in and to partner with the rest of us. I want to make room for you, for you have energies and ideas which no one can quite match. If you don't find the church interesting, you can make it interesting. Just don't walk away. That would be the worst possible thing you can do: It is Christ we are talking about. Don't turn your back on Him, for if you do, all you then all you are left with is Peter's haunting question: 'To whom shall we then go?'" (John 6:68)."

"They [young people] represent in large measure the future of this church," he says. "There must be a more intentional dialogue with young people, and a greater recognition of the contribution that they can and do make within the church. I recognize that many, many of our young people feel distanced from the church—they feel as if they don't have a voice, they don't feel that they have been heard, they don't feel that they have been understood," says Pastor Paulsen. "But I want them to know that the church cannot be defined and cannot survive without them."

In other exciting news, a Let's Talk program, where Pastor Paulsen talks with young people, is being planned for Australia later this year! We'll hopefully have more news on that as it comes through :)

For more news on the GC Session, visit http://news.adventist.org/