Youth for Christ International showed both its age and its youth at its twenty-fifth anniversary celebration. Between 8,000 and 10,000 YFC enthusiasts of all ages poured into the Winona Lake (Indiana) Conference Grounds June 30-July 13. They heard Billy Graham—the movement’s first full time evangelist twenty-five years ago—at the first of nightly rallies and attended training sessions in teen evangelism and a slew of teen talent contests.
This year’s convention was a bit nostalgic. The yearly meeting, held traditionally at Winona Lake, site of YFC’s formal founding, may be abandoned next year for six regional conferences in major cities.
This switch may be the major indicator of YFC’s coming of age. The movement began in big cities such as Chicago to meet the spiritual needs of post-war youth. It has since gone suburban, but it is beginning—just beginning—to turn its face again to the urban centers.
At the same time YFC is developing sophisticated graduate education to prepare youth workers to communicate with the “now” generation. Starting this fall it is sponsoring a youth ministry program at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois, involving a one-year seminar, field work, and personal counseling. The seminar covers the psychological, philosophical and sociological influences on today’s teen-agers, and the problems and possibilities of evangelism and Christian growth in today’s environment. A similar program is also being developed at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.
YFC’s main purpose is to reach teen-agers for Christ and to teach them to share the Christian message with their peers.
The movement sponsors 1,875 high school clubs in 250 cities around the country. Including the Lifeline program for delinquents, the YFC movement reaches some 75,000 teens annually.
YFC has 500 paid staff members in the United States and forty-two in thirty-eight foreign countries in addition to 1,000 national workers and volunteers. Two youth folk-singing groups, the Teen Team and the New World Singers, augment the program in this country and abroad by entertaining and sharing their faith.
YFC’s publications include the monthly Campus Life magazine, now with a circulation of 80,000, and a growing number of paperback books for youth.
The present annual YFCI budget of $1,600,000 will probably go up 20 per cent to $1,900,000 for the next fiscal year.
BARBARA H. KUEHN
