Impuls

It started with a small group of Christians doing youth work in Stavanger. They invited some Christians from the UK (Soul Survivor) to join them in organising a conference. The Millenium conference was held in january 2000: A lot more young people than expected showed up. Even more surprising was the experience of God's presence during the conference, and how this changed people. It was awesome to witness the Holy Spirit meeting people and see the change that this brought. After the conference, we started to realise that God was doing even greater stuff than what we had envisioned, and this fired us up immensely.

The name Impuls was thought up one bright moment when one of the members of the IMI church was reading his physics lesson, and came across this definition: An Impulse is a force affecting something over time, leading to a permanent change of direction.

 

After a few years of running the conference, we found that God was leading us to focus on building up leaders. If a youth worker is changed, that youth work will also be affected. And then the everyday life of young people will also be changed. Thus Impuls Leader Days were initiated in 2003. Again, we were surprised by how concretely and forcefully God met with us and with the other 150 people present at the Leader Days. We spent a lot of time on issues like what is the church meant to be, and what does it mean to be a church for young people today.

It is vital for us to communicate that Impuls achieves its goals when the local youth work achieves its goals. We think this happens when our fellowships function in the way that the Bible models them. Thus we speak of biblically functioning communities. Our way of demonstrating this is through the five symbols we use.

 

Impuls 2004 was a watershed. No one from Soul Survivor were there, and we found that the shoes we stepped into were very large indeed. At the same time, we found that God kept showing up, thus demonstrating that this is not about us or what we can achieve. Impuls is something God makes and we're just attempting to stay tuned to the max.

Our understanding of Jesus is leading the movement to develop. In the summer of 2006 a group of youths assembled in the mountains midway between Bergen and Oslo to inspire each other and to seek God's guidance to shape a summer event.

 

The Impuls conference has now been planted to several locations, both in Norway and abroad, from two bases, Stavanger and Trondheim. Impuls is a lot more than what these two bases generate, though. We often use the expression ' a greater story' to communicate to the young people that God's plans and His work by far surpass our lives, our country or our own stories. Our goal is to challenge and encourage young people to take part in the greater story, to let God write His story with their lives.We are aiming to reach youth and youth workers in three tiers. First through the conferences and similar events. Then through leader days and leader development. The third tier we aim for is a larger network. It is still being developed and refined and we are looking forward to how this will strengthen christian fellowships to bless each other and cooperate. We exist to encourage young people to love Jesus and challenge them to be the church.

If we stop doing this we have no reason to exist.