Ron Luce’s SURGE: A Youth Awakening Across the Nation

THE URGENCY 

After 25 years of hosting Acquire the Fire stadium events all over North America, Ron has heard from many leaders that there is a vacuum when it comes to mass evangelism of America’s youth.  He says it’s time to disrupt this trend that has stolen the hearts of our young generations from the Gospel. “It is undeniable that in the past five-ten years the culture has declared war on the youth of North America. When we look to all the carnage in the values that social media is immersing our young people in, as well as the LGBTQ influence in schools, and pervasive binge-watching Netflix series with debased morals, now more than ever our youth need a cutting-edge experience that will help them encounter God in a fresh way.”  The vision of the October 15, 2025 SURGE event is to have 1000 churches across North America stream it to 100,000 teens versus meeting in individual stadiums, as Ron did for many years.  The idea is that teens from youth groups will bring unchurched guests to experience Jesus for the first time.  
 
THE THEME 

Ron and his wife, Katie, are working on a book called Navigating the Media Jungle, coming out in September 2025, which will serve as the theme of the night.  “During the event, as we use high-tech tools, connect to their phones, and feature celebrities, musicians, comedians, we’ll deliver a heart-wrenching message,” Ron says. “We will help young people come face-to-face with how social media is intentionally aiming to get them addicted to endorphins, compel them to be selfie-driven, and shape their minds and hearts with values and lifestyles all in the name of entertainment.  Because of the very real slavery to media of many forms, youth workers and parents will have great motivation to bring their youth.”

THE GOALS

Ron has set very clear-cut goals for the SURGE event:

• Equip 1000 churches with PROJECT 13 tools to reach and disciple the next generation.

• Train 10,000 young teen leaders in advance to be disciple-makers in these churches to engage all the new followers of Jesus after the event.

• Host up to 100,000 youth in churches nationwide, seeing many thousands come to Christ that night.

• Coach churches after the event via Zoom to help them implement the Deep Dive Disciple-Making tools for the next 6 months, using assessments every 4 weeks to measure the effectiveness of the discipleship process

PROJECT 13

Ron studied churches all over the world and found that the ones most successful in bringing youth to a saving faith used similar methods.  “At its core, PROJECT 13 is a transformational process of reaching and discipling the 

young generation, containing four best practices that any church can implement no matter their history of youth ministry.”  He has developed a master class, which teaches the best practices and trains both youth and adults how to become disciple-makers.  The best practices are:

• Train young leaders

• Hold epic events for 13-year-olds, who are the most likely age group to come to Christ

• Implement “deep-dive” disciple making 

• Building an ecosystem for the entire church 

For more information on SURGE go to gosurge.org And to learn about his latest projects click the LINK! as well! 

CREDITS

Co-Founder, Generation Next ministry / event speaker / author of 30 books on teen culture / Founder, Teen Mania and Acquire the Fire events, 1986-2015, during which he worked with 100,000 churches, and hosted hundreds of arena events attended by three million young people in North America / Executive Director, Jesus Global Youth Day in Manila Philippines, 2019, hosting 50,000 youth in 30 nations / writer, Project 13 Masterclass, teaching church leaders a transformational process in youth ministry based on vast research of churches globally/ PhD in Strategic Foresight / Married to Katie for 40 years, three adult children