Mike Pilavachi told Premier Christianity magazine that when God told him to end the youth festival after 25 years, he questioned God about what would happen to the young people.
"He said 'Mike, they're not your responsibility', and 'they're my responsibility. I will look after them...' That was like a burden lifted," Pilavachi said.
"We're talking to youth organisations about them starting something in the summer of 2020. It's my hope and expectation that next summer; we want to introduce these three events.
"I want to commend them. I only want to commend the events where I believe that they are doing it because they love the kids.
"Anyone can start anything they want, but I couldn't bring myself to commend anything where it was about people seeing a gap in the spiritual market... It's those who love the kids, and they're not going to use the kids, they're going to serve the kids."
Pilavachi also said that he considered doing a nationwide search for other youth workers to head the big annual events, but he said God steered him in another direction.
"Both Andy and Ali, who host the events with me, and others on the team said to me when I said I was going to step back, 'when you step back, we'll step back because God told us to do it with you', and then we suddenly realised to bring someone in from outside is setting them up to fail. And then we suddenly started thinking maybe the Lord is saying we should stop" he told Premier.
Pilavachi added that he received many prophetic words from people signalling an end to Soul Survivor.
He said the prophetic words came from people who knew nothing about him contemplating ending the Soul Survivor events.
The 60-year-old pastor said he has received a lot of encouragement since announcing the end of the festival after "much prayer".
"There are lots of folks saying it's sad but we admire you for being bold and also we say if you think God is saying it, and it's right, that's great."
Listen to Mike Pilavachi speaking with Premier's Sam Hailes here:
