On Eagles Wings - Ron Hutchcraft Ministries

No Longer Alone

Update From Ron Hutchcraft

In order to grasp the excitement and historic nature of what’s going on at Warrior Leadership Summit, you have to imagine being a Native American or a First Nations young person with Christ in your heart. If you are, you feel alone, and sometimes totally alone. Your family wishes you didn’t believe what you believe and may have actually persecuted you for your beliefs. You are, perhaps, the only Christian you know in your generation. You live among people who believe that Jesus is the “White Man’s God,” and because of that you’ve lost your culture, your language, and your life. You are alone.

Suddenly, you arrive at Warrior Leadership Summit and walk into an auditorium buzzing with energy. There you are with over six hundred Native young people from seventy-six nation tribes, and within minutes you are together singing “How great is our God. Sing with me. How great is our God.” It is a huge moment worth about two boxes of Kleenex.

Before there is even any message given, the ministry has begun. If you are a Native American or a First Nations young person, there is energy and excitement in seeing that you are surrounded by Eskimos, Apaches, Sioux, Cherokees, Senecas, Nez Perce and others from many other nations. From all over the continent, young people have come together under the banner of Jesus Christ.

This year’s Warrior Leadership Summit is the most representative yet in terms of seventy-six nations being represented. That is important because these young men and women are being trained to be warriors for their people. They will often leave here, our experience shows, transformed young people. They will go back as warriors for their people to all those corners of the Native population of this continent. At Warrior Leadership Summit, these young people will receive the training of spiritual ambassadors – freedom fighters for their people. The potential is beyond words.

Some have described this event as being like a chapter out of church history; it is unprecedented to have this many Native young people from this many nations in one place at one time, all under the banner of Jesus Christ. If you have been a part of praying for this and even giving to make it possible for us to put this conference on for these young people, understand this is your victory and it really is a victory!

About five minutes into the first session, one big rugged Native believer, who is probably in his late forties, was wiping the tears out of his eyes. He was crying almost uncontrollably, almost in disbelief, at the sight and the sounds of Native young people singing the praises of Jesus Christ. Think of the encouragement this is to the missionaries, Native pastors, and Christian workers who invest their lives in a work where they’re lucky if there are three, four, or even five people who will come to their youth program, and to see and realize now that they are not alone.

Last night, we began introducing our theme for this year’s Warrior Leadership Summit—Breaking Free. This is a significant theme, because we know that Native American young people have the highest rates of alcohol abuse, drug abuse, sexual abuse, violent crime, and suicide on the continent leaving there much to break free from.

It was my privilege to kick off the conference last night. Before the first session, we chained, with handcuffs, two young men each to a chair from the dining room here at camp. They had to get all the way to the session chained to a chair. They dragged the chair into the auditorium with them and I interviewed them about what it felt like to be chained to something that was slowing them down and bringing them down.

I likened that to what happens to us. Jesus said, “Whoever commits sin is a slave to sin.” We’re slaves to dark feelings of depression, anger, and selfishness. We’re slaves to the things in our past that we wished we hadn’t done, along with the shame and the guilt. There is also pain from what’s been done to us. We’re chained to these things that hang onto us that we never thought we would ever keep doing, be trapped by, or be addicted to. Jesus came and He said the truth will set you free.

The police officer with the key came out and set one of those young men free. He talked about what it felt like to be liberated from what he had been chained to. We talked about how God broke into our circle of hopelessness and, with the death of Christ, broke the power of the sin that has enslaved us. We concluded by having the young man who had been freed first take the key and let the other one free. We explained how once you have been liberated by Jesus, you have in your hands the key to set free the people you care about.

The stage has been set for the week and now we move to when I will present the Gospel of Jesus Christ and very clearly what Christ did on the cross. Most of the conference will be to prepare young people to live for Christ, but first we need to make sure they have Christ. A public invitation will be given and many of our warriors, who will be with our On Eagles’ Wings teams this summer, will be those who will have their first rescue of the Summer of Hope. It will be their first rescue of many, we believe, as they have a chance to lead some of these young people at Warrior Leadership Summit to Christ from all over Indian country and across North America.

During the afternoon, young people are in Battle Councils all over this campus led by Native Christian leaders. They will hear topics ranging from being the only one standing alone doing the right thing to meth addiction to violent families. These are some of the real issues of Native young people. Even last night, we had young people reckoning and doing business with God and even reconciling broken relationships.

Each warrior began the conference with a bracelet given to them to symbolize chains around their wrists. When they are ready to break free from bondage for the rest of their lives, they are to rip off their bracelet, bring it up to the front, and put it in the trash. Even after just one session, there were young people who were declaring their personal declaration of independence.

Surely the Spirit of the Lord is in this place. At the largest, most representative, and potentially most impacting Warrior Leadership Summit since On Eagles’ Wings began, we are living the answers to your prayers. At the end of this conference, two teams from this group will go to twelve reservations to declare the hope that they have found in Jesus Christ. For the young people on those reservations we’re heading to, living in places where hope is so hard to find, hope is on the way. Jesus is on the way.

Thank you for praying.