How did your first STORM go

God uses many things to bring glory to Himself. Let me tell you of the most recent thing in our youth group that God chose to use…a Word of Life S.T.O.R.M. meeting. S.T.O.R.M. stands for Sending Teens Out to Reach the Masses. I am a youth pastor at a small church; and, at first, I wasn’t sure how this would work for us. You’ll see that it did! If you’re going to have a S.T.O.R.M. meeting, you need to have a goal. Your goal for the S.T.O.R.M. meeting night is to clearly present the gospel to unsaved students. A S.T.O.R.M meeting is a great way to achieve this objective.

It is also very important that you teach the regularly attending teens the goal of the night so that they know the goal at which they are aiming. Our weeks before the meeting our youth leaders and I began to promote the S.T.O.R.M. event to our teens. In your promotion you need to answer the question that is in your teen’s minds, “Why should I bring my unsaved friends to this event?” In preparation for this event, we had the teens bring a list of unsaved friends they wanted to invite. Then we began praying
during our small groups for those students.

Preparation for this event will include seeking adult volunteers from the church to drive and help transport visitors to the S.T.O.R.M. meeting, bringing the ingredients for the banana split, help make the banana split, crowd control, and most importantly prayer. For us, this was an event with which the entire church helped. Rather than having our regular evening service that night, the entire church body served the teens in our community. This was one of the best things that we’ve ever done. This helped unify our teens and adults in our church. Our normal youth group is fifteen teens and four youth leaders. You can see that your group does not have to be huge to hold this event. The things that we did that night that made it a success included a forty foot banana split, prizes, and the Word of Life ministries team.

Our Area Missionary came and shared the gospel. Having Word of Life there freed up our leaders to focus on getting to know the visitors. We had an outdoor event planned but it rained during the whole event so we moved inside. We average 15 teens in our youth group on Sunday nights and we had forty seven teens for the S.T.O.R.M., of which 31 were visitors. That night after the gospel was shared nine young teens accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. The event was the best thing that the Lord has used in our youth group to bring glory to Himself. If you want to grow your group and get the gospel out to more teens in your community, a S.T.O.R.M. meeting is an event that you must do!
[Mike Fritz is the youth pastor at First Baptist Church in Susquehanna, PA.]
Editor’s Note: By planning your S.T.O.R.M. just prior to a Word of Life Super-Bowl you can more than
double the gospel impact on your community.