January 12, 2000
6,000 youth hit the streets
in Houston to witness, minister
___By Dan Martin
___Texas Baptist Communications
___HOUSTON—Almost 6,000 students and youth leaders fanned out across the Houston area to rake leaves, bag rice, minister in nursing homes, pick up trash and share the gospel of Jesus Christ as the old year ended and the new began.
___The students were among more than 10,000 teenagers who attended YouthLink 2000in Houston Dec. 29 to Jan. 1. The event was part of a nationwide effort that linked more than 46,000 students and leaders via satellite to six other sites across the nation and Israel.
COREY WILLIAMS (center) and other youth from Lake Forest Baptist Church in New Orleans spent the afternoon distributing flyers and meeting people to announce a new Baptist church in Baytown, just outside of Houston. Most of the youth at YouthLink 2000 spent one afternoon in volunteer activities. (BP photo by Denise McGill)
___YouthLink 2000 was held simultaneously in Anaheim, Calif.; Atlanta; Denver; Houston; Philadelphia; St. Louis; and Tampa, Fla.
___In addition to five main sessions, students were given an opportunity to do hands-on missions projects two afternoons in each of the cities. More than 20,000 of the 46,041 students participated in some mission activity, reported Celeste Pennington, coordinator of information for the national effort.
___Reports indicate 5,995 students and leaders took part in some mission activity in the Houston area, said Nancy Hamilton, Acteens and Youth on Mission coordinator for Woman's Missionary Union of Texas and project coordinator for YouthLink in Houston.
___Many stayed at the Astrohall, where they bagged 40,000 pounds of rice into two-pound family-size packages for shipment to Venezuela flood victims.
___The rice project was an ecumenical effort. The food was provided by the Christian Alliance for Humanitarian Aid of Pearland, a United Methodist group, and the labor was done by students and leaders attending the Baptist-sponsored YouthLink.
___Kathie Mann, director of missions for the Christian Alliance, said the youth made it possible to ship the food to the needy people much faster than would have been possible otherwise because of the holidays.
___The family-size portions were boxed, loaded aboard trailers, taken to the docks and put on tankers bound for Venezuela. They would be feeding hungry people within a week, she said.
___In addition to the 1,500 or so who formed assembly lines for repackaging the rice, the students and leaders fanned out across Houston to do a variety of projects, including cleaning up overgrown and trash-filled areas of the city.
___About 1,100 students did a variety of projects to help Park Temple Baptist Church, amulti-cultural inner city church on the near north side.
DANIEL KING (left) and Sarah Bagwell of First Baptist Church of Orange bag rice for Mexico and Venezuela flood relief. (BP photo by Denise McGill)
___Pete Slagle, the 67-year-old bivocational pastor of the church that is 70 percent Hispanic, 20 percent African-American and 10 percent Anglo, said he was contacted by YouthLink missions leaders who were "looking for churches to have kids come out to experience inner-city missions."
___Cary Tolar, youth minister and worship leader at First Baptist Church of Richwood, who worked with Hamilton in setting up the missions projects, said leaders were afraid they would have difficulty finding enough sites, particularly on New Year's Eve.
___He was referred to Slagle and called to ask how many students he could use.
___"I asked him how many he had," Slagle recalled. "He said he had a lot, and I told him that however many he had I would use and would let them do whatever they felt comfortable doing--street evangelism, door-to-door, backyard Bible clubs, surveys, handing out tracts.
___"They started coming, and we gave out maps and started sending them out. The first day, we had more than 500, and the next day they had had so much fun that even morecame, about 600."
___"I don't know how many decisions were made for Christ, but there were a lot of contacts. We had three people in church the next Sunday as a direct result. We probably have 4,000 to 5,000 contacts to follow up on. They covered a great mass of people."
___Slagle became bivocational pastor of the church eight years ago when it had 25 people meeting in a falling-down building. Now, it is a mission of First Baptist Church of Houston, which "doesn't give us much money but gives us a lot of help." The mission averages 135 in Sunday School and about 250 in worship.
___"This was just wonderful," Slagle said of the YouthLink effort. "We have a real revival going now."
___He is saddened when he sees an inner-city church shut its doors, because there is "such an unbelievable need," he said. "The people are here. The need is here. It is wonderful when anybody says they want to come to do mission work. If anybody wants to do mission work, we can use them."
___Another 500-plus students took part in an effort spearheaded by Keith Coast, minister of youth at Central Baptist Church in Baytown.
___He was preparing to take his youth to the event--which was being held less than 30 minutes from the church he serves--and noticed there were no sessions scheduled Thursday and Friday afternoons.
___"I called and was told that missions projects were planned for those afternoons, but that they didn't have anything available, that the needs were all filled," said the student at Lee College in Baytown.
___"I got to thinking that we could do our own mission project," he said. He set up programs at six housing projects near the church, several nursing homes and an apartment complex for elderly people. He also set up several cleanup efforts and a painting job at Central Baptist Church in Baytown.
___More than 500 students and leaders took part in the Baytown project.
___"We did Bible clubs in four of the complexes, did yard work, filled in ditches, visited the nursing homes, and the kids played Bingo and sat and talked. In another place, they raked 100 bags of leaves and distributed 90 bags of groceries. We also gave out more than 2,000 letters from the church inviting people to worship with us.
___"I could go on all day telling you what God is doing," Coast said. "One of the great things about this is we have touched people from all over town. We had at least five in church because of a food bag or a letter on the Sunday after the effort."
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