Small church sees youth reached at SPEAK Tour; next event set for Sept. 27

Youth from various churches gather for SPEAK Tour in Athens

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Dedra Henry’s church is small. Her husband, James, accepted the call to serve as pastor there in 2019, and when the COVID-19 pandemic happened, they lost nearly all of what little youth group they had.

“Our youth group consisted of our son and daughter and maybe one or two others,” Henry said.

Gaining momentum

She was passionate about teaching them on Wednesday nights, but she also wanted them to experience the things a larger youth group would.

So she and her husband loaded them up in 2022 and took them first to Super Summer, then to SPEAK Tour in August.

“We wanted to keep the momentum going,” Henry said.

And at SPEAK Tour — a night of worship designed for youth to bring their friends to hear the gospel — two of Henry’s daughter’s friends made decisions to follow Christ.

“From there, it just started feeding off of my daughter inviting her friends and then they invited friends, and we ended up going to another SPEAK Tour that was closer to us in September,” she said.

At that event, three of her son’s friends from band made decisions to follow Christ too.

Continue reading here.

This article was originally published at TheAlabamaBaptist.org.

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