TRUE LOVE WAITS

by LifeWay Student Ministry

What is True Love Waits?
Created in April, 1993, and sponsored by LifeWay Christian Resources‚ the world's largest provider of religious products and services‚ True Love Waits is an international campaign that challenges teenagers and college students to remain sexually abstinent until marriage. To date, over a million young people have signed covenant cards stating…

How has the campaign been carried out?

From the beginning True Love Waits has been a grass-roots effort that originated with, and has since been led by, young people. Youth leaders have carried the True Love Waits message to young people through churches, student organizations, health-care groups, and on campuses across the nation. Numerous national, city-wide, and regional rallies have been held each year. Southern Baptists made the chastity campaign an ongoing annual emphasis by listing February as True Love Waits Month on their denominational calendar. Other denominations and religious groups have developed their own plans for participating in the campaign, many using the Southern Baptist plan as a model.

How big is True Love Waits?
More than 210,000 covenant cards were displayed on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on July 29, 1994, as part of the first True Love Waits National Celebration. Approximately 25,000 young people attending DC '94 participated in the event. A second event, True Love Waits Thru the Roof, occurred February 11, 1996, in Atlanta, Georgia, as part of the national youth ministers' meeting Atlanta '96. This international display included 340,000 cards stacked from the floor to the roof of the Georgia Dome‚ and beyond. Over 18,000 youth and youth leaders attended.

The True Love Waits Goes Campus phase was launched Valentine's Day 1997. As part of True Love Waits Goes Campus 1998, a campaign report that included an additional 68,000 commitments was presented to state and national government leaders.

Students continue to take the abstinence challenge to secondary schools and college campuses across America each February. On October 2, 1999, 1,500 youth carried 100,000 commitment cards across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California. Cards were then mailed to Australia for a display December 31-January 1, 2000 as a symbol of crossing into the new millennium with commitments to purity. On June 13, 2000, 450 True Love Waits yard signs were displayed at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. This was the site of the first display of True Love Waits commitment cards. In the summer of 2004, youth from 20 countries sent 460,000 commitment cards to Athens, Greece, to be displayed during the Summer Olympics.

Is True Love Waits just about refraining from intercourse? What about other practices such as oral sex?
True Love Waits is about following God's plan for purity. He calls us to be pure and holy. Sexual purity includes refraining from sex outside of marriage, but that is not all. True Love Waits is a comprehensive call to sexual purity that involves the mind, the spirit, and behavior.

Source: http://www.lifeway.com/