Taylor Harrison is a student just like you, but she made a huge impact on her campus. She also traveled as a Youth Alive team member this past fall for the Empowerment Days. You may have seen her talking with people or sharing a breakout session. We love her heart for people!
To help you out, Taylor wrote out her experience with leading her Campus Movement. At first it was an Unregistered Campus Movement, but soon God led her to launch a Registered Campus Movement as well.
Here is Taylor’s story. We know it will encourage you to become creative and stay motivated:
My name is Taylor Harrison I had gone to George Jenkins High school from freshman through senior year. When I stepped into freshman year it was a big change for me as it is for most people who step into high school for the first time. Yet I was blessed to have some amazing Friends from Southside Assembly of God and our Youth Pastor Jeff Johnson to help me along the way. My friends and I were ready to start new and make a change, we wanted to start a movement. A movement that was worth stepping out of our comfort zones and fighting for the people at my school, with the love of Christ. There are three different ways to start a movement and the first Movement we started with was joining a club/ movement on campus, ours happen to be FCA.
We joined FCA freshman year of High school. They had a leadership team, which we joined and they had devotions, amazing snacks and fellowship. One of the most important parts about leading a movement, other than getting into Gods word, is fellowship. You have to build relationships with others.
Within a short period of time, God called us to launch an Unregistered Campus Movement – meaning we did not officially register it with the school, so it was not an actual club. This can look different at every campus! Sophomore year, we had devotions every morning right in the middle of our school, on this concreate platform everyone called “The Stage”. We did our devotions in this location because that is where most people would hang out. We decided if we were going to start a movement, we were going all out. Our Youth Pastor, Jeff Johnson, came and joined us a few times and when our Youth Pastor came at 6:30am, knowing he didn’t have to but wanted to join us and pray with us, it inspired us to want to do more on our campus. One of the cool parts of doing devotions so out in the open is that many students came up and joined us for prayer asked for prayer requests, so we had the opportunity to pray with others about what they were going through. It was amazing how God had moved.
The, Junior and senior year we started a Registered Campus Movement called Youth Alive and God really showed up. This means that we filled out all of the official paperwork and became a registered club at the school. We were running 20-25 students a week and two people given their life to Christ, one was an atheist! We felt lead to start a Y.A. movement because we felt we could do more, we were desperate to see a change, we were desperate to see God move. One thing that really helped our Youth Alive Movement get started was a friend and I had joined the Youth Alive Session at Youth Camp. Natalie and Joe had taught us the key aspects on how to start a movement. If I didn’t have my friend who was also passionate about the need of the gospel in schools, it would have been a lot harder. Someone there to have alongside of you is very important. Even if they are there just for support. We did lots of outreaches, we basically just got creative.
One of the outreaches we did was at lunch. We passed out flyers with the name of our Movement, Youth Alive, the time and day we had it. Sometimes we would pass out the flyers with cookies or lollypops. Christmas time we did candy canes with the gospel taped to it. Another outreaches we did around our school was the Sticky Note Outreach. Each person would get a packet of sticky notes and they would write different inspirational verses on each sticky note. Then, in the morning we would stick them around the school (secretly). Bathrooms, under desks, basically anywhere… The purpose of the sticky note outreach is that we never knew what someone was going through and just buy “accidently” stepping on a sticky note with Gods word on it or finding it taped to the wall. It could affect someone in ways we may never know. We also did a Dum- Dumb lollypop outreach where we would take a bunch of packets of lollypops, tape scriptures on them, and pass them around to people at school. We also used it as a promotion, because we would tell them that we were from Youth Alive. We also wrote letters during teacher appreciation month.
Last, but not least, we did an out-of-school outreach. We made them little baggies on thanksgiving and took them to a nearby retirement home. Some of the people in our movement knew how to play piano, so they played for them and we also prayed for them. We played board games with them, mostly bingo. (They loved bingo). We just sat and talked with them, and one day we brought all the ladies a rose. We really loved spending time with them, and it really touched our hearts to see them enjoy our company, but we might have enjoyed spending time with them more than they did us.
Do you need more info about launching a Campus Movement? Check out The Movement Series! This free resource is available by emailing Lacey@yapfl.com . It will break down the process for you.
Also, if you have any other questions about campus missions or youth ministry in general, please don’t hesitate to reach out! We’ve got your back!
