Mark Dawes, Staff Reporter

David Wraight, president and CEO of Youth For Christ International. - Contributed photos

One of the young ladies who was on that mission took 80 new Christians back to her home church in Kyrgyzstan - a congregation that had no young people. That church did not know what to do with all those young people. Youth For Christ then offered to help her and the local church to disciple the young people, Wraight explained.

The global para-church organisation, Youth For Christ, is in the process of returning to first principles by empowering young people to lead the way in strategising and propagating the Christian gospel.

"Whenever we have empowered young people to lead, the ministry has taken off," said David Wraight, president of Youth For Christ International. Wraight was in the island last month to participate in the 60th anniversary celebrations of Jamaica Youth For Christ.

Wraight, 50, hails from Australia, and has been the international president of Youth For Christ since 2004. He now leads that organisation by working out of its global head offices in Denver, Colorado.

Wraight acknowledged that somewhere along the way, the global Youth For Christ movement had become less focused on its core values. Accordingly, the organisationdid a review and introspection about five years ago and resolved to get back to letting young people lead the way in evangelism, while older folk stay out of their way except to offer mentorship.

The Youth For Christ head is married to Jennifer and they have three children, all of whom are in their 20s. They have two daughters and a son.

The Australian national told The Gleaner that his prime goals include leading the organisation to get back to its 'first love', which is reaching teenagers with the gospel. The Youth For Christ vision, he explained, is to present the gospel to young people of every ethnic group, in every nation, and to facilitate the spiritual maturation of such persons and help to establish these individuals in a Bible-believing local churches.

"We were not allowing young people to lead. We had been training them to lead but not letting them lead. The Lord said to us 'Let them lead. You become the mentor to the young people, but let them lead'," Wraight said.

Matter of the heart

He continued, "We have to empower young people to lead." Wraight, who was at one time the head of the Australia Youth For Christ, made the point that empowerment for leadership was not purely leadership training courses per se, but securing positive character formation. He thus made the point that leadership is primarily a matter of the heart and a matter of character. He stressed that leading is not what a person does, but who a person is.

By going the traditional route of leadership training, Wraight said this would have had its pitfalls. "When you train them to do something, then you determine what they do." By placing the emphasis on the development of the inner-person - which would include devotion to the study of the scriptures and commitment to prayer - leadership will be less programmatic and more character-driven. When this happens, Wraight, explained, young people will do the seemingly impossible in ministry.

One commitment comingout of the YFC's major review is the strong resolve to engage in cross-cultural evangelism and missions. Youth For Christ has historically been involved in missions - but it was not an intentional endeavour. Following the introspection that the organisation undertook, it resolved to get involved in missions in a structured and focused way in order to share the gospel to unreached ethnic groups - most of which are comprised of young people, Wraight said.

The Youth For Christ movement is presently in more than 100 countries. But there are 32 nations where there is little or no YFC ministry taking place. Wraight said he would be devoting much of his energy to influence young people to take the gospel to those nations.

High on the radar of Youth For Christ International is the Central Asia region which includes former Soviet states Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan where there are still laws against proselytising young people under 18.

Most open nation

Undaunted by the legal and cultural hindrances, Youth for Christ took five young persons from the Ukraine whose ages ranged from 19-24 and over a year trained them in evangelism and sent them off to Kyrgyzstan - perhaps the most open nation in the group. The young people were selected from the Ukraine because that country was thought to have a similar culture to these Central Asian nations. Among the things taught to the five young people was peer to peer evangelism - one of the cornerstones of the Youth For Christ movement. In this scheme, young people are taught that evangelism is not so much an event but a process. They are also taught that evangelism is also a lifestyle. This strategy, Wraight said, has proven to enjoy success on a transcultural basis.

Within the first month of their being in Kyrgyzstan, they got involved in a camping programme and made contact with 1,200 young people of which 180 became Christians. One of the young ladies who was on that mission took 80 new Christians back to her home church in Kyrgyzstan- a congregation that had no young people. That church did not know what to do with all those young people. Youth For Christ then offered to help her and the local church to disciple the young people, Wraight explained.

It has been two years since that initiative in that Central Asian state, and now Youth For Christ in that country has 12 persons on its full-time staff - all of whom are from Kyrgyzstan.

The 19-year-old young man, who was the youngest on the team that helped to start the ministry in Kyrgyzstan, was instrumental in starting a Youth For Christ ministry in Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan Youth For Christ now have four full-time staffers and the ministry there is on the incline. Furthermore, Wraight noted that same young man has started work in Uzbekistan.

Empower young people

This progress in ministry in Central Asia, Wraight said, has come about because Youth For Christ dared to empower young people to do the work of evangelism.

The YFCI president said the movement was on the incline globally and was making strong strides in a number of Muslim countries, the Middle East and other parts of Asia. In the Americas, he speaks of the strong witness YFC enjoys in Brazil.

YFC, he said, is helping Christian young people to live for a cause bigger than themselves. He observed that modern youth are grappling with post-modernism, which has come to be characterised by an existential or nihilistic view of life. "Young people are now saying they believe they can change the world. Terrorists know young people are looking for something to believe in and die for."

As he speaks in various churches, his message to pastors and senior leaders is, "What do you want young people to live and die for. Do you want them to live and die for Christ?"

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