Gospel Journey Teens Dare 2 Share

"I might live, but I won't have life," Max says. "I choose Jesus."

The men are weeping and singing hallelujah until two shots are fired and the stage goes dark.

Greg returns to the stage, and asks the teens if they'd be willing to die for Jesus if they were forced to choose between him and their country or their boyfriend or girlfriend: "God is not calling most of us in this room to die for Jesus, but he's calling everyone in this room to live for Jesus, and I guarantee if you're not living for Jesus today, you wouldn't die for Jesus tomorrow."

The next day, the apocalyptic tone gives way to more practical discussions. But then Greg suggests something even more shocking than the previous night's skit. "I want you to think of that one friend who doesn't know Jesus," he says. "Pray for them. Pray that God would use you because you realize what hangs in the balance — the difference between heaven and hell."

When the kids look back up at him, he tells them to take out their cell phones and lift them up, so he can see the lights.

"You're about to call that friend right now," Greg says.

The arena is suddenly silent. Kids laugh nervously. Greg can't be serious.

But he is. If you get voice mail, he says, leave a message that you want to talk about God. And if you don't have a cell phone on you, wait until the person next to you is done and borrow theirs.

"Remember, we deal in awkward moments. This is an awkward moment. This is not a drill. This is not a test. This is as real as it gets."

Kids continue to laugh and fidget with their phones, and then some start to dial. When they get voice mail, there are great sighs of relief. They leave messages that say, "I need to talk to you about something important," and leave out the God part. But dozens of kids actually reach friends who let them awkwardly spout through a message they've memorized. A few friends even agree to "accept Christ" right there on the phone. A crowd gathers around one teen crying with joy because she's just saved a soul from eternal damnation.

This "cell-phone challenge" is classic Greg. "I am sick and stinkin' tired, guys," he tells the teens on the first night of Survive. "I travel the states, and I see teenagers everywhere I go. I get sick of religious teenagers who know all the words to all the songs and all the stories, but they have not fully dedicated themselves. They're one way with their Christian friends at church; they're another way on their MySpace page. It is time to choose a side."

Greg started Dare 2 Share by making a list of 300 Colorado churches in every Christian denomination, then called every youth pastor at those churches, begging them to bring their kids to a seminar. September 1991 was the first Dare 2 Share conference, only it wasn't called Dare 2 Share back then. "I'm ashamed to share with you what our original name was," Greg says. "Warriors for Christ, which sounds like Jihad for Jesus, but we didn't mean it that way. I just wanted to train every kid how to share their faith without being obnoxious. How do you bring it up without throwing up? How do you talk to your friends about God?"

Even in its earliest inception, Warriors for Christ looked a lot like today's Dare 2 Share conferences, with plenty to grab the kids' attention. Rick and Shelley were already in a Christian band, Kenaniah, so they played music. Brad Holder, the friend who'd lent his living room for the start of Grace Church and for years ran one of the state's biggest haunted houses, Frightmare, did special effects with sound and fog. At first the Friday-night dramas were just readings, but they soon became more elaborate. Shelley would write and revise and direct productions that required casting, costumes, sets and sound equipment.

By 1999, Dare 2 Share was attracting several hundred kids at each weekend conference, held in Denver, Detroit, St. Louis, Lincoln and Atlanta. Greg was struggling to balance his desire to reach out — his goal was to train a million kids to share their faith — with his role as pastor at Grace Church. Pastors have to be patient, Greg says. They're supposed to shepherd and counsel people, and he had a hard time with that. Once, he was in a counseling session with a married couple and Rick. The husband said he believed God was calling him to divorce his wife because he was more spiritual than she was. Rick was doing the right thing, asking probing questions. But Greg, watching this man's wife crying next to him, couldn't stand listening to a pious jerk claiming to be spiritual, and he jumped in the husband's face. "God just told me something," he said. "You're full of crap!" The couple left the church, never to return.

Then came the shootings at Columbine High School, and Greg decided he had to devote himself to Dare 2 Share. He resigned from the church, and Rick stepped away from Dare 2 Share to focus on Grace full-time. "By design, it was always going to go that direction," Shelley says of the split. "Greg is high-energy, blow in, blow up, blow out. That's really Greg's personality."