The doors at The Place opened Wednesday, Nov. 8 at 6:30 with food and recreation. From 7 to 9 p.m. three nights a week for six weeks, teens came and brought their friends. Attendance averaged between 50 and 60 each night.
Located in a small building on the corner of the Central Valley Christian Academy (CVCA) campus, the public meetings were an outreach for teens in Modesto and Ceres.
October was preparation month with vision-casting, planning, training and equipping of students at CVCA. Volunteers were organized into specialty teams like prayer, door-to-door, recreation and outreach. Monday and Thursday evenings, the outreach groups went door-to-door, to parks and malls looking for teens while the prayer team prayed. Gym nights, a great way for students to invite their neighbors and friends, regularly drew around 100.
By opening night, a large group of excited teens were ready. Each evening’s format included worship through song and sharing, free gifts, prayer, Scripture and messages from God’s Word. The unseen character of God was shown through the core doctrines of the Adventist church.
Nicole Im heard about the event, dubbed "Unseen," at her Sabbath school class. Though she really wasn’t that interested in Bible study, she thought the Youth Evangelism Team members were nice, so she thought she’d try it. “Everything changed once I got there,” she says. “It was really cool.”
It was after the presentation on the cross that the Holy Spirit spoke to her heart. “It was like I was hearing the story for the first time,” she says. She made her decision to be baptized.
“I feel like I have more energy. I see things in a new way,” Im says about her new life in Jesus. “Studying the Bible is interesting and personal.” And she has joined the Wednesday night youth meetings at the Ceres church.
Four "Spiritual Weapons and Tactics" (SWAT) sessions followed the meetings: Excalibur – Overcoming barriers to a consistent and meaningful devotional life; Operation Anti-Emo – finding emotional stability in an emotionally unstable world; S (cubed) – Super Sweet Sabbaths – identifying the principles of making Sabbath beautiful and holy, establishing customs and serving; and Strategy and Operations – how to plan and implement effective ministry.
