The Revolve Tour:
Where
New Event for
Teen Girls Coming to St. Louis, September 29-30
Life
for a typical Christian teen is not as simple as a leather-bound Bible and sitting in a pew once a week.
Today’s teens face a number of pressures from peer groups that often result in
a separation between faith and daily life.
According
to Barna Research Group, 89 percent of Christian
teens pray weekly, but of that same group 66 percent confessed that they had
lied to a parent or teacher, 55 percent had previously had sex, and 22 percent
had been drunk or high on illegal substances.
As seen by these statistics, integrating
faith into daily life can be difficult for today’s teens. The organizers of a new nationwide teen girl
conference called “The Revolve Tour” understand that very well.
The Revolve Tour, which will be coming
to St. Louis in September of 2006, is a new event for teen girls ages 12-18
sponsored by Women of Faith, the nation’s largest women’s conference. The event 
will
feature special guests such as Natalie Grant, KJ52, ZOEgirl
and Tammy Trent. The conference
is creatively setting the standard for reaching teen girls with a message
that aims to impact teenage culture in a real way.
“The Revolve Tour is a place where real
faith will intercept real life for these teen girls,” said Tammy Trent, Revolve
speaker.
In
2005, The Revolve Tour launched in five cities with over 35,000 teen girls in
attendance! “More girls came than I ever expected,” said Natalie Grant, 2006 Dove
Award winner for Female vocalist of the year and Revolve Tour speaker. “I
anticipated girls to be impacted, but lives were completely changed.”
Due
to this overwhelming response at the first five events, The Revolve Tour will host 10 events in the fall of 2006.
The Revolve Tour’s mission statement
is to encourage teen girls to realize their significance through a grace-based
message grounded in reality. Girls will leave the conference having tackled
tough topics such as sexual purity, growing your faith, and self-esteem, as
well as friendship and family issues.
While,
the event will tackle serious issues, The Revolve Tour is something girls
and their friends will enjoy. While
they’re having a good time, they’ll learn the truth about God and the reality
of His love for them.
All
of the speakers for the tour have something unique to share with girls and are
sure to touch lives with what they have to say. Even though their messages are
diverse, they all still fit in the central theme of “Real Faith: Real Life:
Real Fun.”
Real
Faith
According
to the Barna Research Group, 80 percent of American
teens consider their faith very important in their life and 56 percent of them
talk about faith with their friends.
Faith
can often provide a solid foundation for friendships and can strengthen the
bonds between teen girls. Revolve speakers Laura Wilkinson and Kimiko Soldati are a perfect example
of just that.
Both women are U.S. Olympic divers that have
forged a strong friendship based on their shared passions for diving and for
God. But they haven’t always had such a strong friendship.
In 2000,
Wilkinson won the women’s platform gold medal at the Sydney Olympics. Seeing
Wilkinson’s success, Soldati decided to move to train
with Wilkinson and her coach Kenny Armstrong.
“I think a lot of divers would have
felt threatened about that,” said Soldati. “I never
thought about how I would have felt in her shoes, but Laura opened her arms and
welcomed me.”
Wilkinson
was one of the reasons Soldati began to develop her
faith in God because she constantly referred to her faith as her driving force
in her life. When she won the gold medal in 2000, Wilkinson had what could have
been a debilitating injury and was not the favorite to win because of it.
“I broke several bones in my right foot and
never thought I had a chance,” said Wilkinson. “I spent my time before my dive
praying and asking God for strength and I could not believe it when I won the
gold!”
Soldati said
Wilkinson and her strong faith had a big influence on her and her decision to
follow Christ. “I think God put her in my path for a reason,” she said. “Before
I found Christ, I wanted to win gold. Now that I’ve come to Christ, and Laura
helped reveal this to me, diving isn’t who I am, it’s what I do. I’m only able
to do it because God gifted me.”
Likewise, Wilkinson said that Soldati has impacted her walk with God. “We pray before
events and look things up in the Bible.
She’s a huge part of my growth with Jesus in the last few years. It’s awesome
to share that with somebody.”
Both Olympians will be sharing their story
of faith, sport and friendship at The Revolve Tour.
Real
Life
How did a girl with no money, a failed
relationship and an eating disorder find success?
Ask
Natalie Grant. The now Christian-music pop star landed in Nashville with all of
the above and a drive to pursue her dreams.
Grant spent her years of higher education
not finding herself, but finding a good-looking
boyfriend. A lifelong perfectionist desperate for acceptance, Grant did everything
she could to keep the relationship afloat. “Everyone thought he was the perfect guy,” said
Grant. “I was so worried about having the perfect relationship that I couldn’t
even be honest because I didn’t want to burst anyone’s bubble.”
So in pursuit of perfection, Grant began a
dangerous dance with bulimia that would follow her for years. She eventually broke
ties with the guy, but the eating disorder stuck with her into the beginning of
her Christian music career and her new husband.
“When people meet me, they think of me as a
very driven, strong, secure, self-assured person who is always happy-go-lucky,
always positive and always outgoing,” Grant says. “But they have no idea the
real struggle with security I had and how I was a prisoner to perfection in my
life. For so many years I didn’t even know who I was. I lived behind these
masks of who I thought everybody wanted me to be instead of figuring out who I
really was and being OK with who I really was.”
Though she admits it’s a daily struggle,
finding her true identity began with what was, for her, a revolutionary
realization. “I always knew that God loved me on a grand scale—like He loves
the whole world,” Grant explains. “But I never really came to grips with the
fact that if Jesus was walking down the street right now, He would think I’m a
cool girl. Once I could grasp that, it really started giving me confidence. I
was more assured in who I am and what He created me to be.”
Grant also reveals the details of her
history at The Revolve Tour and in her new book titled The Real Me, in which she says she is the most honest she has ever
been. “One in five teenage girls experiments with an eating disorder,” she
explains. “They don’t need another Christian book that quotes all the right
scriptures and puts Jesus into a nice little package with a bow on top. They
need raw, honest reality and I really feel like my book does that.”
Grant wants people to know that though from
the stage she may appear to have all the answers, she does not. But searching
for them continues to be the most difficult and most rewarding journey of her
life. “We are always looking for somebody to give us the answers,” she says. “But
it’s up to us. God did what He needed to do and now it’s up to us to choose
every day to view ourselves the way God does. Some days I make the wrong
choice. That’s just reality.”
Real
Fun
The
conference is slated to be the most exciting event with out-of-this-world music
and ZOEgirl is sure to please in this category. Their
music is filled with fun, energetic, danceable pop. It doesn’t hurt that the
lyrics, written by the ZOEgirl members themselves,
are a straightforward message sure to touch any Christian teen girl right where
they are.
This
pop trio has sold more than 1 million albums worldwide and is the
fastest-selling debut artists in the 26-year history of Sparrow Records. ZOEgirl has managed to create a success story that
continues to get bigger and bigger with the release of each new album. Band
members Chrissy Conway, Alisa Girard and Kristin Swinford attribute this success to keeping true to the teen
girl’s issues. “I think with each album we’ve been able to integrate more and
more of who we are,” Girard says. “We’ve really seen a need and have been
trying to fill that void for young girls to have a different option when it
comes to pop music. I think we’ve just really focused in on who our listeners
are and what they want to hear.”
Teen
girls have reacted to this focus to their true needs and often use their web site,
zoegirlonline.com, to tell them how much they are helping.
“ZOEgirl has shown me that you can be beautiful and
wonderful with out being the way the world portrays beauty,” said Carol, a
14-year-old from Ohio, “I listen to the song Good Girl every morning. Any time I’m in a situation where I have
to make a choice or I am tempted by sin that song kicks into gear in my head
and reminds me to make a choice God would want me to make.”
“I
could go on and on about how awesome Revolve was, but you have to experience it
for yourself,” said Michelle Kemp, chaperone of a group from Gateway Baptist
Church.
The
Revolve Tour will be coming to the Savvis Center
in St. Louis, MO on September 29-30, 2006.
Tickets are available for as low as $49.
For more information and to register visit www.revolvetour.com or
call 877-9-REVOLVE. Discounts
are available for groups of 10 or more. For
information on group registrations contact Jennifer Bayer at 800-778-5856
x390.
