Zero Hour 2024 Initiatives
Over the last several decades, we’ve witnessed a steady decline of high school students who have a relationship with Jesus. In fact, according to research, the youth in America are now considered to be the first post-Christian generation in our nation’s history. Yet in Youth Ministry, we’ve continued to run the same plays since the 70’s of finding a winsome enough/cool enough young adult to throw events and hope that students invite their friends. In 2020, when record numbers of students and families were leaving churches, we recognized a real need for this trend to change and for the hope of Jesus to find and fill every broken corner of our city. So Zero Hour was designed to flip that script: We believe if 1 out of every 100 high schoolers were equipped and sent to make disciples in their schools, this stat could change and we could begin to see a movement of young passionate followers of Jesus change a hurting and lost generation. Our vision is to see this kind of gospel saturation in every high school within a 30 mile radius of Kansas City.
In the last 3 years, the favor of the Lord has been upon us. We’ve trained over 450 students as disciple makers across 12 schools, and are beginning to witness the first fruits of this movement with 15 active discovery Bible studies & 2 recent baptisms of new believers. The Lord has even begun growing our core hub team. These are full time missionaries who seek to awaken & coach the next generation while connecting to & coaching youth pastors and other adults who long to partner with us in doing so. In just the last 2 months, we’ve doubled from 2 hub directors to 4 and are currently walking with over 12 youth ministry leaders across the country to see more youth-led movements happen.
We are profoundly thankful for the Lord’s hand of blessing that rests upon us. And at the same time, the reality is that we are scaling quickly. One unique aspect of Zero Hour is that we partner largely with youth pastors and other ministry workers in the city to train & coach these students. We get to mutually invest in each other by offering time & resources, but being able to support-raise within this demographic doesn’t come as naturally. Because of this, we long to financially partner with our hub directors as they support raise on their own. Our dream, if the Lord wills and provides, is to be able to pay 4 Zero Hour Directors at $1600/month ($76,800/year) for 2024/2025 to round out a full team with this growing need of students, coaches, teams, and multiplication in our schools and city.