You can't always predict what will happen when you plan a simple youth group retreat. Sometimes, God messes with your plans.
Looking back, that's the testimony of Rick Eubanks.
Who's Rick, you ask? He was the Minister of Music and Youth at Crestmont Baptist Church in Burleson, Texas from 1975-1995.
This was a "pregnancy" that was full of humble beginnings and wonderful surprises. And like radio newsman Paul Harvey used to say, "And now, the rest of the story."
Chuck and Loretta Sharp were adult volunteers in Rick's youth group. Chuck was a guard in a jail; Loretta was a hairstylist. They had a special love for freshmen students, and so Rick put them in charge of the freshman class at Crestmont.
Rick had scheduled a "DiscipleNow" weekend for the entire youth ministry in early 1990. DiscipleNow is a retreat idea popular among Baptist youth ministries. Rick says that although the youth group met en masse at the church for worship, the real teaching of the weekend happened in six homes, where the students met with their adult leaders. The freshmen were hanging out at Chuck and Loretta's.
There was another dynamic at work, though: the freshmen were hungry for God, and had caught the vision for praying for their schools from upperclassmen in the youth group throughout the 1989-90 school year. Some of the "discipling" had already taken root. Many were already claiming their campuses for Christ in prayer. One had started a campus Bible study.
The guest speaker at the Sharps' home that weekend was a young man named Kelly, a youth minister from the Texas Panhandle. He challenged the ninth graders to surrender every part of the their lives, habits - the whole deal - to the lordship of Jesus Christ. They responded eagerly. Later that night they felt led by the Spirit to go and pray at some of the schools in Burleson.
The fact that they would go to a school and pray was not so unusual. That passion had been growing all year. But someone suggested they hold hands - in public, in front of the school! Some - including one of the football players - were nervous, and a little self-conscious. What if one of his buddies saw him? But Rick recalls, "When they started praying, they 'got down to business.'"
The prayer times were rich. They felt God's presence. And they told Rick about it, even though leaving the house was against the guidelines of the retreat.
Their prayer time planted a seed in Rick's mind, prior to a meeting with Chuck Flowers and some other Baptist youth workers at Chuck's office. Chuck was the director of youth evangelism for the Baptist General Convention of Texas. The question on the table was, "How can we help students follow up after SuperSummer (the statewide conference for Texas Baptist churches) this year?" They wanted the impact of the summer camps to carry over to the schools. Rick Eubanks, thinking about his students, suggested: "Let's have kids pray in small groups at their own schools - all on the same day."
The quote of the day came from one of the leaders: "We might have 3,000 kids pray on one day!"
The brainstorming continued: Where should they meet? "Every school has a flagpole…you can say anything you want to under the American flag," Rick observed.
Neil McClendon, one of adults, exclaimed, "Hey! 'See You at the Pole'!" At first, they laughed.
After some more discussion came agreement: "We'll try it for one year." A date in September was set, and the challenge was extended by McClendon to 20,000 students at Reunion Arena in Dallas in June.
Then came the surprises. First, youth workers in other states - Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Mississippi - heard about See You at the Pole and wanted to get involved. Like a Texas prairie fire, the idea was taking off.
Chuck Flowers set up a single cassette answering machine and asked people to call in their reports. On the night of See You at the Pole, he sat and wept as report after report came in. When the documented attendance was tallied, at least 45,000 students on 1,200 campuses were involved.
As Eubanks reflects back, the surprises kept coming.
He was stunned at how See You at the Pole became a time not just of prayer, but where kids led their friends to Christ. Denominational walls broke down at the flagpole.
"I broke down and cried when I heard about students planning their See You at the Pole in Moscow, Russia - near Lenin's tomb - so that they would pray at the same time as us in the U.S," he remembers.
A small town in Texas. Freshmen students. Working-class adult volunteer leaders. And a God who loves to take ordinary people and do great things through them. Could there be another ordinary youth group out there that is ready to be the birthplace of something extraordinary - maybe in your ministry?
Rick Eubanks is still kickin' it with youth as minister of worship and students at Oak Grove Baptist Church in Burleson. He was asked a while back what he would say to a youth worker who might feel, "God would never do something like that in MY youth group."
He replied, "You're the best one God has in your place right now. It's your calling. When we're out in the trenches, we think we don't have the credentials; we're too old or too young; but as we're available, there will be a God-given opportunity. We have to submit to Him and allow Him to use us."
He also challenges youth workers to commit to long-term ministry, and share their everyday lives with the students they lead: "You can teach more about patience while changing a flat tire on a missions trip than in a Bible study in Sunday School."
As in all historic movements of prayer, See You at the Pole did not begin in the hearts of people, but in the heart of God. God used the obedience of a small group of teenagers in one town to ignite what has become an international movement of prayer among young people.
But there will be other movements, in other towns - including maybe yours.
Editors's Note: This story was first published in 2011. Learn more about See You at the Pole 2014 at www.syatp.com, or on Facebook at "myseeyouatthepole." The global date for SYATP is September 24, 2014.