Youth Explosion Heats up Hundreds in Worship
Haitian flags adorned the heads, arms and clothing of some 1,000 students from junior high school to college for a laid-back, cultural outreach that promised to be bigger than ever this year.
BROOKLYN, N.Y. – Hundreds of young Haitian-Americans from the East Coast bore a different red, white and blue Saturday at the sixth annual Youth Explosion. Haitian flags adorned the heads, arms and clothing of some 1,000 students from junior high school to college for a laid-back, cultural outreach that promised to be bigger than ever this year.
The dress-down occasion drew youths, mainly a Christian crowd, from Greater New York and outside states including Connecticut, Massachusetts and Florida.
"This gives them the opportunity to be themselves and at the same time, we get to minister to them," said Rimsky Toussaint, founder of Rimsky Toussaint Ministries which hosts the ticketed event every year.
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Guest speaker Pastor Willie Pierre from Beraca Baptist Church in Brooklyn told the young audience bluntly that youths are falling left and right. Toussaint pointed to a generation that doesn't go to church that easily. But a relaxed music-filled environment draws teens not only to worship, but to the Scripture message as well.
“Shout outs” from DJ Paul drew out cheers from a crowd that was largely already involved in the Church and, furthermore, a part of their own church choirs. In any case, it was an outreach effort to unite both nonbelievers and believers whether from Haiti, Barbados or any other Caribbean lands.
Appearances were made by local music and dance ministries including Juda Camp and Dickson Guillaume and the New York State Haitian Mass Choir, which has sung backup for such artists as Boyz II Men and performed nationwide.
Juda Camp, an entity of JudaMuzik, Inc., which takes the Gospel outside customary musical trends, took up the entire stage with fast steps and impassioned voices that heated a room already too warm for even a spring jacket.
The "community choir," dubbed by Guillaume according to the New York Times, was honored Saturday night for its community work of reaching out with the Gospel in song for the past 16 years.
Following Youth Explosion 206, Rimsky Toussaint Ministries is presenting a Youth Convention for the Haitian American youth on Columbus Day Weekend.
