Engage: Bringing Teens Involved to a new generation.

Some changes are coming to Teens Involved, now called Engage, to help it better reach the current generation. Find out more by clicking here.

Teens Involved: A brief history
Teens Involved started in 1973 with the vision of finding a way to help students realize their potential and purpose by using their gifts for God’s glory. Paul Bubar realized there was a need to help students discover their God-given talents and consider using those talents in ways they never imagined.

Dr. James McDonald was one such student. A youth leader encouraged him to enter the preaching category of Teens Involved, and through that process, he first sensed God leading him to preach the Word of God and later pastor.

Just 32 students came to the first National Teens Involved week on Word of Life Island. That eventually grew to several thousand students in three locations each summer during nationals alone. The number of students participating in Teens Involved has since declined, though, and it was time to talk to youth pastors and leaders, look at the way culture is changing, and reevaluate the purpose and implementation of the event.

Why change the name?
As Word of Life looked to make major changes to the event to more effectively reach the current generation, it was decided that a new name would best communicate that this is a completely different event, even if it’s designed to accomplish the same purpose as Teens Involved.

Why Engage: Discover. Develop. Deploy.
The purpose of Engage is to help students discover their spiritual gifts, develop those gifts through training and instruction, and deploy them for use in the local church. We want students to know God has given them incredible abilities to make a difference and to learn to use those abilities effectively in the local church.

What’s New
The biggest changes are focused on making the event more practical for local church ministry. As Teens Involved developed over the decades, rules were added for clarity or to help with fairness, but they made it more difficult for real-life use.

This generation also is more interested in working as groups than as individuals, so categories have been adjusted to welcome that.

Teens Involved has been extremely successful over the years, and Word of Life are looking forward to how new methods of accomplishing the same purpose will continue to help students discover, develop, and deploy their God-given abilities.