Riley has been DJing since age 15, when he took a workshop with a Christian youth group. He was hooked from Day 1. He felt as if God had ordained him to DJ, to lead worship through the decks. There was only one problem: Becoming a good DJ required hours of practice, and hours of practice required buying his own decks. But decks cost about 800 pounds each, and 15-year-old Riley didn't have that kind of money in his piggy bank. He wrote to church members and family friends saying, "I'm really feeling this is from God, and to get good at this, I have to get my own decks." Within a couple of months, he had 1,000 pounds in donations. "It was good," says Riley, "because they weren't really my decks, were they? They were God's. So I had to come through for him."

The Bull Bar isn't exactly a dream gig for a DJ looking to build a career. But Riley, who runs a popular club night called Rubik's Kube back home in the U.K., says he's not playing at the Bull Bar to advance his reputation. "There's a need for 24-7 in the West End," he says. "If Jesus were in Ibiza, he'd be at the Bull Bar."

Ibiza, an island off the eastern coast of Spain, is known as the clubbing capital of the world, a place that's fueled by the kind of unabashed hedonism that characterized New York's Studio 54 in its heyday. Its excesses are legendary: the orgies on the yachts that cruise the harbor, the club owners who conceived their first child during a live sex show before 12,000 people. Club kids, models and playboys come to Ibiza to breathe the same air as Paris Hilton and dance at the altars of DJs like Pete Tong and Roger Sanchez, jacked up on half a gram of coke or a hit of Ecstasy or both. Around 6 a.m., everyone cabs over to a day rave, where, jacked up on another half-gram of coke or hit of Ecstasy, they continue to dance until 2 or 3 in the afternoon, then pass out on the beach for a few hours before doing the whole thing again.

Across town, in the West End, soccer hooligans and construction workers spend their evenings downing pitchers of Sex on the Beach, gawking at the abundance of cleavage on display, making clumsy attempts to appropriate it for the night, then staggering home alone, only to wake up face down in a gutter.

You would expect the typical evangelical Christian to be horrified by Ibiza. But the 24-7 Prayer missionaries aren't your typical evangelicals. They tend to be pierced and tattooed, antiwar and pro-fair trade, and the minute they get off prayer duty, they put on halter tops and body glitter and wristbands and go clubbing until noon the next day. They might even have a drink or two. They don't do drugs -- which alone sets them apart from most ravers. Most eschew premarital sex, although they try not be judgmental about others' sexual behavior. Like all missionaries, they want to be down with the people whom they're preaching to, but in the case of 24-7, they're not faking it. The primary difference between the average Ibiza clubber and a 24-7 missionary is what gets them off. "To know that the God who made the heavens and the earth loves me and wants to know me -- that's an amazing high that lasts much more than a few hours," says Bruce Gardiner-Crehan, 25, a 24-7 missionary with the beatific countenance of a Caravaggio apostle. As members of a generation that came of age with house music, the 24-7 Prayer team finds it a lot easier to commune with God while dancing at a rave than while kneeling in a church, listening to an organist drone on.

It's not that the 24-7 missionaries don't see the devil lurking in Ibiza. They know he's there. And they plan to do something about it -- by bringing God into the clubs with them so other ravers can feel his presence, too. As born-again Christians, they view the whole world as a battleground between God and Satan; but in Ibiza, the struggle is concentrated. Their role, as they see it, is to wrest the island from Satan's clutches and help deposit it safely back in God's hands. "Ibiza offers a drug option, a sex option, a clubbing option -- everything but a God option," says Vicky Ward, 30, who came to Ibiza with 24-7's first mission team five years ago. "I'd like to think if we gave people that option, some of them would choose it."

24-7 Prayer's mission to Ibiza grew out of a prayer movement that was itself inspired by rave culture. The movement was launched in 1999 as an around-the-clock worship session in a warehouse in southern England, with Moby playing on a boombox and 22-year-olds showing up at 3 a.m. to dance and pray and shout out to God. The intention was to pray in shifts all day, every day, for a month; it went on for almost four. Today there are prayer rooms in 55 countries, including 130 in the United States.

"We had a sense that people would be more excited about praying at 3 a.m. on a Thursday than they would at 11 a.m. on a Sunday," says Pete Greig, the 35-year-old pastor who helped found the 24-7 Prayer movement. "Young people are drawn to extremes." Greig himself isn't a raver -- he's a family man, vaguely bookish in his wire-rimmed glasses and oxford shirts. But he's savvy enough to know that he's not going to get the next generation excited about Jesus by throwing mixers in the church basement. He and his 24-7 colleagues are doing their best to make Jesus relevant, whether through trendy gear (dog tags and hoodies inscribed with fragments of Scripture) or seminars offering tips for praying online and missions to what Greig calls the "high places of youth culture." For the past five years, 24-7 missionaries have been taking the gospel to skate parks and music festivals in the U.K., as well to party destinations around the world such as Puerto Escondido, Mexico, a surfing and 'shrooming mecca, and Ayia Napa, Cyprus, the hip-hop fan's version of Ibiza.

In August, Greig embarked on his own mission: He moved his family of four from England to Kansas City, Kan., to set up a 24-7 Prayer base in the United States, where he will doubtless find fertile ground. For the past decade, the evangelical movement has been attracting American students in record numbers, and a 2003 Gallup poll estimated that a hefty 46 percent of Americans consider themselves evangelicals.

For the moment, though, 24-7 is primarily a European movement -- which may be why its form of evangelism seems looser than the Ashcroftian brand that winces at topless statues. Of the two dozen 24-7 missionaries who traveled to Ibiza this summer, only two were American: Heather and Jonah Bailey, a young married couple who provide moral support and guidance to the prayer teams. Even they don't fall cleanly under the umbrella of U.S. evangelicalism. They hail from Bakersfield, Calif., but they live in Seville, Spain; and they're vehemently anti-George W. Bush.

Dismayed by Christianity's diminishing influence in the postmodern world, 24-7 dreams of sparking a worldwide revival among the generation that is coming of age. Its goal: to turn the tide in youth culture from what Greig calls a "godless, materialistic, self-destructive force" to a generation that loves and worships Jesus. "For centuries, Christians were among the major architects of culture," Greig reminded 100 members of his flock at 24-7's annual conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in September 2003. "Today," he challenges, "are we even on the map?"

This year, 24-7 Prayer has sent two types of prayer teams to Ibiza. Short-term teams come for two weeks, and they take the blitzkrieg approach to evangelism -- strolling up to drunken strangers in the West End and offering to pray for them. Long-term team members settle in Ibiza for the whole summer, and they're less direct about their intentions. Their approach seems inspired by a bit of Scripture from Matthew, found on the last page of the 24-7 Prayer Manual that all missionaries are encouraged to read. "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves," it says. "Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves." The teams infiltrate the community, working as club promoters and waitresses, initiating friendships and doing good deeds. Eventually, they hope, they'll find an opportunity to slip in a few words about Jesus.

"Telling people right away that you're here on mission can impede friendships," says Ward, "because as soon as you say that, people begin to worry that you're going to start preaching to them, or to wonder what your ulterior motive is. But the people we're friends with know that's not what we're about." She smiles slyly. "Not always."

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