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.
"All these kids reserve places in the van a week before we go," she says, noting that there are now three minivans making the weekly trek to Marysville.
Another Marysville regular, Amanda Nickelson, a high-school junior, once was so shy she "couldn't talk to people." That changed when Perez's youth group joined other Christian youth on a Mexico mission trip in 1994. When her bus became lost in one of the cities, the Marysville youth began to pray aloud. "We were trying to figure out what to do," she says. "God just hit the bus. People got baptized in the Holy Spirit, and I haven't been the same since." Eventually, the group found their destination as well as renewed enthusiasm for their mission.
Ministry teams formed The Marysville youth, once their Christian faith was awakened, have taken new initiatives in ministry, forming 17 teams for inner-city outreach, nursing-home visitations, and fellowship groups.
In one recent effort, 59 teens were dispatched to Seattle, 40 miles away, for street evangelism. "We're taking over America from Marysville," Perez says with elation. "Our youth are model students. They're witnessing to friends, becoming leaders on campus. The homecoming queen gave glory to God at the game."
The Marysville teens have integrated their vision for "warfare prayer" into their daily lives. Following a service in early June, Christopher Dea and Corinne Soule stood outside church as dusk fell when a carload of teens pulled up nearby and shouted insults at them and the church. But it didn't faze Dea. "We're a light for Jesus," he says. "And when we're all here we're a bonfire. They can't help but see us." They bowed their heads and prayed with boldness, "Lord, deliver those kids to our church." As a result, they have intensified outreach to their unchurched peers.
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Last September, following a time of intensive preparation, 3,200 people attended a series of outreach meetings in Marysville over a two-week period. With that kind of response, other youth pastors are arriving at Perez's office, hoping to find out how to revitalize their own youth ministries. Perez, whose senior pastor, Ken Squires, fasts and prays along with him, has a simple answer, "It's not a magic formula. It takes fervent prayer." Squires says, "It took a couple of years to even come to the place where we are right now."
At least one other youth leader has been won over. Scott Gibbons, a youth pastor in Springfield, Missouri, says, "We implemented several things Benny does. We put an emphasis on prayer and fasting. When I visited Benny [in 1995], we were running 100 young people. It has grown to 225. God has blessed us."
A Southern California evangelist, Iann Schonken, has traveled to Marysville several times. He calls the area "a youth-pastor graveyard with the grunge music culture and New Age influences." But he has watched the Marysville youth become transformed by the gospel. He says, "Benny Perez's vision has become their vision."
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