Here are ten things you don’t want to hear after See You at the Pole.
- “A guy yelled at us that Jesus was stupid and we all yelled back at him, ‘Oh yeah, well, you’re stupider!’”
- “I showed up ‘cause this really cute girl said she was going to be there. But she was a no show…I’m never getting up that early just to pray ever again.”
- “It was sweet! All we did was eat doughnuts!”
- “I was the only one there…”
- “I felt like God would be mad at me if I didn’t go, so I went. But I wore a paper bag over my head ‘cuz I was embarrassed to be there.”
- “I forgot…”
- “This dude in the hall made fun of the girl next to me for praying at the flag pole, so I smashed him into a locker.”
- “No one told me about it…I had no clue…”
- “Everyone kept yawning in the middle of their prayers.”
- “Afterwards a friend asked me to tell him more about Jesus and I didn’t know what to say.”
See You at the Pole (SYATP) has become a September tradition at many schools across the country. It’s a time for students to lead the way and pray for their schools and their friends. But often we let this golden opportunity slip by without maximizing its impact in the lives of our students and utilizing the strategic opportunity it provides to focus our teenagers on their “outreach mission” each and every day of the school year.
See You at the Pole as Catalyst
SYATP provides an awesome and inspiring opportunity for Christian students to gather and pray. Prayer is an absolutely critical component for our teenagers as they seek to stand faithful to Christ in their schools.
But this year, I want to challenge you to use SYATP as more than a one day event. Use it as a starting point for building a vision in your students to reach their campuses for Christ! Gathering for prayer on Sept 28th can be a powerful catalyst at the beginning of a school year for focusing your students on their mission field—their school.
As a youth leader, you can help launch your students into their mission field by training and equipping your teenagers to share their faith clearly and effectively. When you prepare your teenagers for relational evangelism, you’ll dramatically improve their “faith sharing radar.”
Dare 2 Share provides loads of free resources on our website that can help you make the most of SYATP this year. Check out the “free” section of our site today. But I also want to give you a heads up about a new four-week DVD evangelism training curriculum we are releasing on September 23 called Evangephobia.This new product would be the perfect follow up for maximizing the opportunities that surround SYATP. I’m excited about it because, as the name implies, it’s specifically designed for teenagers (and youth leaders) who are afraid of evangelism.
Evangephobia will help your group discover how to overcome their fears about sharing their faith and will help them fuel up their passion for sharing the gospel. This discussion-based DVD curriculum will engage your students in honest conversations about the challenges, fears, obstacles and rewards of sharing their faith with friends.
This year, use SYATP on September 28th as a trigger to help your students catch a vision for taking THE Cause of Christ to their campus all year long. Whether you decide to use Evangephobia or some other evangelism training approach, be the coach and help your team face down their evangelism fears, get them praying for their friends who need Jesus, train them how to explain the gospel message to others and prepare them to share the story of what God has done in their own lives!
