7:00 P.M. Faith

By DAVID VAN BIEMA

Gapped, American Eagled and Abercrombie & Fitched to the teeth, teens emerge from cars packed four to a seat, flirting and yelling, heading for the back of senior Katie Sonderman's tidy white house on Greeley Avenue. Within half an hour, the 24-ft. by 26-ft. Sonderman family room contains--just barely--about one-ninth of the Webster Groves High School student body. Suddenly an overhead projector flips on, two amplified acoustic guitars chime in and 160 youthful voices scream, "Here's a story! It's sad but true! About a girl that I once knew!... Keep away from Runaround Sue!"

It is ebullient; it is deafening. "It's bigger than band," says Herm Adams, who convened it. "It's the largest group in the school." Actually, not in the school. One of the peculiarities of life in Webster Groves is that in a community in which Catholicism is the largest Christian denomination, and in a school that has no on-campus prayer groups, the most important weekday social event is Club, the entry level of a national Evangelical group called Young Life.

For 59 years, Young Life has specialized in gathering "unchurched" teens back into the religious fold; officially nondenominational, Young Life has a strong Evangelical Protestant base. Wednesday-night Club is its accessible first level; the second is Camp, a $500, one-week stay at a Young Life facility. The third is Campaigners, a small group that convenes at the Adams' home Fridays at 6 a.m. for prayer, fellowship and mutual exhortation: to bring new kids to Club. Of tonight's hearty choristers, Adams estimates, 120 will end up trying Camp. Of those, he predicts, "probably 70% will give their life to Christ."

The young crowd roars through Brown-Eyed Girl, The Lion Sleeps Tonight and other oldies that seem suspended in amber. "Yeah, they seem corny," says a sophomore. "But everybody's singing them, and that makes it fun, even though it's corny."

Adams rises, holding a laptop computer. "We want to do two things here," he announces. "One, we want to have a lot of fun, and, two, we're gonna answer some of the most serious and fundamental things about life." He gestures to the computer. "You look at this, and you realize its a fairly complex piece of equipment. We recognize that someone fairly intelligent designed it. Our bodies and souls are far more complex than this is... The Bible says God created heaven and earth and created us. What do you guys believe? That is the starting point for us."

Most students, teachers and Webster High parents support Young Life. "It's incredibly cool," enthuses Beth Perez, a Campaigners member. "It just shows kids, at a very early age, why they are here and what God has planned for them and how great their lives can be." Her mother Susan Perez, a lapsed Catholic, speaks for many parents who, if they fail to match their children's fervor, are extremely grateful for the program's fruits. "If your teenager is going to be tied to some sort of group; if she comes out of it saying I don't drink, I don't smoke pot, I don't do this or that because I'm a Christian...well, that's O.K.," she says.

Campaigners do tend to be good students, well grounded, chaste and drug-free, although backsliding on drinking is not unknown. Through Campaigners, Club and their own considerable charisma, Herm and his wife Terri exert a major and wholesome influence on the entire student body. "I believe Young Life is a force in the school," says Herm. "I think it's increased school spirit."

Still, not everybody is enthused. Some students who have not been to Club deride it as a cult. Mary Beth Carosello, a former student-body president who is studying at the University of Missouri, attended both Club and Camp but became disenchanted. "When you're a freshman, you see older kids who are so into Young Life and so into Terri and Herm, and you think, Wouldn't it be fun to be friends with them? And then you get in there, and they're really Christian [meaning Evangelical]. I came to feel, why do we need this hard-core group with such an important place in our high school?"

James Jenkins is more comfortable with the group's role. Young Life is overwhelmingly white, but Jenkins, who is African American, is returning tonight to his second Club. A promising pitcher and the junior-varsity quarterback, he buses in from St. Louis' South Side. James has a younger brother and sister, and had an older brother Anthony Morris. "But he died. Some guys robbed and killed him." It happened three days after James' birthday. "I was 15," he says. (He still is.) He was 14, he says, when his father died. When Adams promises to talk about "some of the most serious and fundamental things in life," James is listening. "Now if my pastor [at St. Louis Christian Center in the city] preaches about something, and I don't really understand what it means," he says, "I could go to Young Life for an answer."

It is 8:30, and Herm brings his mini-sermon to a quick close. There is a scuffle and a muted shout, and the horde empties almost instantaneously into the fleet of cars. Out the open windows you can hear strains of September's inescapable novelty hit, Lou Bega's mildly salacious Mambo No. 5: "A little bit of Monica in my life/ A little bit of Erica by my side... / A little bit of Sandra in the sun/ A little bit of Mary all nightlong." The kids sing along. But not as loudly as they did in Club.

--D.V.B.