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Leading the Youth Nation by Titus Pannell

What if you had everything you ever wanted, but you had to choose to give it all up for a divine calling that could save millions of souls. This is the premise of “Leading the Youth Nation”, which is a bizarre
comedy about a famous rock star’s journey from the concert stage to the pulpit
of a youth group.

Elijah Campbell is the 21-year-old lead guitarist of the mega-famous rock group “Abomi-Nation”, who gets charged, in court, on a D.U.I offense while defacing church property. For his punishment he is sentenced to 6
months of community service being an assistant youth pastor at the church. At
this time the church’s youth group is failing before Elijah arrives. Only 3
teens attend the Wednesday night youth meetings, which is led by a 96 year old
man. After Elijah arrives over 200 teenagers, who are his fans, join the youth
group, and about 50 of them attend regularly. Many of the clergy and lay
people, who are led by the outspoken 51 year old Ethel Conley, believe that
Elijah will be the down fall of their church, starting with the youth, but the
head pastor of the church believes that this could be a blessing in disguise.
The pastor hopes that Elijah will be changed by hearing God’s word, as well as
realize his responsibilities as a celebrity to the youth of our nation.

The twist in the story begins when Elijah pretends to become a Christian, so that he can get with the pastor’s daughter. The pastor, himself, attributes Elijah’s quick turnaround as an occurrence similar
to Paul on the road to Damascus, and almost everyone buys it except Ethel
Conley and her minions. At first Elijah sees this as one big joke until the 96
year old youth leader gets injured, and Elijah is asked to temporarily pastor the
youth. Things quickly become serious for him when he is told by a male youth
that if it wasn’t for Elijah preaching the word of God to him for the first
time he would have committed suicide. At first, Elijah attributes this to the
power of his celebrity influence, until he sees other teens as well as their
parents’ lives being changed because of God. Now, Elijah begins to find himself
struggling between really believing in Jesus, and accepting this new calling
into his life, or making his triumphant return to Rock n’ Roll.

In each chapter of the series Elijah is always in some new kind of adventure with the youth group. If it’s either a youth retreat, talent competition, doing a 30 Hour Famine, or organizing youth plays
there is always something going on, and someone getting saved. As Elijah is
doing all of this he beings to really fall in love with the pastor’s daughter,
because he sees her being different from any other girl he has ever met.
Problem is she still doesn’t give him the time of day. Plus, she is in love
with the church’s guitarist, Patrick. This leads Elijah to hold a “Battle of
the bands” charity fundraiser to battle against Patrick to win the heart of the
pastor’s daughter. Throughout all of these adventures Ethel Conley is
constantly lurking in the shadows trying to bring down Elijah.

About ¾ of the way into the story Elijah accepts Jesus as his personal lord and saver, and he fully realizes his responsibilities to the youth. His personality changes so drastically that even
the pastor’s daughter begins to take notice of him. The teens begin to feel the
power of Jesus’ love pouring out of the heart of Elijah so immensely that they
begin to minister about the love of God to teens at their school, and over a
thousand teenagers start coming to the youth meetings. This garners so much
press that a national youth rally is held and Elijah becomes the guest speaker.

Towards the end of the series Elijah’s 6 months are up, and the old youth pastor has passed away. The church has found a new youth pastor to lead the kids, but Elijah puts in his bid to stay as the new official
youth leader. A meeting is then held among the clergy to decide what should
happen, until Ethel decides to blackmail Elijah with a copy of a recording of
him confessing his hypocrisy. Elijah is forced to step down quietly from the
youth pastor position, so there won’t be a huge media scandal. The teens try to
get him back, but it doesn’t work.