While most Christians agree that Jesus' New Testament admonishment to "pray without ceasing" doesn't necessarily mean 24-7 knees-to-carpet entreaty, they nonetheless believe that an attitude of prayer should outlast 'amen.'
While most Christians agree that Jesus’ New Testament admonishment to “pray without ceasing” doesn’t necessarily mean 24-7 knees-to-carpet entreaty, they nonetheless believe that an attitude of prayer should outlast ‘amen.’
That’s exactly what thousands of Seventh-day Adventist young people plan to claim when they gather in Dallas, Texas, from February 28 to March 4, for the North American (NAD) region of the church’s first World Youth Prayer Conference.
Organizers are saying the Dallas conference will be the largest such gathering of Seventh-day Adventists in North America, apart from the world church’s quinquennial sessions.
Called “Just Claim It 2007” (JCI), the conference won’t conclude with a closing prayer, something James Black, NAD youth director, hasn’t seen in his 18 years of youth ministry. Black says the gesture is “meant to symbolize that there is no conclusion, no ‘go home and forget about it’ attitude.”
Instead, Black continues, “it asks, ‘what do you do in the following weeks in your local church?’ Rather than returning to claim that they’re in touch with God in a deeply spiritual way, [participants] are urged to go back and claim their entire town for Christ, extending that connection to their family, friends and neighbors.”
Joelle Acre, a young person active in her upstate New York church and a member of JCI’s Prayer Committee, believes this strategy will work. “I really think [JCI] is going to reach out to kids and inspire them to get involved. Going door-to-door and praying with people and witnessing how effective it is [during the conference] will teach kids and encourage them to do something similar in their own towns.”
Involving young people like Acre in ministry is something the church has struggled with, admits Black. “A lot of times [the church] labels something ‘youth’ but young people are really not represented in what is supposedly targeting them,” a tendency Just Claim It aims to amend by putting young people in charge.
The conference is a deliberate “refocusing of how young people view the church. For many of them, it will be the first time they’ll come to an event that’s 100 percent youth-oriented and youth-led,” says Black.
Acre believes young people are far more likely to listen to their peers when it comes to spiritual issues. So does Bret Senton, who attends Midland Adventist Academy in Shawnee, Kansas, and is urging friends and fellow classmates to attend the conference. When young people don’t get involved, he says, youth ministry becomes “pretty mediocre.”
While he admits some young people just aren’t enthused over the idea of ministry or youth leadership, he says it’s usually because they haven’t given it a chance. Why? “A lot of times young people don’t have the resources, the backing, or the role models they need for ministry,” says Senton.
Black, too, has noticed a fundamental lack of resources available to what he calls the “post-Pathfinders, post-academy” age group. “We often ask,” Black says, ‘where are our youth?’ Where are they?—they’re at home, because we aren’t offering them anything relevant. [With Just Claim It], we’re hoping to help fill that ministry gap.”
At JCI, Acre is taking advantage of the opportunity to connect with other young people by volunteering to staff one of the conference’s many prayer rooms over the weekend. But she doesn’t think young people should wait around for church-organized events.
“If you’re really willing to get involved, you can get people to support you. I’ve heard stories of kids wanting to preach and their local church not letting them, so they went out and preached on the street corner. So young people can do leadership. You don’t have to be in a church building to witness or to be in a leadership role,” she says.
Empowering young people to go home and change their churches and communities is exactly what Black hopes JCI accomplishes. “Everything that we’ve done for this conference comes down to the idea that young people are going back to impact their neighborhoods. We’re creating a model of ongoing mission that is both simple and concrete,” Black adds.
“Our intent is to start with the basics,” says Black. “A lot of young people know God exists, but don’t know how to connect with Him, to effectively communicate [with God].”
But the conference will go beyond Prayer 101. Young people won’t be cooped up in meetings. They’ll participate in a myriad of active outreach projects—essentially prototypes of what they’ll learn to implement in their local churches and communities. These range from music and drama ministries to work projects and prison outreach. One project is “Just Make Over,” where young people will refurbish 1,000 homes in the Dallas, Fort Worth area.
Senton and Kayla Frishman, who also attends Midland Adventist Academy, hope their excitement about youth ministry will be contagious—in a lasting way. “It’s easy to get fired up at youth conferences, but hard to go back and make real changes,” Frishman says. “But I think this conference will be different. We’ll actually learn practical stuff to do, we’ll set goals, and all get involved.”
“I’m looking forward to learning more leadership skills as well as improving my personal walk [with Christ],” adds Senton. “I’m hoping this conference will bring back a positive attitude among young people and push them to step up and take on leadership roles.”
For more information on the conference, visit www.justclaimit.org.
