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It's 6:30 on a Wednesday night, and 80 teenagers are on the move. Thirty minutes before starting a youth outreach service that weekly draws upwards of 600 youth, these 80 young leaders cram into a long, narrow storage room behind the sanctuary at a church in Marysville, Washington, north of Seattle, for a time of forceful prayer, which they also coordinate with regular fasting.

As the teen leaders pray aloud, others hold hands or huddle in corners with heads bowed. The back of a shirt worn by a young man proclaims, "God's Huge!" They call these intensive sessions "warfare prayer," and afterwards they move quickly into the sanctuary at Marysville's First Assembly of God to await the arrival of hundreds of their peers, some having been driven more than an hour to attend the twice-weekly youth events.

Worn-out methods
Starting in 1992, Benny Perez, an evangelist and youth pastor at First Assembly, came to realize that existing youth outreach methods were missing a large segment of teens. "God really laid it upon my heart as I came up here to be different, to be radical, to be a voice," says Perez, a native of southern California.

Perez, 31, attributes the growth of his ministry—starting with 20 teens in 1992—to impassioned prayer and fasting. "We literally pray that the heavens would open and the power of God would descend," he explains. "We have people crying out for revival. Most pastors I talk to don't pray fervently. Prayer takes time. We keep asking, and we don't stop." He and his youth leaders take turns fasting and praying for the youth every day of the year. Dates are reserved on a calendar one month in advance.

The teens take these demonstrations of commitment seriously. Once the service begins, teens flood the altar as the band—backed by guitars, drums, and keyboard—leads the church in song and prayer. For 20 minutes, the sanctuary pulsates with the clapping and singing of hundreds of teens, standing shoulder to shoulder.

Perez himself hasn't even stepped to the pulpit yet. He is in the front row, lost in a sea of youth, lifting his voice and arms in worship.

"It's powerful, incredible," says Tom Connelly, youth pastor at Church Alive in Randolph, New Jersey, who attended a service in hopes of learning how to recharge his church's youth outreach. "It's evident God has the heart of those teenagers."

The service moves on quickly. Perez steps to the stage and asks how many brought their Bibles, and hundreds are thrust into the air. Perez then delivers a 30-minute message with the sound system on high volume as he attempts to hold the attention of teens, many of whom have been exposed to a mind-numbing diet of three-minute MTV music videos.

In his messages, Perez cultivates a vibrant, spiritual atmosphere. On one occasion, Perez stopped in the middle of a message and said he sensed a spirit of rebellion at work. When no one responded to his call for repentance, Perez went row to row through the sanctuary, pointing to individuals and asking, "Are you right with God? Are you? This is serious, young people."

On another night, as Perez preached against cultic influences, a young man walked up and tossed a Ouija board into a trash can labeled "secular trash."

Transformed lives
Each service ends not only with an altar call and a time for Christian commitment, but also prayers for healing. One parent, Colleen Hicks, was so inspired after her son was healed of acute back pain that she bought a minivan to transport more kids to the services, even though she lives an hour and a half away.

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January 6 1997, Vol. 41, No. 1