A story of collaboration between the GOVERNMENT, the POLICE and the CHURCH which led to hundreds of thousands of gospel exposures, thousands of changed lives and mobilized believers.
the incredible story of YTL, how God planted a small mustard seed in Hungary behind the Iron Curtain and made that a ministry that went to 62 nations
In 1994 we got connected with the National AIDS-coordinator, Dr. Dénes Bánhegyi. He asked us to help prevent the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Hungary by putting together a program for educators and youth experts on how to deal with youth-problems. We told him that our conviction is that the only real solution for all of todays problem (drug, promiscuous sex, AIDS, alcohol, etc.) is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We shared with him that the program we put together has to be built on that conviction. Although he is not a Christian, he agreed with us in that and he opened an incredibly door for us. We developed a tool called “Youth at the Threshold of Life” to train educators on how to deal with youth-problems from a biblical point of view. As of today our curriculum is a three-volume, 1000 pages long teachers manual that deals with relationship and character building, AIDS- and drug-prevention. The curriculum has 57 classroom lectures, 27 reading assignments and 5 game-collections along with 5 videos and two other books From the educators point of view this is an effective educational program to help prevent risky behaviors. From our point of view it is an excellent tool to share the gospel with educators and students.
YTL now is accredited by the Ministry of Education and it is an official training program for educators.
Amazingly after 20 years and 23 nationwide symposium over 8,000 educators are reached and trained at the week-end long YTL symposiums. 80 percent of them are non-believers and the symposium is the first time when they hear a clear presentation of the gospel with an opportunity to receive Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord.
What is most surprising is that these non-believer teachers are not just using the YTL curriculum but 75 percent of them are showing the Jesus film in their classrooms, too. Over 750,000 students in Hungary saw the Jesus video in their classrooms because of YTL.
YTL has been developed in Hungary and now it is used in 62 other countries of the World.
The program YTL, the Policy and the Presbyterian Church started, called “Contrast exhibition” had a big start in two major cities. In each city we held a press-conference and basically all the important media were present. Important government, political and religious leaders were speaking. It even made it to the evening news in the national television and there were many other reports showed in TVs and radios. In many of these interviews it is openly mentioned that the gospel is a part of this exhibition.
Thousands of Students are gathered every week
Students between ages of 14-18 in these cities are required to come to this exhibition as part of their classroom activities. But before that each school organizes a special seminar for them and we travel down to speak to these students on Why wait?. Also we train the educators – and give them reason why they should allow Christianity to be promoted and a Christian-based program, like YTL to be used in their classrooms. We had incredible discussions and saw great openness – they are so hopeless, they don’t know what to do and how to deal with youth problems.
In a short two weeks we’ve already gave talks and opportunity to hear the gospel to 4,000 students and 300 educators. These events are organized by the schools and we just have to go there and speak.
Opportunities generate more opportunities
Two universities offered us to teach courses in their universities and train campus students on YTL for credit!!! This means that they allow campus students to get credit to come to a class where they will hear the gospel!!! WOW! 1Cor 1:26-29 is truly become reality – God is using the fools, us…
Next year the government wants to take this exhibition nation-wide and bring it to Budapest. They’ll provide the resources for the exhibition and we need to provide the speakers for the student’s and educator’s seminars!
Also, we had been asked by the government to help develop a curriculum for schools to prepare kids for family life. We’ve developed a possible strategy of such program and that had been published and distributed by the government to every school already – in 5,000 copies. On November 5th, we’ll introduce this in a conference for professionals.
