Going to his first Power to Change Winter conference was a life-changing experience for Harry Amner. Harry was just a nominal Christian when he joined Power to Change in 2016, during his first year at university, and it had a huge impact on his spiritual life and walk with God.
“For the first time, I was surrounded by other Christians my own age who were passionately following Jesus,” he recalls. For Harry, being challenged to put his faith into action “was a life-changing experience.”
“At the first winter conference I went to, I wasn’t spending a lot of time in prayer. At this conference, the topic was prayer. And there was one quote that I still remember: your spiritual life will never exceed your prayer life. I don’t remember much else from the conference. But I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, if I’m not spending that time with God, what does that say about my priorities? It was just so helpful.’ And with the friendships I made at that conference, it was a highlight of the year.”
Harry now works as a campus missionary at Monash University in Melbourne because “I really want there to be a Power to Change for the next little me-s that come along.” But he still sees many of the friends he made at his first winter conference. “In fact, some of them are on the same Monash team now. It was a great opportunity to meet with a lot of other people in the movement so it’s great for building connections and friendships.”
At the recent Winter Conference in Melbourne, Harry’s third as a staff member and seventh overall, he took 35 students from Monash with him. One afternoon during the week, he ran a session on evangelism, encouraging students to go out and share the gospel with their friends. The primary way they did this was to ask a friend to watch a short video on The Four, a tool to share a summary of the gospel, and have discussions afterwards.
“Part of the reason behind encouraging students to go out sharing is also to teach the importance of living out our faith and sharing the gospel with those around us and how, in a way, it’s unloving not to share with those around us. But also to be trained to do that in a really respectful way and not just Bible-bashing,” he says.
Another highlight of this year’s conference was the informal fellowship after hours. “The schedule was a lot more chilled this year, so people had a lot more time to hang out and fellowship together. You could see a lot of students getting on well with each other and that was a huge blessing to them.
“On the last night, the students stayed up all night. I only lasted until 6 a.m., but there were such good conversations that night. It was really good to get to know a bunch of people a lot deeper.”
