"As significant as it is to have thousands of teenagers hear and respond to God, equally significant is the way in which it is happening, through the cooperative efforts of churches and leaders and laymen serving the Lord together. That's the way it's supposed to be, but not many are doing it." - Buster Soaries
God birthed the Hot Hearts Regional Evangelism Conference as a dream in the hearts of a group of youth ministers from Southeast Texas in 1986. Their vision was to provide a top-quality evangelistic experience for the youth of the area. Bringing a conference close to where students live allowed more lost teenagers to attend and hear the Gospel. Hot Hearts has always combined the messages of the most effective youth communicators and the very best in contemporary Christian music with state of the art video and light shows for a high energy weekend. And 20 years later the dream is still alive and growing. You too can be a vital part of this experience.
As the original steering committee planned for the very first Hot Hearts they could not have imagined what would actually take place. Preparations were made for up to 800 students to converge on the Holiday Inn Beaumont Plaza. However, God had other plans as 1,250 attended the first ever Hot Hearts.
In 1988 the conference saw a change of venue from the Beaumont hotel to the Port Arthur Civic Center. The first year in Port Arthur saw an attendance of 1,500. The years that followed saw continued growth. In 1994 Hot Hearts filled every seat in the Port Arthur Civic Center with an attendance of 2,976. While plans were being made to move the conference to a larger venue, plans were also being made to move the conference to other cities.
With the move from Port Arthur back to Beaumont, Hot Hearts experienced an 81 percent increase bringing the attendance to 5,400. This crowd gave Hot Hearts the distinction of being the largest two-day event ever held in the Beaumont Civic Center. That same year five other cities agreed to host their own Hot Hearts.
When the 1996 conferences were finished in Beaumont, El Paso, Lubbock, Texarkana, Bryan/College Station and Corpus Christi over 17,000 people had attended, including 400 adults who attended Hot Hearts for Parents, held in conjunction with the Beaumont site. The 17,732 attendees represented 792 churches from six states (Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona) and two countries (the United States and Mexico). Five of the six sites sold out their venues turning away more than 1,200 people. The only site which didn't sell out was 19 short of a packed house.
The impact of Hot Hearts has been phenomenal in the lives of the thousands of people who have attended the conferences. Life-changing decisions have been made to follow Christ. Over the years an estimated 2,600 students have given their lives to Jesus Christ. Close to 6,000 students have made other decisions to follow Christ and just under 1,000 have committed their lives to some type of ministry work.
Only God knew what was about to happen when that first group of youth ministers sat down and began to pray about a way to effectively reach students with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. My zeal for God and His work burns within me." - Psalm 69:9 LBT
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Feel free to contact us by email: info@hothearts.org, by phone: 409-792-1960 or by mail: PO Box 215 Orange, TX 77631
