I had the opportunity to teach this a few years back at a conference…
A quick illustration to start… A university professor in a lecture hall stood behind a table with a giant clear jar before him. He reached under the table, pulled up a bucket of large stones, and poured them into the jar. Then he asked the class “is the jar full?” The class responded “yes “. He then lifted a bucket of small stones and poured it into the jar and asked the same question. “Is the jar full?” Most at this point said yes and others were thinking this might be a trick question. He then pulls out a bucket of sand and pours that into the same jar with the large and small rocks. He then ask’s “Is the jar full?” The students were not sure what the right answer was. He then produced a bucket of water, which he added to the jar of stones and sand. He then declared the jar to be full. The point of the illustration is that you have to get the big pieces in before the little ones or they will not all fit. The next few minutes are about the big pieces.
When I was new in youth ministry several people spoke into my life with key words of wisdom. The first one I heard was that my ministry would only ever be as a good as my walk with Christ. That proved to be very true. A few years later someone told me that “what you win people with is what you win them to”. This I also found to be very true. Another way to state that is “how people start is how they continue”. This became a game changer for me over the years. I found this is also sort of taught in scripture as well. Col 2:6-7 tell us…
Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
The very way we engage students with the gospel, the very way we make disciples, is the way they will continue to grow or not grow. Going a step further, it is fair to say that how we do youth ministry today is how we will do church tomorrow. Research has actually shown this to be true. What we do with teens becomes what we do with adults. I could give you lots of examples but time does not permit that at the moment.
Because how people start is how they continue, if we want to build ministries that last and ministries that make for a better church in the future, we need a solid foundation. Rooted in its early years defined five core values that make for an excellent platform to build on. It’s worth grappling with these and implementing them into your ministry at the beginning.
1. Gospel Centrality. What does that mean exactly? Most youth ministry folks would say that the gospel is the center of their ministries but many don’t fully grasp what it means to be gospel centered.
After ten years as youth director for a large church in the Chicago suburbs, I took a youth ministry position in England where I spent the next five years. Early in that time I kept hearing the phrase “gospel ministry”. It struck me as odd. I thought all ministry was gospel ministry but I started to sense they meant something more than my simple definition of gospel. I began to understand that the gospel was not only about salvation but also sanctification. The gospel does not just save us it transforms our lives over time. We constantly need to hear the gospel to keep growing. We never outgrow the gospel. Previously I viewed the gospel as limited to primarily four books at the start of the NT. Then I began to see the gospel from Genesis to Revelation. The good news is God’s story of redemption.
Gospel centrality means we emphasize gospel clarity. It must be a priority that students understand and be able to articulate the gospel. We cannot assume they get it. The gospel is more than about sin & redemption; it shapes all that we teach and how we do ministry. Gospel centrality means we don’t simply teach young Christians about how to live like Christians, we proclaim God’s truth so that students fall in love with Jesus. We emphasize not what we do but what God has done.
2. Theological depth through Biblical teaching.
We need to help students make sense of a senseless world. They desperately need a biblical worldview, which means teaching them doctrine. Too often we underestimate what students can comprehend and need to learn. They learn calculus in high school but often the church seems to think that teaching theology is somehow beyond them. Here is one example. At this point in history if a student does not understand key truths found in the first three chapters of Genesis, they will cave in to the world’s ideas about the origin of life, the nature of humanity, gender identity, and the purpose of marriage. That is enough to decimate their faith. Too many Christian students are entering college and having their faith shredded by professors who raise questions or arguments that have been resolved long ago by theologians. Why? No one taught them how to think biblically.
We don’t want to create moralistic therapeutic deists. We already have a generation of Millennials with this shallow and distorted view of God. We need to be committed to teaching the truth of God from the word of God. Our teaching is already becoming viewed as radical. God help us if we don’t equip students to defend their faith.
3. Relational Discipleship
My first training for youth ministry drilled into us that we had to earn the right to be heard. The idea was that we reach out to students, build a relationship and then and only then can we share Jesus with them. The trouble is, this view is nowhere to be found in scripture. Relationships are not prerequisite to proclaiming the gospel! Yet we also don’t beat a stranger over the head with the gospel. The Bible teaches that we are called to be ambassadors. As such we don’t use relationships as a means to an end, we love students because God first loved us.
The great commission calls us to make disciples and that happens best in the context of relationships. Jesus not only taught this but modeled it for us as well. Now, relationship building in today’s world has become a challenging task. Most students these days are relationally challenged. We have actually come to a point where we need to teach teens how to have healthy relationships. We can actually make a huge difference in their lives even if they don’t grasp the gospel until later in life.
I’ll add one more dimension to relational discipleship. Too often we think about relationships in ministry as being between the youth leader and the student. We need to be intentional about helping students do relational discipleship with each other. In other words, helping students grow in their faith together as a community pays huge dividends in the long run.
4. Partnership with parents –
Search the scriptures to see what God’s plan for making disciples is and you will find that it is the family. Immediate family, extended family, and ultimately the church family (in that order). Parents often don’t realize that they have more influence over their teens than anyone else in their lives and far more influence than youth pastors do. Studies of who influences teens puts parents first, peers second, teachers and coaches next and youth pastors further down the list. What does that tell us about how we minister best to teens? We need to help parent’s disciple their kids. Often parents don’t know what to do with this. The church, broadly speaking, ranges from clueless parents in this regard to very intentional parents. Figure out where the needs are in your context and partner with them.
Let me confess that as a twenty something youth director, I was intimidated by parents. I thought I had nothing to offer them because I was not a dad and was so young. I had to find ways that I could be a resource to parents and when I did, it changed my relationship with parents. I started with helping parents understand youth culture. There are resources online that can help you do that. We can steer parents to the Rooted blog to encourage and empower them. There are now resources online that are written to help parents intentionally disciple their students. We don’t have to tell them how to be parents, just show them how to do what we do with their kids so that it happens at home as well as at church. We need to equip and empower them to be powerful spiritual influences in their kids lives.
5. Intergenerational Integration
What happens if students grow up only surrounded by peers and not interacting with people of other age groups? They are deprived of the opportunity to see what it looks like to follow Jesus at different stages of life. The first church I worked for was very segmented. Families came to church on Sunday mornings and parents went to the worship service while children and youth went to Sunday school. Afterwards they met up at the entrance and headed home. The only adults in the church that our students knew apart from family friends were youth leaders. They had no interaction with other generations. What a tragedy! The next church I worked for was the opposite. Students growing up in the church knew and interacted with all ages. When you see an octogenarian approach a 15 year old after church, take their hand and tell them they are praying for them daily… it’s priceless. That was the norm.
In scripture (and I wish I had time to show examples) we don’t see age segregated church. Both Old and New Testaments have examples of intergenerational relationships, discipleship, worship, and teaching. It’s worth studying and looking for these things if this is an issue you need to convince others of. It’s also worth knowing that studies like those done by the Fuller Youth Institute show that students who are integrated in the life of the church stay in the church. They are the exception to the drop out stats.
Now, here’s my suggestion to you. Take these five core values and adopt them for your ministry. You might have some core values to add to these for the sake of your context but these five are essentials. Sadly the only one of the five that I heard 30 years ago when I was new to youth ministry is the relational discipleship one. We have come a long way. Share these with your church leaders, youth leaders, parents and the church. You will look brilliant and impress everyone. It also becomes the filter through which you make decisions about what to do in ministry. Having a framework to build on is essential for your success.
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