Today’s mail brought the registration of Joshua Johannes. He is a student at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri and a member of Sardis General Baptist Church in Forsyth, Missouri. Joshua is registrant number 25 and we welcome him to the Festival!
Joshua is the first Festival registrant to hail from Missouri. That brings to eight the number of states now represented by those who have registered. Here is the list: Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Florida, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Georgia. These are the states in which the sponsoring church is located. One Kentucky young preacher is attending school in Washington DC.
Other states will eventually be on the list as I know of young preachers in Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, Oregon, Alabama, and New York who are working on their registration papers. This is pretty good for a pilot project centered in Louisville, Kentucky and targeting only the area in a 150-mile radius of Louisville!!
Everybody is welcome, of course, even though we plan to sponsor Festivals of Young Preachers in other parts of the country and perhaps even overseas. We have limited registration at this inaugural Festival to those living within the United States.
There will be one hundred young preachers on the program of the Festival. To date, 25 of these preaching slots are taken. And there are only 87 days left to register. Deadline is October 1, 2009.