2) The Power of a Youth Movement!

by Jean-Claude and Sundie Noah
Detroit, Michigan

In 1992, I (Jean-Claude Noah) gave my life to the Lord. That same year, there were three young people who had in their hearts a desire to pray to God. They were not born again and did not understand what was happening to them; they just knew that they needed to pray. They gathered together every Saturday to pray and after three months, forty young people had joined the group (myself included). There wasn't a leader and so every week, someone different was designated to share the little knowledge they had about God or the Bible. It was the supreme work of the Holy Spirit.

We were so passionate for God, that people started asking us what was going on. The Spirit of God started manifesting in our midst and young people were baptized with spiritual gifts. The gift of prophesy flowed. We evangelized by singing praises to God and by praying. Parents began to open their doors for us to meet in their homes and they were touched by God.

One day, in 1993, a man of God visited our group. No one had ever seen him before. He introduced himself as Bro. Hal Rahman. We asked him to come back and teach us as we were all very ignorant of spiritual things. He came back the following week. He asked us a question during his teaching that touched me deeply:  "Who is Jesus for you?" Over several weeks, Rev. Rahman continued to minister to us. We began to see a bigger picture and a vision was born.

We organized a youth festival and asked Rev. Rahman to preach. His message was on sanctification, something we knew nothing about. That night, 300 youth gave their hearts to Jesus.

In 1994, we held another youth festival with the theme, Youth Aflame! During one of the meetings, we were worshipping, singing the words, "Holy Father, we wait on You for fire!" The fire of God filled the hall. Youth were baptized in the Holy Spirit, consecrating their lives to Jesus, repenting of sin, falling under the power of God. We went out on the street to evangelize the next day and almost 400 youth came to the Lord.

It was out of that youth festival that the ministry, Youth Aflame, was created. We worked under the leadership of Rev. Rahman. Between the end of 1994 to 1996, we had gone and evangelized every school in the city of Douala (business capital of Cameroon). We encouraged youth to create music and drama groups to evangelize in their schools.

100 youth groups/clubs were created form 1995 to 1996 and we were winning 1,000 to 1,500 youth to Christ per week. Churches were launched, missionaries were sent. We have been able to pioneer in the area of youth ministry in Cameroon. We were among the first to use the style of Christian rap music to minister to youth; for the first time, a Christian youth group was allowed to march in the annual youth parade; God opened a door for a 180 Youth Center to preach the gospel and disciple thousands of youth.

Many of the original youth from that prayer group are now full time missionaries, senior pastors or Christian business people. They were on fire for God and were able to influence a nation for His glory.