0 Comments

You can't always predict what will happen when you plan a simple youth group retreat. Sometimes, God messes with your plans.

Looking back, that's the testimony of Rick Eubanks.

Who's he, you ask? He was the minister of music and youth at Crestmont Baptist Church in Burleson, Texas, from 1975-1995.

See You at the Pole 2002 Sept. 18 Leaders and youth will gather around school flagpoles at 7 a.m. Eastern time, Wednesday, Sept. 18, to lift up prayers for America during the 13th annual See You at the Pole event. You can check out ideas and suggestions, and preview resources for this year's campaign on the SYATP Web site. Although See You at the Pole is free, promotional materials can be purchased. Brochures, promotional videos, T-shirts and other items can be ordered from the SYATP resource office in Burleson, Texas, at (817) HIS PLAN.

You might already know that his youth group was the "womb" that gave birth to the concept of See You at the Pole in 1990.

This was a "pregnancy" that was full of humble beginnings and wonderful surprises. And like radio newsman Paul Harvey says, "and now, the rest of the story."

Chuck and Loretta Sharp were adult volunteers in Eubanks' youth group. Chuck was a guard in a jail; Loretta was a hairstylist. They had a special love for freshmen students, and so Eubanks put them in charge of the freshman class at Crestmont.

Eubanks had scheduled a DiscipleNow weekend for the entire youth ministry in early 1990. DiscipleNow is a retreat idea popular among Baptist youth ministries. Eubanks says that although the youth group met en masse at the church for worship, the real teaching of the weekend happened in six homes, where the students met with their adult leaders. The freshmen were hanging out at the Sharps'.

There was another dynamic at work, though: The freshmen were hungry for God, and had caught the vision for praying for their schools from upper-classmen in the youth group throughout the 1989-90 school year. Some of the "discipling" had already taken root. Many were already claiming their campuses for Christ in prayer. One had started a campus Bible study.

The guest speaker at the Sharps' home that weekend was a young man named Kelly, a youth minister from the Texas Panhandle. He challenged the ninth-graders to surrender every part of their lives, habits -- the whole deal -- to the lordship of Jesus Christ. They responded eagerly. Later that night they went to pray at some of the schools in Burleston.

The fact that they would go to a school and pray was not so unusual. That passion had been growing all year. But someone suggested they hold hands - in public, in front of the school! Some -- including one of the football players -- were nervous and a little self-conscious. What if one of his buddies saw him? But Eubanks recalls, "When they started praying, they ‘got down to business.' "

The prayer times were rich. They felt God's presence. And they told Eubanks about it.

That planted the seed in his mind prior to a meeting with Chuck Flowers and some other Baptist youth workers at his office. Flowers was the director of youth evangelism for the Baptist General Convention of Texas. The question on the table was, "How can we help students follow up after SuperSummer (the statewide conferences for Texas Baptist churches) this year?" They wanted the impact of the summer camps to carry over to the schools. Eubanks, thinking about his students, suggested: "Let's have kids pray in small groups at their own schools -- all on the same day."

The quote of the day came from one of the leaders: "We might have 3,000 kids pray on one day!"

The brainstorming continued: Where should they meet? "Every school has a flagpole…you can say anything you want to under the American flag," Eubanks observed.

Neil McClendon, one of the adults, exclaimed, "Hey! See you at the Pole!"

After some more discussion came agreement: "We'll try it for one year." A date in September was set, and the challenge was extended by McClendon to 20,000 students at Reunion Arena in June.

Then came the surprises. First, youth workers in other states -- Oklahoma, Arkansas and Mississippi -- heard about See You at the Pole and wanted to get involved. Like a Texas prairie fire, the idea was taking off.

Flowers set up a single-cassette answering machine and asked people to call in their reports. On the night of See You at the Pole, he sat and wept as report after report came in. When the documented attendance was tallied, at least 45,000 students on 1,200 campuses were involved.

As Eubanks reflects back, the surprises kept coming.

He was stunned at how See You at the Pole became a time not just of prayer, but where kids led their friends to Christ. Denominational walls broke down at the flagpole.

"I broke down and cried when I heard about students planning their See You at the Pole in Moscow, Russia -- near Lennin's tomb -- so that they would pray at the same time as us in the U.S.," he remembers.

A small town in Texas. Freshmen students. Working-class adult volunteer leaders. And a God who loves to take ordinary people and do great things through them. Could there be another ordinary youth group out there that is ready to be the birthplace of something extraordinary - maybe in your ministry?

Eubanks is now the worship pastor at Grand Parkway Baptist Church in Sugar Land, Texas. He was asked what he would say to a youth worker who might feel "God would never do something like that in MY youth group."

He replied, "You're the best God has in your place right now. It's your calling. When we're out in the trenches, we think we don't have the credentials; we're too old or too young; but as we're available, there will be a God-given opportunity. We have to submit to Him and allow Him to use us."

He also challenges youth workers to commit to long-term ministry, and share their very lives with the students they lead: "You can teach more about patience while changing a flat tire on a missions trip than in a Bible study in Sunday school."

As in all historic movements of prayer, See You at the Pole did not begin in the hearts of people, but in the heart of God. God used the obedience of a small group of teen-agers in one town to ignite what has become an international movement of prayer among young people.

But there will be other movements, in other towns -- including maybe yours.

Doug Clark is director of field ministries for National Network of Youth Ministries in San Diego. The organization links youth workers for encouragement, spiritual growth and sharing resources in order to expose teens to the gospel of Jesus Christ, establish those who respond in a local church and disciple them to reach the world.