June 19, 2000
True Love Waits returns to Orlando,
stakes claim for abstinence
___ORLANDO, Fla. (BP)--Six years and a million teens later, True Love Waits returned to Orlando's Orange County Convention Center to stake a claim for sexual purity.
___One hundred and forty hammer-wielding students arrived at 7 a.m. June 13 for a rally and to post 450 True Love Waits yard signs on the lawn in front of the convention center where the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting was about to convene.
___True Love Waits is a program sponsored by LifeWay Christian Resources that challenges teenagers and college students to remain sexually pure until marriage. As a statement of their commitment, youth sign covenant cards.
YOUTH from Rose Hill Baptist Church in Ashland, Ky., post one of 450 True Love Waits yard signs on the front lawn of Orlando's Orange County Convention Center June 13. The sign they are posting was sent from youth at First Baptist Church of San Angelo. (BP photo)
___LifeWay launched the sexual abstinence program in 1993. The first public display of this affection occurred in 1994 at the SBC annual meeting in Orlando. Since that time, True Love Waits cards have covered the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (1994), been stacked to the roof of the Georgia Dome in Atlanta (1996) and been carried across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco (1999).
___"Being here is a public sign of my commitment to Christ," said Lindsay Stavish, 17, a member of First Baptist Church of Orlando.
___During the rally, Richard Ross, True Love Waits co-coordinator from LifeWay, called the beginning of the program in Orlando six years ago the start of a world-changing event.
___"In '94 we had a surgeon general (Joycelyn Elders) who was a confused lady," Ross said. "She said teenagers couldn't control themselves sexually. She was dumping condoms on high schools.
___"Prior to True Love Waits, teenagers committed to purity were feeling very isolated. We needed to give these teens a way to find each other and to discover how many hundreds of thousands shared their values," Ross said. "We needed to make an impact on secular culture by showing them that abstinence is a viable message for teenagers that will be recognized by significant numbers of teenagers."
___Randy Devinney, youth minister from Oakdale Baptist Church in Rockhill, S.C., has seen the effect of True Love Waits since its beginning. "When (youth) can see college students who have been through the program, it makes a big difference," he noted.
___After the rally, the youth put their hammers to work as they displayed True Love Waits signs on the convention center lawn. Parkway Baptist Church of Orlando collected the yard signs and prepared them for posting. Each sign represents one church and 10-200 signatures.
___
Send this story to a friend
Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!
