speakers

Melri Wright - Student Leadership Trainer

Melri Wright has worked with youth for over 20 years, serving alongside her husband, Mike as youth pastors in BIC churches in Ontario, Canada. She has contributed significant energy to creating many youth ministry adventures in the Canadian Conference. Melri is also part of a team of people who founded the Centre for Student Leadership, a ministry that focuses on developing the leadership capacity of students through team-based experiential teaching and communal living. Melri lives in Clarksburg, Ontario with her husband Mike and their two children MJ and Michelle...along with many students who are part of team experiences.

Melri has spoken at countless retreats, camps and conferences and you will love her engaging and vibrant personality. She will encourage you to take the things you learn at YouthQuest and apply them to your everyday life.

Bruxy Cavey - Teaching Pastor

Bruxy Cavey is the Teaching Pastor of The Meeting House - one of our fastest growing Brethren In Christ Churches. This multi-site community in the Greater Toronto Area shares the same teaching and vision: to create safe places for spiritual seekers to ask questions and develop thoughtful faith. Bruxy’s accessible style, historical rigor, and refreshing candor make him a popular guest on television and radio programs and at universities across Canada. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario with his wife, Nina and three daughters, Chelsea Chanelle and Maya, and their lovable dog Toby.

Click here to check out The Meeting House or download MP3 messages by Bruxy.

Jay Smith - BIC Missionary

Jay Smith has cross-cultural missions in his blood. As a third- generation Brethren in Christ, he was born in a remote village in India's Himalayas.

As a teen, he trekked across Asia into Europe and found himself in Switzerland at L'Abri, where he became convinced that the gospel was absolutely true and relevant. At a 1981 missions conference, Smith encountered two numbers that changed his life: Only 1,500 missionaries were ministering to the world's 800 million Muslims, a missiologist reported.

"Fifteen-hundred wouldn't do diddly-squat," Smith said. So he threw himself into apologetics and specialized in Islamic theology. Following graduation from Fuller, Smith grew a bushy beard, learned to speak French in Paris, and headed off to French-speaking Senegal, eager to engage Muslims.

Four years later, an urgent message from a London missionary redirected Smith's focus. This friend was doing a door-to-door survey on religion and found that the average Brit cared little about faith. This researcher's most dynamic religious conversations were with Pakistani and Indian Muslims. And this colleague uncovered a troubling trend: an increasingly radical Islamic element that Britain's Christian leaders were apparently unaware of, let alone doing something about. He urged Smith to come to London. Smith agreed.

Soon after arriving in 1992, Smith visited Speakers Corner, where hundreds of Muslims converged each Sunday to hear virulent Islamic preachers.

At times, 10 passionate Islamic speakers, using a short ladder as a platform, roused equally passionate crowds of men in native dress, all punching the air, shouting "Allahu akbar." These individuals were imams or educated men of high standing. Women also attended. Combative free-for-alls between followers of different Muslim clerics erupted on occasion.

Smith decided to step right up and start speaking to the crowd. But he didn't get far. The crowd laughed at him. They pushed, punched, and cursed him, and yanked his beard (since shaved off).

"I was not expecting vitriol, aggression, physical abuse," Smith says. "This was way out of my comfort zone." Smith found addressing Muslims' objections to Christianity next to impossible. These adept debaters responded with challenges that Smith's years of apologetics and seminary studies had not prepared him to confront.

"Christians had all the best material but didn't know how to package it," Smith says. To reach Muslims, he needed a better way to communicate. "I just felt I didn't know the material well enough. Muslims had much better presentation."

Click here for a full story by Christianity Today about Jay and his ministry.