Greg Stier wrote a thought provoking article on Christianpost.com which raises some good questions. I particularly liked his part about Gospel activism.
What if you began to help teenagers see themselves as Gospel activists and their circle of friends and school campuses as opportunities for social impact? What does the Gospel have to do with social justice? More than you might imagine!
Throughout church history Gospel activism and social impact have gone together like peanut butter and chocolate. Missionaries, seeking to spread the Gospel in suspicious cultures, built hospitals, launched orphanages and started schools so that lives could be changed, communities could be transformed and disciples could be multiplied!
We must reframe evangelism as Gospel activism. We must help our teenagers see the spread of the Gospel through our lives and lips as the primary way we can make an impact on our society. Once teenagers get this then it changes the way the view school and how they interact on social media. Suddenly they’re conversations are missionized and their peers are Gospelized.
This approach also helps you and your leaders begin to view “youth group” as a week-long endeavor (as opposed to just a one night meeting during the week.) With this mindset your teenagers become your ultimate outreach meeting because they can be engaged in some sort of Gospel outreach all day long.
Read the whole article here.
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