CLAYTON -- More than a thousand teenagers, many of them from local churches, yelled, "Sex is great!" during a high-energy performance Sunday night at Cleveland Community Church. The phrase was followed closely by five other words: "In the context of marriage."
The event was one of two scheduled this week by the Pittsburgh-based "Silver Ring Thing," a nondenominational Christian ministry.
These teens in middle and high school grades arrived ready and eager to heed a message their church and their parents have been teaching them for a long time: abstinence until marriage.
At the two-hour event, studded with mock commercials, Will Ferrell movie clips, pyrotechnics and testimonials by teens that waited, and teens that didn't, the message was unambiguous: Sex is dangerous. Waiting is better.
Even before the teens entered the church, known as C3, many plunked down $20 and got fitted for silver rings they got later - after they took a verbal vow to refrain from sex until marriage.
"God created us to be with a certain woman," said Tyler Franks, 18, of Angier. "You're not supposed to have sex until you're with that woman."
Backsliders welcome
Though studies, such as a 2004 Columbia University report, show a majority of teenagers don't live up to those vows, the Silver Ring Thing wants to encourage those who have strayed to start over with a "second virginity" pledge.
"Most people do seminars on abstinence," said Denny Pattyn, the founder and president of the Silver Ring Thing. "We kind of perform it."
The ministry was invited to the Triangle by a junior at St. David's School, a private Episcopal academy on White Oak Road in Raleigh.
Mary Scott George had seen a presentation of the Silver Ring Thing at a conference of pregnancy care providers in Baltimore and asked the group's director to consider bringing the message to Raleigh.
"It so reaches out to my generation," said George, 17 of Raleigh.
George plans to attend Wednesday's Silver Ring Thing event at her school. The event, which will accommodate 1,600 teens, has been sold-out for two weeks.
The show's appeal to students is undeniable.
Its primary tool of engagement is the cell phone. Early in the program, teens are encouraged to pull out their phones and punch in their responses to a bunch of questions by using the cell phone's texting function.
"Do you think it's possible to wait until you're married to have sex?" Seventy-seven percent clicked "yes," according to the numbers projected on screen. Later on, the youth were asked, "Why would you let someone tell you it's impossible?"
But it's not only technology that appeals to the kids. The Christian message provides the motivation. Pattyn said 20 percent to 30 percent of teens commit themselves to Christianity as a result of the show.
"When they hear from people their own age sharing their stories and testimonies, it exposes that guilt and shame, and they really do want to get their relationship with God back on track," Pattyn said. "We offer that to them."
Pattyn first got into the abstinence movement in 1995 when he was living in Yuma, Ariz., which, at the time, had the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the nation.
The movement grows
An ordained minister in the Evangelical Church Alliance, Pattyn was already training youth ministers, and he decided to cobble together an abstinence program. He dispatched his wife to Mexico to buy a bunch of silver rings and started a church program. At the end of the seven-week program, 20 teens decided to wear the rings.
Pattyn thought his work was done, but young people kept showing an interest.
"I had no idea there was a movement for abstinence brewing in the youth of America," he said.
When he moved back to Pittsburgh, he took the idea with him. It really took off when a documentary filmmaker did a one-hour documentary on the project for the BBC.
"Next thing we knew, everybody asks us for an interview," he said.
Last year, the ministry held 80 events across the country.
At Sunday's performance, teens were warned repeatedly about the risks of sexually transmitted diseases and the possibility of pregnancy.
"Waiting. It Just Works," was the motto of the evening.
Teenagers at Sunday's event came away motivated and determined to avoid sex.
"It made me recommit," said Taylor Starcher, 16, of Willow Springs. "I was already firm in my beliefs, but this reinforced it."
