If it were not for the Jubilee conference, I would never have become the president of the CCO. In fact, I don’t know where I’d be today. Jubilee changed my life.
I was a freshman at Ohio Wesleyan University when my older brother, Dave, first invited me to attend Jubilee. I had yet to surrender myself to the living God of all creation. Dave knew that. I knew that. And at some subconscious level, I knew that going to a conference like Jubilee would wreak havoc on the status quo. But I went.
I showed up at the Pittsburgh Hilton on Friday afternoon, and by Sunday, everything had changed. My life had been transformed.
That was February 1978. Thirty years later, Jubilee has outgrown the capacity of the Hilton, and will be hosted this weekend for the first time ever at the Westin Convention Center.
Jubilee weekend remains one of my favorite times of year, right up there with Christmas and Easter. I still get excited each February as I watch thousands of students gather to sing praise songs and to be challenged to live all of their lives for Christ. How many of them have walked in on Friday evening as one person and left Sunday with a whole new awareness of God’s presence in their life?
And where will they be 30 years from now?
—Dan Dupee | 2011
