GOD. YOUTH. TRUTH.

As I have entered into my second year of full time youth ministry, I have reached a stark realization that the idea of ministering to youth takes many forms in the minds of those who attend your congregation. For the elderly of the church, the youth ministry is the future of the church. These are the future elders, deacons, ministers, and wives according to step forward and take the reigns of leadership when their time arrives. To a constituency of the congregation, the youth program is a glorified play date for adolescents who only want to seem to socialize in an environment that is devoid of order and leadership (and they fully believe you let those heathens run wild). To a group of parents, a youth ministry has become a haven to discuss the difficult issues of spirituality and faith that they do not wish to take the time or responsibility to discuss with their children. To others, youth ministry is just a line in a budget (real encouraging right?).  To your peers, its a brotherhood of joy, hurt, anguish, delight, regret, self sacrifice, and helping developing young people to find the God that so deeply wishes to know them. 

However, the question I pose today does not beg what others perceive of “your” ministry, but how you see and purpose your ministry. 

First lets mull over a few concepts though.

1. Ownership: We have a tendency after some time to begin to describe the ministry that we conduct as “our” ministry. We take direct ownership often times because of the hours of sweat, tears, hope, and planning that we place into a ministry. We begin to describe the young people we work with as our kids. I caught myself in this very trap a few months ago when I took a teen along with me to a meeting at a sister church. I described him as my teen, and the poor 90 year old  woman who I was talking to believed him to be my child. Why? I described him as such. We forget that our ministries belong to God.
2. Relationship: We can develop a serious worry over time in youth ministry that can be summed up in a single question, “Do these kids like me?” We know that we can say that we care for our students, but the real question should be something much more important. Do our students care about and like God?” We can lose confidence that if we can teach them to love God then they will come to have an even closer relationship with us thanks to the connection of Christ’s blood. We must remember that their relationship with God is more important than their relationship with us.
3. Authorship: For some unknown reason, rookie youth ministers can feel they need to rewrite the book on ministry. Maybe we do not believe our ministry is relevant enough, reaches enough teens, or even fits our personal style, but there is an itching need to reinvent the wheel sometimes. If we do not reinvent the wheel, we feel the need to implement someone else’s youth ministry plan or style into the mix. The fact of the matter is that we can not redefine the message of Christ to fit our own personal goals or needs. We can unintentionally (or intentionally) sacrifice the Truth of God’s Word by rewriting it to fit our needs. Maybe we should be looking to ministry models from the New Testament(discipleship anybody?). We need allow the God-breathed words of the Bible to speak a strong message than we could ever dream of speaking. 

I am willing to give away the biggest secret to my youth ministry strategy that I have never really shared with anyone, but I am breaking my silence today. The secret that should not be a secret to success is that…

CHRIST/GOD MUST BE THE PURPOSE, MEANING, AND MOTIVATION OF THE MINISTRY…

Pretty simple, right? You would think so, but because of our egotistical human nature we tend to put the ownership, relationships, and authorships in our own hands. We must begin with a fixed gaze on Christ that begs the question: “Is Christ the focus of our ministry?” 

Listen to what the Psalmist had to say about this:

Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun-Psalm 37:5-6 

If we want our cause to come to light, we must begin to place Christ/God as the focal point of our ministries. Our “programs” should be set up with the idea that if it doesn’t glorify God, create fellowship between Him and our students, and foster fellowship between our students then it is unproductive. If we commit our ministries completely to God then we can be certain that God will be faithful to make them shine in our communities. We have to stop worrying about “our” ministries, trust God, place them in His hands, and allow God to use us to build them up.

If a major disaster were to strike today, would you be ready to survive the difficulties that were to follow? We have experienced a taste of such a disaster over the last year with our area being with out power for several days in some locations. Imagine if that power had been out for weeks, months, or even years. The Department of Homeland Security has created disaster preparedness guidelines and kits that can be assembled at home to plan for your needs in the event of a serious catastrophe. Are you prepared to face a disaster that comes your way?

There are a few things that one needs to know to prepare for disaster:

1. The kind of disaster: There are general things that apply for every disaster, but some will require specialized needs and tools.
2. The length of the survival period: Will it be weeks, days, months, or years?
3. The amount of people: Will you be preparing for yourself, your family, or your community?
4. The precautions needed to be safe: What will it take to be secure?
5. The people who you will trust:  Military, government agencies, churches, or strangers?
6. The destination when the disaster hits: where will you go?

Deciding these minor things beforehand can create a significant difference in ones survival, but they will have no impact if we are unwilling to hear that there is an imminent disaster. A serious disaster is quickly approaching, and there are many who refuse to hear the call of those who see it. We must realize that the return of Christ can be either a disaster or a salvation. For those who aren’t prepared, the Master makes no room and leaves them in the outer darkness (Matt. 22:1-14). The coming disaster is the return of Christ, and we must prepare ourselves to spend eternity with or without God. If you haven’t decided already, it will be too late when the tragedy hits.

In my personal Bible study, I am making an attempt to look back on the stories of the Old Testament and see their relevance today in my life. There are so many stories that we learn when we are young, but miss the point entirely in our older years. We treat them as childish fables and move on. As I was studying this week, I began to rethink the situation of Jonah in relation to what expects of those who answer his call. It is in this call to Jonah that we can understand our search for our calling in life.

1. God placed a very specific calling before Jonah. Go to Nineveh (Jonah 1:1). Time and again God tells Jonah where he wants him to go. Nineveh was described as a great city that had done terrible things against God.
2. Resistance to God’s call is impossible- Jonah tried to avoid the God’s demand. He ran away and boarded a boat for Tarshish to escape the presence of God. However, God had set this on Jonah, and would not let Jonah escape this calling.
3. Jonah was seemingly proud of his calling-  Jonah felt some weight from this call, and was not afraid to tell those around him why he was traveling (v 10).
4. The calling brought with it a sense of responsibility - Jonah was remorseful for the trouble that he cause the sailors because of his attempt to run, and offered to throw himself overboard (v 12).
5. Jonah nearly died because he did not answer God’s call- The prayer of Jonah described in Chapter 2 of the book provides some insight into the mind expanding experience of Jonah. What he describes here paints a picture of his own drowning but rejoices in being saved by God.
6. Jonah’s calling only required him to inform the people- Jonah followed out his calling to the letter. He was required to tell the people of Nineveh their sin, and the consequences of their actions. He did just that. No more, No Less.
7. Jonah found it difficult to have pity on the people of Nineveh- Jonah became bitter because God spared the people of the city, and began to grumble and complain about their salvation. God used a plant to show Jonah that if he could have pity on a plant, then God could have pity on Nineveh.

All these aspects sound similar to the calling of Christ. We have a specific calling that is inescapable to those we serve God, and we have the responsibility to bear witness to our calling in one way or another. For us, failure to answer the call of Christ results in death, but he finds a way to use our darkest times to bring us to that call. He only asks that we share the story of Christ, and understand that we do so out of pity on the lost souls of this world. Those who are a great city and are living against God need to hear that message of God, and maybe their story can turn out like Nineveh’s.

Have you ever found yourself in a public place and met someone you knew from long ago? Did you remember their name? Did they remember yours? We all have a need within us to be remembered. We long to leave an impact that will affect generations to come. We long to be remembered. Sometimes in this life we enter into dark situations and we begin to question where God is?

Psalm 13

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I takecounsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Consider and answer me, O LORD my God;
light up my eyes, lestI sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I amshaken.

But I havetrusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

I will sing to the LORD,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.

There are moments in this life when we feel completely and utterly forgotten. The emptiness that comes with that feeling only isolates us more, and drives us further into our own despair. The fact is that even during these times we forget that God is still there for us. However, we are so lost in our own self pity and loathing that we assume that he has left us as well. David felt this way when he was on the run from Saul. God is the source of all joy, all wisdom, all strength, and life itself, but David felt separated from Him because of his current situation. David ends by returning to a trust in God that reaffirms his faith and drives his fears away.

            We need to take a page out of David’s book here. When life becomes dark and drear and we feel like God has turned his back on us, we must make the conscious effort to focus our minds back to His faithfulness. Overwhelming fear must be cast out by an overwhelming God. Just remember, the next time that you feel like God has turned his back on you that you don’t serve a God who is in the business of deserting people. 

One of the worst things in existence is the testing of the Emergency Broadcast System over the television channels that you watch. It always seems that the station selects a time when you are almost asleep on the couch on a Sunday afternoon to blare that confounded buzzer over the speakers of your television. Sometimes it is in the middle of your favorite television show, and it blocks off all the sound so all you hear is the buzzer followed by the all too familiar message. The resounding words… “This is only a test…” If we are exposed to that often enough we begin to ignore the message from the station, and we could eventually ignore any type of helpful message that comes across the television in this way. It all has to do with exposure to the message.

We are assaulted daily by various messages both verbal and subliminal, and through the messages we develop and reshape our view of the world. However, a message does not need to be true to become a change element in our outlook. Repetition becomes a theme that plants a seed of change into a person’s heart and mind. Marketing companies know this and is why they will structure add campaigns around certain ideas with a catchphrase to reaffirm their product. The message becomes repeated so many times that the individual eventually believes that they need that product, and the ads continue to have a subliminal effect on the consumer. Products are not the only things that use the ideas of repetition to seed thought into people’s minds, but values and ideas can use the same process to sway the moral and spiritual compass of some people.

Christians are constantly assaulted with ideas that are contradictory to the calling of God, and because of the repetition and frequency of these messages modern Christianity is accepting them as acceptable in the sight of God. A primary example of this is the acceptance of homosexual couples and even clergy among many Protestant and Evangelical churches. We live in a media culture that assaults us with an idea that it is cool to be a practicing homosexual, counselors who tell teens that it is who they are when those questions arise, and that tolerance of this practice stating that everyone must accept and accommodate this practice. However, God stands in opposition to this practice and the people who support such things (Rom. 1:22-32). We struggle with these things because we have become desensitized to them, and after a while we stop paying attention to serious problems (Heb. 3:12-13). We must be cautious not to fall victim to the assault of ideas that we face each day, and it requires that we are selective in our choice of media, music, and company.

Staring at a heap of unfinished projects, I had to decide what to get rid of and what to keep. It had seemed like there were so many things that I had begun in excitement that fizzled out with time and difficulty. I was staring at a huge pile of quit, and it was just a reminder of how many times I had failed. I saw it as a reminder of all the times that I had not carried through with the things that were at some point so important to me. Why could I not finish these things? What kept me from completing these things that I was so passionate about? It seems like so often we begin things with such gusto and passion that failure seems almost impossible. However, we find that we are apt to leave something incomplete when we lose passion and zeal over that undertaking. It would seem there is a direct link between how passionate we are in the beginning, what happens in the middle, and the end result that leads to success or failure of a particular undertaking. For most of us the thing in the middle is the breaking point, and it usually deals with a minor setback of some sort. A little thing becomes a big thing in the overall scope of completion. Because we are so passionate and emotionally invested, we make a mountain out of a mole hill. We allow our emotions and passion about our undertaking to turn against us, and become the very thing that works against us. Frustrations at primary signs of difficulty develop attitudes of disgust and disdain that lead to us quitting. This is significantly true in the Christian journey. We begin so excited about our new faith, and have big plans of how to work for our Father in heaven. This turns into excitement and zeal that puts to work in the Body. At some point we encounter something that we do not agree with, and the emotional investment that we have poured into our faith goes bi-polar. We have invested so much of ourselves into this only to feel like it is turning against us, and we handle it by becoming frustrated and quitting. The problem with quitting is that in every case it abandons the end goal for the present pleasure (or diminishing of pain), because the emotions override the dedication to the goal. Christianity is a marathon not a sprint (I Cor. 9:24). We must be willing and wise enough to realize that there will be difficulties and that despite those difficulties Heaven is our ultimate goal. When we focus on the end goal, the insignificant things that are between here and there are trivial. They become part of the journey. We begin to pace our excitement and emotion, and find that we are able to complete all tasks that are placed before us. Run so that you can finish the race.

We like attention. From birth, we crave attention and the care of others in our life. We fuss and cry constantly as babes to make our desires and needs known to those who are around us. However, we do become conscious to the fact that we can utilize this to get what we want at some point. Consider the toddler who wants the toy that someone else has and pitches a fit to encourage the adults around to obtain that toy for them by force. Parents the world over have fallen victim to the tantrums in shopping center’s toy sections as children stomp, cry, and even scream their demands to their poor parents. The fact is that we are encouraged to be selfish manipulators even from birth.

                The greater problem in all this is that we can lose track of the things that we really need and blur those lines with the things that we really just want. The longer luxury items are present around us the more common and mundane those items become. We grow a sense of entitlement and complacency demanding that those things be present in our lives. When they go missing, we find an opportunity to complain about their absence and hope that it forces others to take notice. We throw pity parties about vain things.

                Jesus put it quite simply “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

(Mat 6:19-20) We like the attention that we receive when we fret and worry about these things out loud. Imagine if we were worrying about our eternity out loud. Imagine if we began to share with others the confidence we have in our eternity rather than the disappointment we have in this life. Imagine if we would work as hard to draw attention to our Lord as we do to draw attention to ourselves. This is what Christ has called each of us to do, and hopes that we might realize that it is not about us. 

With my 10 year class reunion approaching quickly, I took the chance to look back and think about the things that I wish someone would have told me when I was younger. These are a few things that I came up with…

1. Be yourself:

There are so many people telling you what to be or how to be it that you can almost kill yourself chasing down every fad or trend. Explore what it out there, but you need to learn who you are first and foremost. Each of us is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14) by God, and God has sculpted us in such a way that we are unique and individual. We must search ourselves out and find that uniqueness that God has placed in each of us.

2. Use your Emotions.

At no greater time of your life are you as passionate, on fire, crazy, or in love with everything in life. Use this to your advantage, and take the time to fall in love with God. It seems that God can be so distant at times, but a love for Him can be strengthened through serious study and dedication during this time. Christ pointed to the fact that loving God is the first and greatest of the commandments (Matt. 22:37, Mar. 12:30, Luke 10:27-28). If you can figure this out during your youth, you can create a long and strong relationship with God.

3. Do not sell yourself short.

“Let no one despise you for your youth (I Tim. 4:12). As teenagers, you hear plenty about what you can not do, but do not let this deceive you in thinking that you are unable to accomplish great things. You are at a point in your life that you have so many options and possibilities that can be rewarding to you and glorifying to God in the same breathe. There are countless examples of teens that wanted to make an impact in the world around them and undertook something that many believed that were unable to conquer. Dedication and a clear goal create a winning attitude that makes you unstoppable at this point in your life.

4. You are an example.

“Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” (1Ti 4:12) The biggest thing that I did not realize in my teenage years was the impact that I had on those who were around me. People became more excited about something when I became more excited about something. Put that to use for God. I also didn’t realize the people that I had watching me for cues on how to live life. We never truly know the scope of our impact until we see it in action. You are someone’s example. Are you setting a good one? You have an opportunity to lead others just by the way that you live.