Students asked to start campus groups

July 24, 2000

Students asked to start campus groups
___By Ken Camp
___Texas Baptist Communications
___SAN ANTONIO--Texas Baptist teenagers can become part of a national movement to establish student-initiated prayer and evangelism ministries on all 56,000 secondary school campuses in the United States.
___Fred Lynch of Campus Challenge and Josh McDowell Ministries urged young people to become campus missionaries during the statewide Youth Evangelism Conference June 23-24 in San Antonio. He also provided training for their adult leaders.
___The Challenge 2000 Alliance, a group of denominational and para-church youth ministries, already has identified 29,000 junior and senior high schools with existing prayer and evangelism ministries, Lynch told the adults.
___The remaining public and private secondary school campuses can be touched with the gospel as students accept the responsibility of becoming campus missionaries, he said.
___"The campus missionary strategy is simple. The school campus is considered to be the mission field. Christian students are the missionaries. And the local church is the missionary-sending agency," Lynch explained.
___Student "missionaries" commit themselves to reflecting Christ in their lives; praying for school leaders, other Christians and non-Christian friends; praying for and sharing the gospel with five non-Christian friends; and participating with other believers in starting or sustaining an evangelistic club on campus.
___The youth minister's role is to recruit and empower students as missionaries and to train adult volunteers as off-campus coaches who mentor a small group of campus missionaries.
___Involving youth in small groups and linking maturing Christian teenagers to mature Christian adults is vital, Lynch said. He cited a study by researcher George Barna demonstrating that 56 percent of youth leave church between the 10th and 12th grades, and 86 percent leave soon after high school graduation.
___"The No. 1 reason why they leave is isolation," Lynch said.
___Mentors reduce that sense of isolation, he added.
___Churches are encouraged to commission campus missionaries in a special worship service, preferably on the second Sunday in September, prior to the See You at the Pole student-led prayer emphasis the following Wednesday.
___On the evening before See You at the Pole, adults are invited to join the Campus Prayer Journey prayerwalk. Parents and other adults walk around the perimeter of a local school campus seven times, praying for specific concerns.
___Once the student-initiated, student-led campus clubs are launched, participants are urged to accept principles of Challenge 2000. The challenge, built around an acrostic CHRIST, involves a pledge to:
___ Commit oneself to a love relationship with Jesus Christ.
___ Honor Christ in one's moral life, including thoughts, words, actions and relationships.
___ Respect parents and other authorities.
___ Involve oneself in encouraging and uniting with other Christians.
___ Seek God through prayer.
___ Take the message of Christ to one's school and to the world.

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