Fighting for our generation!

Check this out...this article was in the Sydney Morning Herald on Friday 13th Jan...on PAGE 3!! WOOHOO!!! How awesome!! Let's continue to encourage and empower the youth of this generation so that we can see a nation impacted for Christ!!

Heart Cry of a Generation as Young People Jump for Jesus
January 13th, 2006
ON STAGE and in the mosh pit, it is all high-octane energy and infectious enthusiasm: more than 4000 clean-cut Christian kids, pogoing in unison, jumping for Jesus.

Australia’s national youth music festival, Big Day Out, plays up the road on Australia Day. But yesterday, in the Olympic Park Sports Centre, it was God’s Big Day Out.

It’s the opening session of the four-day Planetshakers conference and Sydney is third stop on a five-state tour billed as Australia’s largest annual gathering of Christian youth.

Think Planetshakers, think of a Hillsong conference with amps.

There’s a similar line-up of speakers, teachings and worship sessions but many in this stadium have barely won the right to vote.

The American preacher Reggie Dabbs takes to the stage for a sermon that sounds like no other. Interspersed with self-deprecating humour and music, coined Jesus Rap, his message is of inclusiveness, self sacrifice, living for others and self-motivation.

As the Australian film director Peter Weir once did in Dead Poet’s Society, Dabbs commandeers the Latin aphorism “carpe diem” and has his congregation chanting back, “Seize the day”.

Planetshakers is an offshoot of Adelaide’s Paradise Church, from which the Family First political party grew.

Like Hillsong, it is an Assemblies of God church, part of the growing Pentecostal movement. It is headed by the charismatic husband and wife team of Russell and Sam Evans and is rapidly building a congregation in Melbourne Town Hall based on high-energy praise and worship.

This is the second year the church, which says it has no local ambitions, has brought its road train to Sydney.

By the end of the month, more than 20,000 young Christians around the country will have moshed for Jesus.

As the mainstream churches struggle to engage youth, Pastor Evans believes communication is the key. He says he doesn’t push politics and didn’t invite any politicians.

“I think the church is beginning to speak the language of young people and; the churches that speak the language of the day, they are the churches that are growing.

“Young people relate to the music; they want a purpose in life, they want to be involved in a service; they don’t just want to be a spectator. There’s nothing wrong with tradition. It’s all about making that tradition speak to the younger generation.”

Helping this is the Planetshakers band, the former group of Guy Sebastian, which features Sam Evans as a vocalist, and reportedly sold 70,000 albums last year in the burgeoning Christian music market.

One of the band’s lead singers, Michael Guglielmucci, does not think there would be much crossover between his audience and that of a hard-rock festival.

“The secret is the message. We don’t just write songs. This is the heart cry of a generation.”

The rock anthems of love gone wrong and alcoholic binges don’t carry to an audience that is jumping “in the House of God”. Jump, Jump, Jump.