Spiritual awakening among youth creating passionate followers of

Christ

By James Dotson

ALPHARETTA, Ga. (BP)--The "youth group" of Crestwood Baptist

Church in Frankfort, Ky., made a strategic shift in 1998 to

becoming a "youth ministry." Everything now is focused on making

disciples, with campus clubs serving as the evangelistic "front

door." Passionate God-centered worship defines midweek meetings.

Newcomers who are Christians are immediately plugged into

ministry teams where they can start serving. Spiritual highs and

lows that traditionally plague youth ministry have largely

disappeared.

"What I came to realize is I am not the youth minister as much as

I am the youth pastor. They are the ministers," said Rick Long,

minister of youth and evangelism for the church. "The pastor's

role is to shepherd and guide. The minister's role is in the

one-on-one relationships."

The transition at Crestwood is typical of what churches across

the country are experiencing, according to a number of national

leaders in youth ministry. A passion for prayer, worship and a

desire to see those around them come to Christ is a movement of

God, leaders say, comparable to some of the greatest spiritual

awakenings among youth in this century. Evangelistic growth and

increasing commitment to short- and long-term volunteer missions

service is the tangible result.

"To me it started about five years ago when there just seemed to

be a real groundswell of spiritual awareness -- a revival among

students -- starting to break out in different pockets around the

country," said Len Taylor, director of youth evangelism for the

North American Mission Board.

"It's like a drop of water. This ripple comes out from the

center, and it just starts spreading. And you get enough drops

through the country going, and you've got these ripples of

revival going out and affecting everybody," he said.

Wesley Black, professor of youth/student ministry at Southwestern

Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, traced the

modern youth ministry climate back to the early 1990s. See You At

the Pole prayer rallies on school campuses and True Love Waits

pledges of sexual abstinence gave youth the opportunity of

staking their own claims for their Christian faith publicly.

The concept of discipling youth by allowing them to take the

leadership in their own youth ministries is not new -- dating

back to the 60's and 70's, Black said. But it has increasingly

become the norm as churches have moved from an

entertainment-based model of youth ministry to ministry and

training with greater spiritual depth.

""We used to think of adolescence as a fun-filled, goofing-off

time," he said."... Nowadays there's a real hunger for the

spiritual things. And I think a lot of the youth are as attracted

to good solid spiritual guidance and teachings as they are to the

pizza parties and banana splits."

It is this aspect of youth ministry culture, in fact, that

differentiates the spiritual awakening among youth of the 90's

from the earlier movement, according to Johnny Derouen, minister

to youth at Travis Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth and a

veteran of youth ministry since the 1970s.

"The youth revival movement of the late '40s and '50s, those were

very evangelistic. But it's almost like this generation is taking

it a step further into worship and prayer," he said. "And they

want to be involved in the actual discipleship process of their

peers and friends, carrying out the work and ministry of the

church and the campus clubs."

Richard Ross, founder of the True Love Waits movement and

currently a professor of youth/student ministry at Southwestern

Seminary, said he once felt that the campaign of asking students

to pledge sexual abstinence before marriage was "an end in

itself" in order to "bring glory to God and to avoid the human

tragedies that always accompany immorality."

"But I now sense that True Love Waits was simply a prelude to

coming revival," he said. "It is difficult to imagine teenagers

leading the Church into revival while being sexually involved at

the same time."

James Lankford, youth ministry specialist for the Baptist General

Convention of Oklahoma, noted how different typical youth worship

services are today from only 10 years ago.

"You could go to youth ministries on a Sunday or Wednesday night

and see a little bit of singing, but it was mostly fun, silly

songs ... and a few spiritual songs. I go to youth ministries

now, and I don't even hear the silly songs any more. Instead of

five minutes in an opening song and then a speaker, they might

spend 20 minutes on worship."

Randy Record, a campus evangelism missionary for the North

American Mission Board and a youth evangelism strategies

coordinator for the Kentucky Baptist Convention, contrasted the

current climate in many church youth groups with what he saw in

his own youth group as a teen.

"I went to church every Sunday, and to every youth camp and

retreat that you could be at," he said. "But there was an element

missing there. Nobody was equipping us to go and be Great

Commission students for Christ."

While baptism statistics actually indicate a plateau in youth

baptisms during the '90s, Taylor and others attributed that to a

modern mindset among teens that tends to reject formal

affiliation with denominations, or even particular churches. In

fact, NAMB hopes to address the importance of baptism among teens

with a five-year "Celebrate Baptism" emphasis that begins in

January.

"We're trying to address the issue of celebrating the baptisms,

instead of making it a solemn event," he said. "We're trying to

stress that this is very exciting. Let's grill some hamburgers,

have a party and celebrate a changed life."

One milestone in the development of youth ministry has been the

Supreme Court decision in 1990 to uphold the Equal Access Act,

which specified the parameters of school based Christian clubs.

The leeway was broad, the court said, as long as all activities

were student-initiated.

While student-led ministry had been advocated and was being

practiced in some churches, the trend began to grow concurrently

with the rise of movements like See You At the Pole and the

organization of student-led Christian clubs. Today, such efforts

are frequently central to church youth ministry strategy -- and

serve as an ideal arena for developing youth leaders.

The groups have also become more focused in their purpose. Many

organizations in recent years have adopted a four-week cycle for

their meetings centered not on fellowship, prayer, or Bible Study

-- but on evangelism and making disciples. One of the latest

organizational plans is the "FiSH!" strategy -- being promoted by

the North American Mission Board in partnership with the

evangelical organization Campus Revolution.

The FiSH! cycle begins with Focus week, when students focus on

how God is working in their lives and pray for the friends God is

leading them to reach. During Inspiration week, students are

inspired in their mission by an outside speaker. Testimonies are

shared during Share week, and the cycle concludes with Hook week,

invited students have an opportunity to hear and respond to the

gospel.

A similar strategy in Henderson, Ky., helped a new club in one

school grow from 12-15 students at the first meeting to as many

as 70-80 students some weeks, according to Andy McDonald, youth

minister at Mt. Zion Baptist Church. About 20 professions of

faith were recorded during the year.

"I watched several Christian kids who initially were skeptical or

leery of what we were doing who by the end of the year were

excited," he said. "The church is also commissioning campus

missionaries to encourage those sharing Christ. And our Wednesday

night student worship has taken an incredible leap in quality, a

quality of passion for Christ in worship."

McDonald also felt that it was hard to pin the change in youth

ministry on anything but a "a movement of God's spirit among

youth ministers and among students."

"We are tired of youth ministry that is us-focused and focused on

fun. There is nothing wrong with that; you invite a friend and if

they get saved, great. But now everything is focused on being

passionate about Christ in worship, and then going out in our

mission field."

Long, the youth minister at Crestwood Baptist Church in

Frankfort, Ky., echoed the sentiment, remembering the days when a

central focus of youth ministry might have been the annual trip

to an amusement park. Now, they might still do an amusement park

trip in addition to various other ministry efforts, but "our

focus is not on the amusement park trip, but on how we can expand

the kingdom through an amusement park trip."

At Crestwood the clubs are where new students are introduced to

the gospel, and then the next stage might be participation in the

Wednesday worship service. Sundays are primarily for the core

group, with Bible Study on Sunday mornings and discipleship in

the evenings.

The emphasis on evangelism forces students to be more concerned

about their own spiritual growth, which in turn leads to greater

spiritual maturity, Long said.

"So it's a full-course circle. Everything we do interconnects

with everything else."

Taylor noted that the emphasis on campus evangelism -- including

the commissioning of students by churches to serve as

missionaries to their campuses -- has created a new awareness

that "we don't have to go load up on a van and go to Florida. We

have a mission field right here in our community."

But concurrent with the passion for evangelism close to home has

been a new interest in broader missions involvement as well.

Andy Morris, director of volunteer mobilization for NAMB, noted

the overwhelming level of commitment at YouthLink 2000 -- despite

actual attendance of about 45,000 that was significantly below

projections.

"We wanted hundreds of thousands of students there, and we

thought that God might call 10,000 people to missions

commitment," he said. "Well, we didn't have hundreds of thousands

of people there, and we still had 10,000 people called to

missions commitments."

Black, at Southwestern Seminary, concurred that there are

accepted guidelines of what percentage of youth will typically

respond at a conference, and "YouthLink 2000 just blew that right

out of the water."

The interest in mission trips has grown steadily since the

popularity of youth choirs and choir tours peaked in the 1970s

and '80s, according to Black. And for many of these students the

next step is commitment to summer or semester missions or career

missions service.

In Oklahoma, Lankford said they have seen the number of decisions

recorded during their summer youth weeks at Falls Creek Baptist

Assembly rise at a rate of about 50 percent annually since 1998,

from 566 that year to 1,110 this year. Students increasingly are

venturing out on mission trips as individuals, including one

13-year-old girl he knows who spent 30 days in Budapest, Hungary,

with 20 other youth from around the Country

"I started noticing it about probably five years ago, where we

started seeing just a swell of students with very much of a

servant heart who just wanted to go wherever God led," he said.

Ross, founder of True Love Waits, has joined others in advocating

that Southern Baptists families begin planning to sponsor their

children routinely in a one-year missions commitment on the

completion of their formal education. The only reason this is not

done routinely by many students, he says, is simply the lack of

financial resources.

Morris also said that he has seen the trend toward deeper levels

of worship during World Changers projects each year. But he also

noted that it was not anything that World Changers organizers or

any other adults could truly take credit for.

"We've just to got point them in the right direction and get out

of the way," he said. "The challenge for us those of us who work

with students ... is to not be a stumbling block for what God is

doing in their life."