Victorians gather to lift their eyes at Summer Under the Son

Elspeth Kernebone

19 January 2024

Hundreds of people have gathered to lift their eyes to God’s work throughout the world at CMS Victoria’s annual Summer Under the Son conference in Melbourne.

The conference features speakers including Province of the Indian Ocean archbishop James Wong, CMS cross-cultural gospel worker Tamie Davis and missionaries such as Lauren Raiter and Derek and Rosemary Snibson.

Keynote speaker president of CMS Australia Archbishop Kanishka Raffel said he hoped to see people know Jesus through the conference, in line with the CMS vision. He said CMS conferences around Australia were a wonderful way for people to start the year, by lifting their eyes to a world God had made and focusing their lives on how to serve the nations.

Read more: ‘About the call beyond this’: Be encouraged, challenged this summer

Preaching on the Psalms, Bishop Raffel said they contained imperatives to Israel to declare to the nations the glory of God, invitations to the nations to join in the praise of God such as Psalm 117, and the anticipation of the nations being grafted in to the people of God such as Psalm 2.

Bishop Raffel said he had been tremendously encouraged by CMS cross-cultural workers at Summer Under the Son, who lived their lives in the obedience to which Jesus called all his disciples.

“Their testimony of God’s faithfulness, the demonstration of their love to people that they are sent to be amongst, their sense of God’s power and presence among his people everywhere. I just find that enormously encouraging,” he said.

Summer Under the Son 2024 runs until January 20. More information is available online at: summerundertheson.org.

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