In an age with a multiplicity of minute-by-minute appeals for teenagers’ attention, many of them unsavory, their first priority should be a relationship with Jesus Christ, say the Rev. Shane Kenney and his wife Natalie.
Started in 2013, the couple’s Permian Basin First Priority program now has 2,000 participants in the middle schools and high schools of Odessa, Midland, Greenwood, Stanton, Andrews, Monahans, Kermit and Wink with groups meeting during the lunch hour once weekly to share their faith and encourage church attendance.
“Through four-week cycles of hope, the goal is to put students back into the local churches and impact the middle schools and high schools with the Gospel message through student-led clubs,” the Rev. Kenney said. “They open with a prayer and have speakers.
“We have had 1,046 students give their lives to Jesus. We are multi-denominational and doctrinally neutral, right down the center. We don’t get into doctrinal differences. We have more in common than we have differences. It’s about a relationship with Jesus.”
Kenney, a Southern Baptist, said there has been no opposition because the Equal Access Act of 1984 gave students the right to pray, carry Bibles and have religious meetings during non-curricular hours. “There was a vacuum before then, so thank God for Ronald Reagan,” he said.
“Some students haven’t rejected the Gospel. They just haven’t heard it. Teenagers are the No. 1 influence to show their friends how to have faith in something bigger than themselves. God hasn’t left the schools because the students are taking God with them.”
Kingdom Church Executive Pastor Elizabeth Rodriguez said the Kenneys’ “heart is for the teenagers of the Permian Basin.
“Shane and Natalie give these kids a sense of hope because lives are changed when Jesus comes into the room,” the Rev. Rodriguez said. “I have seen what happens when they talk to kids about Jesus and provide an opportunity to share him. Hearts are changed and it impacts the schools.”
The Rev. David Cadena, youth minister at Tanglewood Baptist Church, said First Priority “is a great program where the students gain the confidence to share their faith with 60, 70 or 100 kids.
“It’s incredibly empowering,” he said.
