Rivers Baptist Church - Christ alone - and Him crucified

A week ago, 747 had a speaker from Brisbane City Church, Andrew Carter. As any 747 leader will attest, God has been doing amazing things all year in that ministry. That night, God moved in such a powerful way that 747 ran out of the church’s stock of bibles.
A typical night at 747 has three one-hour parts: two ‘hang out’ times at the beginning and end of the night, where the youth (ages 12–18) can play volleyball, skateboard, use the PlayStations or get into several other activities; and the worship time, very much a youth-focused church service.

‘It’s usually pretty noisy when the speaker comes on. It can be hard to keep the kids’ attention. But this guy had them with his first sentence and talked for 40 minutes,’ says Corey Gieskens, co-ordinator of 747.
Andrew Carter has an amazing testimony. A couple of years ago, he ran his motorcycle into a tree and became a quadriplegic. While in hospital, he recalled an incident from his childhood. He had badly burned his leg at home and asked his father, a pastor of their church, to pray for his leg. As he prayed, the leg was miraculously healed.

Lying in his hospital bed, unable to move and completely devastated, Andrew prayed to God for enough healing so that he could turn his body to the side. God gave him movement in his arm, enough to be able to roll over onto his side. Gradually, he regained movement of his body. He had X-rays showing his smashed vertebrae and letters from his doctors to his parents explaining how they would need to modify their house to cater for his new disability. On Friday night at 747, he played volleyball and moved amongst the youth, and then walked up on the stage unaided.

‘His testimony was very strong,’ says Corey. ‘And at the end, he asked, “Do you know where you’re going? You might die tonight, or you might die in 70 years, but do you know where you’re going?” At least 20 youth put their hands up to make commitments. And he also asked the kids to pray a prayer of recommitment and another ten or so youth put up their hands.

‘We normally ask them to come out the front when they make commitments because it’s easier for us to get beside them afterwards. So when their hands went up, I thought, “How do we follow up now?”. Well, basically they came to us.’

The leaders of 747 were swamped as young people came up to them, telling them they had made first-time commitments or recommitments.
‘We found a box of bibles,’ says Corey, the Head of the Manual Arts Department at a local high school, ‘and we handed out between 70 and 100 bibles. Youth were running up to us asking for bibles. I recognised one of my kids from one of my classes and, when I went up to him, I realised that about a third of my Grade 8 class was there wanting a bible. And they were asking “Are they free?”.’

The leaders of 747 are very committed to seeing God move on a Friday night. They meet early to pray for the evening. Lately, they’ve been praying for specific youth. (They do this every day and it’s called the ‘triple one’ (one youth, once a day at one o’clock.)
‘Debrief went really late that night,’ says Corey. ‘The leaders were so pumped with how God impacted the youth.’

The key for The leaders of 747 is passion, and prayer. ‘As the youth come and go over a period of time, the youth go, “Wow, you’re still here”,’ says Corey. ‘And the leaders’ response is, “Well, I really care for you guys”. We’ve currently got 33 leaders at 747. But there’s so many young people there now (747 is now averaging close to 200 kids with over 600 who are on the database for 2006), that we could always do with more. It doesn’t matter how old you are. We had Josie (Hockley) with us for ages, before God called her to other things, and the youth used to run up to her — they really loved her.’