ATLANTA (BP)–A “lifetime of challenges” awaits Southern Baptist students at YouthLink 2000, organizers of the year-end event told messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting June 15 in Atlanta.
Richard Ross and Dean Finley, YouthLink 2000 co-chairs, said 33,000 youth and college students already have registered for the Dec. 29-31 event that will be held simultaneously in seven cities — Anaheim, Atlanta, Denver, Houston, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Tampa. It is designed for junior high school, high school and college students.
“For the first time in the 154-year history of the Southern Baptist Convention, God is calling together all his young people, every student,” Ross said. “He has powerful work to do among this vibrant generation.”
Members of the YouthLink 2000 steering committee issued a series of challenges to messengers at the convention:
— A salvation challenge — that more students will be saved at one time at YouthLink than any other time in history.
–A vocational challenge — that thousands will commit to be pastors and to lead churches, schools and institutions in the new millenium.
— A missions challenge — that more than 1,000 students will commit to serve as career missionaries.
— A purity challenge — that more than 100,000 students will commit to a “lifetime of moral purity.”
— A campus missionary challenge — that 50,000 students will serve as missionaries to their campuses under appointment by their churches.
— A witnessing challenge — that more than 100,000 students will commit to witness to every lost student in North America by the end of the year 2000.
— A giving challenge — that more than 100,000 students will commit themselves to a lifetime of giving through their churches, especially to missions.
— A presidential challenge — that presidents of the various SBC entities will challenge the students to give one summer, semester or year in full-time missions and ministry before completing their education.
YouthLink will be a “solemn assembly” for students, Ross and Finley said. It will include six worship services, satellite links to sites in Israel, small-group discipling experiences and hands-on mission projects.
They acknowledged complications in getting a youth group to YouthLink. The reason to deal with those difficulties is an “unmistakable conviction that God is about to do something powerful with this generation and only those present will get to see him move firsthand,” Ross said.
