[1]OKLAHOMA CITY (BP)–An Oklahoma City teenager and her father gave testimony to True Love Waits campaign on a TV talk show Feb. 10.
Mike Fetters, youth minister at Oklahoma City’s Village Baptist Church, and his daughter, Lindsay, appeared on the Sally Jesse Rafael show Feb. 10.
In addition, Fetters was able to lead one of the other guests on the show to Christ using FAITH, a new evangelism strategy developed by the Sunday School Board. Fetters had just attended the first FAITH training conference in Daytona Beach, Fla., in January.
Fetters and his daughter, Lindsay, a high school junior, were selected to appear on the show by Richard Ross, one of the True Love Waits organizers at the Baptist Sunday School Board.
Fetters met Ross at the Atlanta airport when he was on his way home from Daytona Beach, recounting to Ross his church’s True Love Waits involvement. Ross, meanwhile, was flying to Oklahoma City to speak to Capital Baptist Association’s youth workers retreat.
While Ross was leading the conference in Oklahoma City, he got a call from the Sally Jesse Rafael show asking about the possibility of someone going on the show as a True Love Waits spokesperson.
“He cornered me and asked if Lindsay and I would be interested,” Fetters recounted.
The following Monday morning Fetters got a call from the show, and he and Lindsay spent the day interviewing over the phone to assure the show’s producers they could stand up and speak on television.
The show, which was taped two weeks before it aired, was billed as being about a judge who was going to offer cash incentives to girls not to get pregnant.
There was a young lady on the show who debated with the judge that that isn’t the best way to go. She said teaching right and wrong is what is important.
“This lady was a Christian,” Fetters said, “but she didn’t talk about Christian things. She just gave the positive side of teaching teenagers not to have sex.”
She was followed by two 15-year-old girls who are having sex and who want to get pregnant.
“This interview was pretty crazy,” Fetters recounted. “Their mothers came on, and the girls and their mothers argued back and forth.”
Next on the show was a 17-year-old girl, Jenny, who had a baby nine weeks prior to the show.
“She was there to say it isn’t worth it,” Fetters said. “She said the baby is the only blessing you get out of it. The heartache and all the relationship difficulties aren’t worth it.”
Then Fetters and Lindsay came on. Sally introduced them by mentioning a movement that she didn’t think would ever catch on, “but here is Lindsay Fetters who speaks to that.”
“Lindsay shared the commitment she’s made to God, to herself, her family, her friends, her future mate and her future children to stay sexually pure until she gets married,” Fetters said.
Lindsay, 17, told the two 15-year-olds she is a normal teenager, has the same temptations and same opportunities, but “you’re too good to throw yourselves away for that.”
“She was more or less encouraging them to rethink what they were doing,” Fetters said.
Sally asked Lindsay if she had a boyfriend, “because it’s easy to say if you don’t have a boyfriend.”
Lindsay said she does have a boyfriend who is a Christian who has made the same commitment.
Then Fetters was asked how he feels about all this as a dad.
“I said I thought the key factor in the whole thing is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” Fetters said. “They cut that out.”
Fetters said he did say something about God’s Word and they left that in.
The icing on the whole thing, however, happened in the limousine on the way to the airport after the taping, Fetters said.
“They put us in the same limousine with Jenny, and I had the opportunity to lead her to the Lord,” he said. “I believe that is why we were there.”
Fetters said when Jenny got out of the limousine her hands were filled with literature on how to start True Love Waits groups in her hometown of Miami.