THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 15, 1996 TAG: 9609150046
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DIANE TENNANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 83 lines
The young Christians in the mosh pit were ready for anything the band could throw at them: ear-shattering decibels, unintelligible lyrics and The Message.
``If we don't leave this earth ready to meet Jesus, man, we don't have nothin','' shouted one of the singers with Johnny Q. Public, a five-man rock band. ``Praise God, man!''
The 1,500 teen-agers in the YouthFest tent screamed back, ready to take on the sinful world, but not quite, perhaps, ready for their next task - take on the local shopping malls.
The Christian Broadcasting Network held a 12-hour youth rally Saturday, mixing live concerts by popular bands with evangelizing, T-shirt sales and games. The object was to involve youth in World-Reach, CBN's effort to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to 500 million people by the year 2000.
The majority of the rally involved listening to youth evangelist Ron Luce and various bands. The real work came at dinnertime, when the teens were dispatched to area malls to ask shoppers whether they knew Jesus.
``We pray right now for all the people hangin' out in the mall and on the beaches,'' Luce said to the crowd. ``They might think they're just hangin' out, but they don't know they have an appointment with the Lord.''
And 1,500 kids, in what Luce called an invasion, headed out.
Katie McDonough and her friend Megan Senter, both 17, wandered Greenbrier Mall in Chesapeake. They carried handfuls of evangelizing tracts printed to look, when folded in half, like $5, $10 and $20 bills.
``Saying you want to share Jesus Christ with people is not something you encounter every day,'' admitted McDonough, a senior at Kempsville High School. ``It's as difficult for us as it is for them.''
The teens had been told to ask questions of people, questions like, ``What do you think about God?'' or ``How do you think somebody goes to heaven?''
McDonough and Senter approached a few people, and were politely brushed off, although two young men accepted the tracts. One woman said she already had a tract.
``She said she already had one, but I could tell she hadn't,'' McDonough said as they walked away. ``This is hard.''
Then another girl who, like McDonough and Senter, had come to the rally with a group from First Baptist Church of Norfolk, told them that mall security did not want the teens talking to customers.
They stood for a moment, perplexed.
McDonough folded a $20 tract and laid it on the corner of an empty table. Twenty minutes passed, and at least three times that many people, but no one picked it up.
Senter, a senior at Maury High School, suggested a new tack. She wadded a tract and dropped it from the second level of the mall to the first. Within seconds, a passer-by had picked up the ``money'' off the floor, straightened it out and looked at the message inside.
``We might as well leave them here,'' Senter said.
``There's no point in taking them back with us,'' McDonough agreed.
``We could drop some more.''
``A man picked it up.''
``He read it.''
They dropped some more.
Another rally-goer was not so fortunate with his choice of tactic. A folded $10 tract lay on an empty table in the food court. A young woman glanced at it several times and finally walked over to pick it up. She looked inside and dropped it back on the table.
``It's not real,'' she said to her companion.
YouthFest organizers did not expect complete success with the mall expeditions. CBN estimates that to convert 500 million people worldwide, it will have to contact at least 3 billion. Organizers expect the 1,500 youth to help.
After leaving the malls, the teens gathered again in the tent next to the CBN studios, where the ministry's weeklong revival will kick off today. They were commissioned as WorldReachers and ended the evening with a final concert by Grammy Award winners dc Talk.
McDonough said evangelizing was a good experience. ``It gives you a lot of confidence to go up and talk to people, and talk about something very personal,'' she said. But, she added, spreading the gospel can be done in more subtle ways.
``Just the way you live your life, you witness,'' she said. ``You don't really have to say anything.'' ILLUSTRATION: BILL TIERNAN PHOTOS/The Virginian-Pilot
ABOVE: Silas Mullis, 15, (second from left, facing camera), and
Joseph Garrastegui, 16, right, both of Virginia Beach, join friends
listening to rock band Johnny Q. Public. BELOW: Jenna Bowers, 11,
left, and Jessica Osborn, 12, both of Chesapeake, pray under the CBN
tent Saturday. by CNB