DiscipleNow grows youth groups across East Liberty

When First Baptist Church, Lanett, held its first association-wide DiscipleNow weekend this summer, members had no idea how the program would affect youth ministries in East Liberty Association churches.
   
Yet, three months later, church leaders are still seeing increased student attendance and lingering excitement about the event, according to associate pastor and East Liberty student coordinator Tim Andrews.
   
“We had several students who made professions of faith, and one child came forward to share the call to be a missionary,” Andrews said.
   
“A lot of children have kept coming back to church on Wednesdays in a lot of the churches. Many students have invited their non-Christian friends to church,” he said. “We have had students in our own student ministry to keep coming back to church, giving us an opportunity to keep ministering to them.”
   
Although First, Lanett, has sponsored DiscipleNow programs for their students during the past three years, Andrews saw the need to include other association churches in the event. “We decided to open it up to association churches and host it at Lanett because many of the churches have bivocational pastors and couldn’t be involved in something of that scale,” he said.
   
Nine of the 39 associational churches responded with more than 180 registered junior high, high school and college students. Then church leaders invited anyone who wanted to attend and did not require payment.
   
“We had close to 300 people on Saturday night including pastors and staff from other churches,” Andrews said. “It is by far the biggest event specifically geared to students that the East Liberty Association has promoted.”
   
During the weekend, students learned about evangelism from featured speakers and the “Jesus 101” discipleship study led by college students from Auburn University’s Baptist Campus Ministry. 
   
Students also participated in various local missions projects, including free lawn service and yard work, volunteering at a community-wide health fair, renovating a local church playground, visiting seniors at an assisted living facility and nursing home and doing door-to-door evangelism.
   
Other volunteers passed out candy bars labeled with their church information. They also served at a barbeque fundraiser to benefit a school for the mentally handicapped.
   
“One of the priorities was to have the churches perform missions work out in the community,” Andrews said.
   
“I think that often churches are [internalized] and we don’t get outside, and Jesus said get out into the highways and by-ways. We are missing some real ministry opportunities when we don’t.”
   
Satisfied with this year’s event, First, Lanett, plans to host the event again next year.
   
“Kids are still talking about it and are excited about attending next year’s event,” Andrews said.
   
“Overall, I think we had very positive results, and we are looking forward to DiscipleNow 2005. I really expect quite a bit more students,” he said.