When I was Section Youth director about 10 years ago, I started a program called, ARC (Apostolic Revival Corps) that traveled to various HM churches in our district and conducted training, outreach and services. Our team was made up from 20 to 30 young people from our section and included musicians, young preachers and passionate youth from ages 14 to about 25. Each young person had to fill out an application, have it signed by their pastor, and get three reference signatures. In the early ARC missions, we would conduct a Saturday afternoon service, but found it was much work and wasn’t strategically placed in the weekend for visitors to attend, so we decided to focus simply on the outreach aspect of it. This was a good move, as it allowed all the youth to make it back home to be fresh for their Sunday services.
A typical trip looked like this:
We select a city/church and pitch the idea to the pastor. If they like the idea, we begin laying the groundwork of finding a suitable (read CHEAP) hotel, begin promotions a few months in advance to the youth, and begin an outreach strategy for the church.
FRIDAY
All young people meet at the Host Church on Friday evening at 7pm for outreach training, a very brief sermonette from one of the young preachers, and intercessory prayer for the city.
After prayer, all of the youth from the Host Church and the ARC team go to the hotel where we have a conference room set up for a pizza/board-game party. This gives the Host Church youth a chance to really get to make some friends, and our team to build good relationships.
Note about the Hotel: We charged each attendee (except the host church) $20 per person to be a part of an ARC mission. Assigning 4 people to a room averaged about $80. Room rates were arranged to be $50-$60, which would leave us with about $20 per room to use for pizza, drinks and any other necessities for the weekend, like outreach materials printing, etc.
On Friday, the kids would stay up very late having fun… then we would wake them up early in the morning (about 8am) to pack and get their breakfast (continental, provided by hotel).
SATURDAY
After breakfast on Saturday morning, the youth would go directly to the Host Church at 10am to meet with their youth and any members who wanted to participate, have quick prayer and head out into the city for outreach.
After outreach, we would return back to the church for lunch (provided by host church) and sharing testimonies about the things that took place. The lunch was simple sandwiches, chips and drinks and cookies. Nothing major. This was the only cost to the Host Church. (in retrospect, this could have been picked up by the Youth department, and in some cases it was.)
Outreach consisted of either mass distribution of flyers, or conducting door-to-door surveys. The 60-second surveys were always VERY effective, and yielded several HBS for the host church to teach.
It was all around a very positive event for everyone.
The Host Church benefited from:
- mass outreach in their city
- excitement within their people to have others support their work
- a shot in the arm for their youth
- training on simple, effective evangelism
- making strategic friendships
The Youth benefited from:
- excitement of the harvest
- something to take home to local church
- training on simple, effective evangelism
- making, strengthening positive relationships
- building confidence to be involved in ministry
All in all, it was an incredibly positive experience, and the host pastors still fondly remember and talk about the opportunity. The youth who I look back and recall were involved are mostly all now in ministry of some sort.
I’m really liking this plan and can’t wait to fully have it in movement with our young people. This is funny; just reading the article has excited me to the point that I need to call someone…. but who? Who do I tell 1st. (Now I’m like a lil kid hopped up on sugar).
🙂 Glad you like it brother! I would love to see this take flight in our students, in our Section, state and around the country… Revival is waiting on us!