Foreword In the 1970s, a movement known as Jesus People swept the nation as tens of thousands of hippies and drug addicts turned in their needles for Bibles, their skepticism for devotion, and their partying for praise. It was an amazing time in North American history as young people turned to faith in God en masse, causing even Time magazine to take note. "The Jesus Generation" was front-cover news, and an entire age group was positively changed. We have prayed for another such movement today. The apostle Paul once told his protégé Timothy, "Don''t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity" (1 Timothy 4:12, niv). If we are to see a move of God today, it will only come about as new leaders rise up and embody those words of the apostle Paul. People like you. People like Nick Hall.
As you read Nick''s story in Reset, you can be confident that this is not simply the story of a gifted young man from North Dakota. It is also the story of God himself who is changing lives. Through PULSE and the message of Reset, Nick has shared the gospel across the country before live audiences of millions of students, and to date more than five hundred thousand of those young women and young men have publicly responded to Jesus. God is moving in this generation! We see it across the globe and right here in the United States. Our prayer for you, as you make your way through this book, is that your life would be the next one changed. Each one of us has given our life for the very message embodied in these pages, which is that Jesus really does change everything. Whatever you need reset in your life can be changed here and now, today, through the life-saving message of Jesus Christ. Joyfully and gratefully, Josh McDowell Luis Palau Ravi Zacharias Living the Dream Are you the guy from North Dakota doing the big youth events?" It was Billy Graham talking.
As in, the Billy Graham. And he was talking to me. I thought I might pass out like a fangirl at a Justin Bieber concert. I was sitting in the living room of a living legend, and he--Dr. Graham--was making mention of PULSE, the ministry I had started. This had to be a dream, or a continuation of one, anyway. The dream started becoming reality for me just before my freshman year of college, and by the time I was a junior, it was consuming my life. I''d been part of a few campus clubs by then and had met other students who were trying their best to live for Jesus and wanted to have an impact at our school.
In addition, I would often have conversations with friends after class and learn that whenever they surveyed the climate of our campus, they were just as disheartened as I was. It seemed students were drunk all the time, or high, or both. They were harming themselves and destroying their lives. A few of them even committed suicide. Depression and despair were rampant; something had to give. A few of those buddies and I decided to start meeting together every week to pray for our campus. We had no idea how our group was supposed The Setup to address the problems we were witnessing, but we believed that if we prayed and were willing to do what God said, he just might use us. During the same season, my English prof assigned our class a project: write a fifteen-page business proposal and prepare a fifteen-minute presentation for the class on some change we wanted to see on campus.
She divided the twenty-four or so students into groups of four and left it up to the groups to determine their project. My school, North Dakota State University, was a pretty big party school. One of those designated party areas was the tailgating lot near the football stadium, but because there were more drinkers than the limited real estate could accommodate on game days, there had been a push for a bigger lot. My group for that English project decided this was its cause. The passionate plea? "Make Room for Our Beer!" I suppose the fight for justice takes on a variety of forms. Another group would appeal for more parking on campus and still another for an on-campus golf course. And while these causes were fine by me, I came away from that class feeling unsatisfied. God had already given me a vision for seeing the campus changed by Jesus, and I wondered if forcing myself to formalize a specific strategy might help me actualize that goal.
Instead of heading home after class, I waited for my professor to free up. When I asked her if it would be okay for me to do the assignment on my own instead of in the context of a group, she looked perplexed. "It would be a lot more work to do it that way," she said, making sure I had counted the cost. "But if you''re convinced that''s what you want to do, then have at it. I''ll give you the same presentation slot--fifteen minutes--but I''ll need the same-length proposal from you . fifteen pages. Agreed?" I sat down at my keyboard that night wondering what I''d gotten myself into. "God, I could use some help here," I prayed.
"For starters, how do I even write a proposal?" There was only one other person in that English class who I knew was involved in a campus ministry, but I''d take any help I could get. I pulled her aside after class one day and explained what I was going to do my presentation on. I asked her to pray for me between now and then. After all, I was going to be presenting a proposal to my classmates about reaching them. I could just hear myself: "Today, I want to talk to you about a big problem on our campus . you need Jesus!" Yeah, this was going to go over really well. As it turned out, I survived the presentation. Later, when I read through the email comments I received from my classmates (we all had to send in feedback to each group regarding its presentation), I felt a huge sense of relief.
The responses blew me away. One said he hadn''t been to church in forever but that the presentation made him want to go the following weekend. Another said she believed in the cause and wanted to help out. On and on the positive feedback went, and my heart stirred with each review. (Okay, there was one dissenter who wrote, "Religion is personal. Mind your own business, you bigot." But hey, one out of twenty ain''t bad. Plus, there''s that verse that says to "count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me.
"1 So, evidently, now I was blessed.) On the heels of that presentation, I took that proposal, titled "Pulse," to the campus copy shop and told the workers to print as many copies as twenty bucks would buy, the amount of money I happened to have on me that day. I gave those copies to all of my friends leading ministries for the three schools in our area and said, "God has laid on my heart this goal for Christ to be at the pulse of our generation. Would you read this and pray about it? And then let''s talk." From there, word spread. Students came up to me, "Nick, this is so exciting!" or, "Nick, God''s totally up to something here!" or, "Wow, Nick, your proposal is awesome, but your graphics? No bueno." In my mind, I''d think, Hey, this was an English paper, not a graphic-design project. Cut me some slack! But before I could say any of that, one guy said, "I have some ideas.
Can I take a run at the design?" Another student said he was a marketing major and had ideas about how to get a campaign like this one off the ground. Another had thoughts about how to involve campus ministries. Another was good at fund-raising. Another was interested in PR. What could I lose in letting them at it? Within a month of the presentation, the campus was buzzing. I walked into the student union one day and found a group of kids huddled up, praying. I approached them and said, "What''s up?" to which they responded, "Nick! We were just praying about what God is doing around here and about this ''Pulse'' thing . have you heard about it?" I had to laugh.
Yeah! I had heard about it. The guys I''d been praying with week after week and I started mobilizing all sorts of teams toward a goal of hosting a regional event the following spring that would reach as many of the twenty-two thousand college students at the three area colleges as we possibly could. Based on our research, we figured that about one thousand of those kids were involved in some kind of church or campus ministry. If every one of those students reached one person for Jesus that year, the impact would only yield two thousand of the twenty-two. Plus, the stats told us that only 10 percent of Christians of any age share their faith. We were staring at a giant math problem. We needed not simple addition but radical multiplication--hence, the need for a big effort, some Mountain Dew, and a whole lot of prayer. <.