This March 750 teenagers and their leaders got together in 3 regional festivals. These are the latest gatherings for a growing number of youth ministries who have joined together in the Soul Revival Jesus Movement. The Festivals gave teenagers and their leaders an opportunity to get together with a common mission. They met to call young people to be committed to Jesus and to live for him in local churches that work together, training young people to read the Bible for themselves. The strength of this movement is that it helps neighboring churches partner together while maintaining a commitment to the local church in mission and discipleship of young people.

Churches have been exploring new initiatives to cooperate in mission. In August last year, youth pastors from 6 churches in the Sutherland Shire decided to launch a new mission partnership they called the Soul Revival Jesus Movement. 9 months later the movement has grown to 16 Churches. These churches are geographically spread out. So the youth pastors have decided to form three movement mission areas. They are the Sutherland Shire, the Illawarra and the Shoalhaven regions.

The regional structure allows neighboring youth ministries to cooperate with each other and dovetail with regional structures of their particular denominational structures. At the same time the movement can share resources and ideas across the regions. Soul Revival is a partnership between evangelical churches from 3 denominations. Baptists, Anglicans and Presbyterians have joined the movement. Each are hoping to grow more local youth ministries in their denominations.

Stuart Crawshaw from Gymea Anglican wants Soul Revival to be a blessing to the Anglican church. “We don’t want to create more competition. We want to work with and compliment Anglican initiatives, to help grow local youth groups through conversion not through transfer growth. 78% of Sydney Anglicans report coming to faith before the age of 20. Soul Revival is committed to reaching out to more young people.”

The core mission happens week to week in the local High schools and local churches. The Soul Revival gatherings have supplemented these missions. Nearly 100 young people have made commitments or recommitments to Jesus at Soul Revival Gatherings. After the initial launch there we have held been a Shire prayer night and January mission that also strengthen our Christian young people in their evangelism.

With 2 new regions joining Soul Revival this year, the youth pastors decided to hold 3 festivals in March to celebrate. This gave them an opportunity to share the vision of the movement as well as call more young people to commit to Jesus.

The Festivals took place in 3 locations. The Shoalhaven Region saw 120 excited teenagers from 7 churches gather at the Shoalhaven Anglican School. Young people from each church prayed with each other about living as a Christian. Simon Twitchen from Isaiah 40 about having courage under fire.

Jake Desalis from Ulladulla Anglican is one of the Soul Revival regional coordinators who helped organise the most southern festival. “I like what Soul Revival offers. We are committed to Jesus and the Bible when we meet together. It is so clear who we are, who Jesus is and what God thinks. It is great to be working together with other churches with this in common.” Jake said.

Brett Middleton from Miranda Anglican spoke to the 500 young people who came to the Sutherland Shire Festival. “Soul Revival festivals were a chance for local shire youth to get excited about what God is doing through Jesus: that through Jesus we are reconciled to God and one another.” said Brett. It was great to see young people from 3 different denominations meeting in the name of Jesus. “‘Soul Revival’ was a great opportunity for Cronulla Pressie’s Youth to hang with other Shire teens, & be built up by the message that Jesus has done everything to reconcile sinners to God. Very blessed!” says Ian Holder from Cronulla Presbyterian.

Leonard Kiswangi from Africa Enterprise also shared about reconciliation in Africa at the Shire festival. The Shire region has already given $2500 to AE with more to be given this year.”Reconciliation is such an important issue in our world and having both a guy like Leonard sharing about the situation in Congo and a Biblical understanding of what reconciliation means is tremendously helpful and beneficial for young people.” Says Steve Dixon from Gymea Baptist Church.

The Shire Festival had a live Skype link up with the Illawarra Festival at Fig Tree Anglican being held on the same night. Ron Irving, the youth and young adults pastor sees new opportunities opening up as youth ministries work across regions. “I’m excited about the clarity that the movement brings to youth ministry across our diocese as well as the intentionality of working together which brings with it the huge benefit of reminding ourselves there is something way bigger than ourselves, our church or even our denomination…”

The youth ministries like Fig Tree, that have joined Soul Revival have a common theology. But the practices and models of youth ministry vary in the movement from local church to local church and region to region. The movement recognises a need for a new common strategy for youth ministry to reach more young people in our culture. This strategy needs to be broad enough to take into account our different models of youth ministry but tight enough to foster collaboration.

Ron spoke to 110 teenagers about the simple 4 prong strategy of Soul Revival. The Movement calls teenagers to be committed to Jesus, committed to their local church, committed to be trained for a life time of ministry and work together with other like minded churches in the movement.

More from the Soul Revival Jesus movement is expected in the future. Not only are the existing members excited about more missional activity together but hope more churches will join the friendship and that new regions may be added. At the end of the Day the Soul Revival youth pastors are praying that Jesus’ name will be proclaimed and many young people will respond to the good news and make a commitment to Jesus across our Country and beyond.

Soul Revival’s theology, strategies and updates of its missional activities can be found on it’s web site, soulrevival.org.au. The web site also offers visitors the opportunity to contact the movement to discuss joining in.

Half way through 2010 the SRJM youth pastors had a vision. What if we gave up all the hype, bands, crazy activities, prizes, lighting rigs, heart string tugging videos and celebrity testimonies which go hand in hand with running a mission for young people and gave ourselves solely to two things. Prayer and the clear preaching of the gospel. And not just in small amounts. But six nights in a row. Three nights of prayer and three nights of preaching.

In January 2011 this vision became a reality.

As a movement we got together for 3 nights of calling upon God to be true to his character of mercy and grace and to pour out salvation upon the young people of the Sutherland Shire. And we spent 3 nights together hearing the good news that in Jesus Christ there is freedom from all those things which keep us separated from God.

And frankly it was amazing.

The prayer nights were times of such encouragement. It was great to hear other believers pouring out their prayers and requests to God. Calling upon him to save their family and friends. And to sing with them about our wonderful saviour God.

And every night where the gospel was preached there were people who didn’t know Jesus listening. There were people who had heard about Jesus but were still far off. And these people were responding to the messages. Engaging in conversations with their friends and asking questions. We pray that the seeds which were sown in their hearts would produce a wonderful crop of salvation.

So thank You Jesus Christ that you heard our prayers and that you answered them. Thankyou that you spoke and lifted our eyes heavenward to see you in all your saving glory. May you receive all the glory and honour and fame and all the accolades that our hearts can muster for all eternity.

Jesus, as a movement, your bride, we love you and adore you.