November 13 thru 15 we held our first Youth Challenge Conference with over 200 young people registered from all over Ukraine and even Russia. Slogan of the conference was You Can Do More. It encouraged radical commitment and actions in different areas of youth ministry such as leadership, mass media, hip-hop, worship and dancing.
The conference hosted great speakers Sergey Martyunichev (youth pastor of Word of Life Church, Moscow, Russia), Wayne Brown (school clubs director and one of the core leaders of 220 Power youth ministry of Bethany World Prayer Center), David Annoh (pastor of Tabernacle Church, Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine), Anton and Ira Kraft, rap ministry Gospel People and many others. Every day they led unique seminars, trainings and master-classes in the areas mentioned above.
I’d like to tell a few words about each area or section.
At the Youth leaders stream we talked about evangelism, character of a leader, disloyalty both to God,
and church, power of the Word and traps of a leader.
We also discussed attitude to God, other people and self. Sergey Martyunichev taught about ways of reaching out young generation and importance of seizing opportunities. He made an illustration from Exodus 8:9-10, ‘Tell me when you want me to pray for you, your officials, and your people. Then you and your houses will be rid of the frogs…’ ‘Do it tomorrow,’ Pharaoh said. Was it ok with them to sleep that night with multitudes of frogs surrounding them?
Igor Galenko continued the theme presenting the vision and application of Alpha-course in reaching out people. It works well in our church and among youth and we decided to introduce it to the youth 
leaders since most of them hadn’t had a first-hand experience of Alpha-course. Wayne Brown preached about unmovable character and faith that can save you during tough times and promote you both in ministry and in other areas of life. I focused on traps that we sometimes get caught by. They are pride, slothfulness, misusing money, and crooked relationship with opposite sex. I also gave some piece of advice as for how to avoid them.
Main thought of the Worship stream was to live a life of worship in everything you do.
Pastor Vlad Kalin from New Life Church, Kharkov was the first day speaker. He taught about characteristics of a worshipper, relationship with God and importance of worshipping Him in out closet. Pastor Vlad said, ‘What we do today in our closet determines what we will see tomorrow in our life’.
David Annoh said during a day 2 seminar, ‘Serving God is a lifestyle that has nothing to do with how you feel today or how much talent or money you have today’. Main thought of his message was that the Father is looking for worshippers not for talents. So in order to become His true worshipper one has to know God as his Father (John 4:23). There is no need to imitate anyone, because God chose you to serve Him and He wants to use you as a person. David talked about some technical aspects of worship at the end of his message and held a master class together with his wife for musicians and singers.
Ira Kraft, worship pastor of Youth Challenge Project preached on the last day of the conference. Topic of her sermon was holiness. Irina talked about personal holiness and purity before God of every Levite and called to be radical for God, ‘When we approach God, we must be holy’.
Although it was mostly worship team members who attended the worship seminars, all Christians need to understand the cause and the importance of worshiping our God. He is our Maker, and we are His creation. God does not need our worship, He has an infinite number of angels and seraphims, who worship Him and glorify Him much better than people. We ourselves need to worship team, because it is when we worship, God meets our personal needs.
Ruslan Kukharchuk and Aleksey Mykilayenko challenged the conference members in the area of mass media
Ruslan paid attention to the fact, that Christians need to develop their own media and information services, as well as expand the Christian representation in the secular media. The audience learned about the possibilities of citizen journalism and tools that allow each user to become an active participant of web media space. Kukharchuk described the principles of creating news and inspired students to create information centers of the church. 
Aleksey Mikolayenko put an emphasis on changes in the modern media and the increasing role of the Internet. He shared some principles of creating and managing websites. Aleksey said, ‘Not long ago it took a pro to create a website, now everyone can do it within 15 minutes’. Of particular interest was subject of advertising in the Internet, where Aleksey Mikolayenko revealed features and available tools for the advertising campaign on the Internet. A key message of the speakers was a call to go to the Internet, creating websites, blogs, audio podcasts, video channels, so that at the right moment to become a vehicle for delivery of truthful information about the church, Christianity, bringing people to Christ. Participants were able to test platforms for creating blogs online during the seminars. Many guys started microblogging through twitter or made their first entries in LJ.
Dance stream. How was it? One of the participants shared her impressions.
Within 3 days of the conference I received a lot of useful information regarding the dance ministry. I have explored new styles, such as soul hip-hop, step (both classic and modern). We had incredible coaches: Alisa Evdokimova and Edik Popov with his fellow colleague Sergey. 
Gospel People ministry leveled up understanding of Christian rap for the guys involved in a hip-hop ministry. The guys shared key moments of how to compose a quality track, setting goals for team, and held master classes in rapping as well as shared some of their secrets.
Also as a part of the conference we held a friendship party, where everyone had a chance to invite his friend and even win a prize for him or her. Wave of joy, Ishod and other participants of dance stream of the conference performed uplifting dances. Rap bands Holy Squad, Gospel People, 4JL, and Slavko-Smile from Novovolynsk warmed up the atmosphere with their lyrics.
It is hard to describe the unbelievable atmosphere of the party. I believe it is true with everyone who had a chance to be a part of it. However the main thing is the future fruits of the renewed ministries and inspired ministers that accepted a challenge from God to do more for the Christ.
You can do more for the Christ too!
P.S. Some key thoughts from messages from the Youth Challenge Conference
When we answer the call of God for our life it is like we get on a train that moves us forward tremendously fast (Anton Kraft).
Set impossible goals, because when you set impossible goals you reach the maximum. When you set maximum goals you reach the minimum. When you set minimum goals, you hardly reach anything (Elija, Gospel People).
Your character determines how large your ministry is (Wayne Brown).
Whatever you do whether it is work, studying, worshipping or saying ‘Amen’ in your church, do it with joy as for the Lord (Sergey Martyunichev).
God is looking for worshippers, not musicians (David Annoh).
If a dead person arises today, are we ready to let the whole world know about that within a couple of hours? (Ruslan Kukharchuk, president of Novomedia Association)