Teens ask peers to take a stand

USA (MNN) — How difficult is it for you to stand up for your faith? Think back to what it was like in high school. Was it difficult? Did you have people encouraging you or holding you accountable? A group of students in Harrison, Arkansas, are making that a priority.

High school senior Jordan Witmer caught the vision for this student movement. “What would it be like if we could change the culture at our high schools to where a culture of living for Jesus was more important than living for the culture?”

He says many schools have closet Christians. “There are a lot of kids who are on the fence spiritually. A lot of times they’ll wear one hat on Sunday and then come back to school on Monday and wear a different hat. We want to be able to challenge those kids specifically to take a stand for Jesus.”

Witmer says he began talking to friends about it, including Abby Rush who’s helping spearhead the event. “We just prayed. We asked [God] about what we really wanted to do through this movement.”

Out of that, #HowToLife was born: a student led event that will draw hundreds of high schoolers from different high schools in the Harrison area. “We began promoting this and getting a lot of people on board back in January. And, have had multiple prayer gathers with about 50 students and have corporate worship together as well.”

#HowToLife is totally and complete initiated and led by students. The team of students is hoping this event will encourage Christians in Harrison to share Jesus.

Witmer is also praying this will catch on in other schools “so that they’ll be able to start mini revivals in their own schools and begin challenging the students who just come to school to do school, [so that they] will actually begin living Christ-like at school.”

The opportunities are pretty amazing. Witmer says, “There are 25 million students attending public high schools all over this country right now. The best missionaries to these 25 million students are the students. What if students were challenging students to live for God?”

Pray for this event tomorrow, which will be held at the North Arkansas College Pioneer Pavilion. Pray that God will raise up motivated young people to make a difference in their schools. Pray that the movement will take root and spread throughout the U.S.

Ron Hutchcraft Ministries is providing needed resources to help as these teens challenge their peers with worship, drama, a message with the clear Gospel, and an opportunity to make a public commitment to choose Jesus.