Many youth ministries try very hard to put on outreach events to attract the lost.  Some youth pastors get worried if non-believers attend small groups when it is for the “committed” students.  In another words, their small group ministry represents the discipleship component of their youth ministry philosophy.

I am arguing that discipling students before they believe is the new youth ministry evangelism method.  Youth pastors are dealing with such an unChristian and unChurched teenage population that deeply studying books of the Bible, theology, and ethical issues are what the students are needing.  When something becomes a rarity, it is different.  Teaching for 45 minutes about Leviticus can now be the new cool thing to do in youth ministry.  Why?  Because Bible literacy and education is so removed from the teenage culture.

Andrew Root said it best:  “youth ministry has settled for bullet pointed bible verses as theology, rather than seeking the mystery of the burning bush. Theology is not about giving the knowledge to solve kids problems but a way of being and seeing world and searching for God.”

Students are living in a philosophical fusion of existentialism and modernism, which should compel youth  pastors to cultivate environments that exhibit   informational and transformational mediums.

Did Jesus do outreach events and determine who believed and who didn’t believe?  No.  He kept preaching the message of God and restoring the world and people.  Actually the more popular He became, the harder the message.

If a non-believer shows up to my youth group, I have no problem teaching from the book of Nehemiah for 45 minutes.  Granted I carefully contextualize the story and define certain theological and Bible words.

I think too many youth ministries have dumped down their youth talks, hoping to be more translatable to their audience.  Unfortunately, students are only getting three really cool pithy statements that are very surface level and redundant.  Stuff like….. “it is great to date, but worth the wait. (Proverbs 3)”

Implications for Youth Pastors:

1.  He/she must become theologically trained so he/she knows what the heck they are talking about.  If a youth pastor does not like theology, he/she doesn’t belong in youth ministry.  It is like saying:  I like Football, but I don’t like practicing it.  It is essential to be in theological conversations.

2.  Understand discipleship is a freaking messy process and cannot be assessed by how many  committed students are in “small groups”.  Small groups are not for the good and committed students. Serving and being missional is for the committed and core students.

3.  Comprehending that being a follower of Jesus involves more than just believing and saying the sinners prayer.  It is about learning the deep historical roots of Christianity and knowing the ins and outs of exegesis.

4.  Evangelism doesn’t necessary mean sharing your faith and conducting outreach events.  Evangelism means to invite non-believing students into the faith of Jesus and shows them the beauty and wonder about following Jesus.

5.  Evangelism means letting our non-believing students test drive the faith before they believe and buy into it. Therefore our youth ministries need to show them the ins and outs about being a follower of Jesus.

Discipleship as the New Youth Ministry Evangelism means we show a non-believing student the complexities, richness, landscape, and reality of what it means to be a follower of Jesus before he/she signs the Christianity lease agreement.  Youth ministries need to reverse their priorities by immersing non-believing students into faith (discipleship) before presenting the convent agreement (Evangelism).

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© 2009 – 2010, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.

NT Wright in his book “Justification” states:  God’s plan, God’s single plan, always was to put the world to rights, to set it right, to undo Genesis 3 and Genesis 11, sin and the fracturing of human society which results from that sin and shows it up into full colors.

Some youth ministry philosophies heavily rely on small groups ministry.  Some youth pastors think getting students in small groups is the bread and butter of youth ministry.  Some think if only students would take the next step and join an awkward small group, then their life with Christ will be legit because of the authentic accountability that transpires in youth ministry small groups.

My point:  Small groups aren’t bad or not necessarily good.  But, what is the sole thrust of  our youth ministries?  Getting kids to join small groups or getting kids to join the mission of God, here and now? Or both?

Small groups are more about accountability which essentially means more “sin management”.  Participating in the movement of God means to restore the world, which is more about “participation in advancing the Kingdom of God”.

The majority of Jesus’ ministry is not about gathering his disciples to talk about how they feel and what sins they committed.  No.  Jesus’ ministry with the disciples was about healing people and leading people to Jesus.

My problem:  Too many youth ministries devote to much time, $, resources, staff, and effort to small group ministry, than they do to advance the kingdom of God in their town and on their school campuses.

Think about it…small groups are for the good Christian kids.  Atheists are not necessarily stoked to join a small group, but they stoked to join a movement of God that restores.

Here is a crazy thought….what if our small group ministries not only confessed their biggest sins, but actually served the community together while sharing the good news?  Youth pastors need to have a shift.  The shift is accepting the reality that throwing a new Christian into a small group, who they would not naturally get along with, is NOT the end all for youth ministry.  Throwing a new Christian in a service project where they have to collectively share and talk about Jesus with other Christians is a better solution.

Can you see my point?

Hear me out here because I know I am going to get some angry youth pastor who loves small group ministry commenting on this post.  I think small groups are great if they are outreach focused.  Generally small groups are inward focused and closed off to outsiders.  Think about how intimate and closed off small groups are?  Yeah we say small groups are open and want “visitors” but there is no way an atheist will feel a sense of belonging in a Christian based small group.

I am recommending we rethink our small group youth ministry.  Youth ministry small groups need to have a mission focus agenda in order to move past a “self help-AA (alcoholics anonymous)”  type of small group youth ministry mentality.

What should bother youth pastors more?

1.  Students who don’t memorize their Bible verses?

2.  The local needs of their community

No, you cannot say both.

© 2009, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.

This past weekend I took my JR High students to Forest Home Winter Camp. Not only do I love ministering to middle school students, but I love Forest Home Christian Camps—out of all of the Christian camps I have been to, Forest Home knows how to do it right. The food is great, facilities are great, programming is great, JR director is great, location is great, and the worship and teaching are always right on!

Ministering to middle school students is also great. Middle school students actually listen , respect, and obey you. If you say: “Hey, lets jump up and down and scream” they will do it. Middle school students are so dependent and clueless. It was sooo funny, throughout the entire weekend only one boy out of 14 took a shower. Needless to say our cabin stunk bad and it did not even phase any student that our cabin stunk, but they also stunk! The weekend was a blast! Although throughout the four camp worship sessions, I paid close attention to how the speaker was connecting, communicating, and illustrating his four messages to the middle school students.

In these four speaking session, I was asking the questions of: Do these students understand what is being said? What are great spiritual topics to teach to JR High students? What teaching/speaking method works the best for JR High? What stories should be shared? Can students understand the hard theological topics within the Bible? How long should a JR High message be? Does a JR High message need to include the JR High students’ participation and interaction?

Through my contemplating, reflecting, and asking I concluded that when delivering a message to JR High students it needs to be clear, concise, simple, narrative-based, short (15-20minutes), high energy including much randomness, and heavy usage of props, pictures, movies, and illustrations.

Communicating to JR High students is completely different than communicating to SR High students. JR High students are concrete thinkers while SR High students are abstract thinkers. JR High students are intuitive. They like to feel life. They need to feel Jesus, than learning about Him. A JR High communicator needs to layer his or her message in the affective. One can successfully do this by relying on the story of Jesus. All throughout the gospels Jesus uses stories to teach His followers. Jesus’ teachings are simple, but yet very profound. Jesus rarely tries to hammer out complicated doctrine for only the elite to understand. Bottom line: We as JR High communicators need to be sensitive to where JR High students are at spiritually, psychologically, emotionally, and cognitively. Before we connect the middle school student to Jesus, we need to first connect with them. We need to establish a rapport with the students in order to achieve the task of delivering Jesus. It should be our goal as Youth Pastors to get middle school students to know, trust, experience, love, and obey Jesus.

© 2009, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.

How does a youth pastor raise up a pack of high school males?

I am honestly asking this question with no sexist implications.  I am confused about why high school guys don’t like church or following Jesus.  In my experience, it has been easier to motivate females to explore their faith and put it into practice than it is for a guy.  Talking to a high school male about spiritual stuff is like basically talking to a wall…..And trying to motivate a high school guy to pursue righteousness is a tough-tough task.  Hence this is why I am contemplating the issue of youth ministry male mentorship.  There is a deep problem when youth group/church is the last place an upper class guy wants to go.

What type of males are we raising up in our youth group?

Why don’t guys generally like going to youth group?  Why do many of them disappear after their sophomore year?

Are we just raising up boys who know the Christian rules really well?

Are we raising up boys who are just “nice” and “polite”?

Are we really asking our guys to be barbaric (like David) for God?  Are we asking them to fight the good fight?

Honestly, what group of guys do you as the youth pastor attract and influence? The theater crowd?  the jocks?  skaters?  surfers?  Band? Intellectual?  The idealist?  The realist?  The cynical?  The fighters?

And is this crowd of guys actually being the Kingdom of God on their high school campus?  Do other non-believer guys really respect your youth group guys? Or are your guys viewed as the losers and being lazy?

It is my belief that the men of the church should be raising up the high school guys.  Guy students need to be around other guys so they can  learn life lessons from the older men in the church.  It is essential males are with males because men issue manifest themselves in different ways.  Plus, if there are gals involved more than likely the guys will be distracted.

The topics high school males need to internalize:

1)  Character (honesty, integrity, courage, and commitment)

2)  Lust/sex/masturbation/pornography (how to control the man’s sex drive)

3)  Money (how to manage and save money)

4)  Leadership (learn proven principles about leading  or influencing a group of people)

5)  Criticism (i.e. how to take and absorb criticism)

6)  Dating (i.e how to treat the ladies)

Bottom line:  I think youth group becomes a “safe” place where the good-pretty-non-confrontational-sensitive-tolerant-mommy boys go.

High school guys need to realize how essential it is to put on the armor of God and fight the good fight.  High school guys need to be tough spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically.  If high school guys have a humble-confidence in who they are in Christ, it is game over.

Youth ministry needs to be raising up guys who are willing to stand for righteous living!!!  We need more Davids, Nehemiahs, Josephs, and Pauls emerging out of our youth ministries.

Youth ministry and the church train high school guys on how to fight for Kingdom values as a man of God.

How can a youth ministry adopt this type of male mentorship?

*  Get as many great men around the high school guys

*  Do guy only type of events (camping, paintball, football, video games, guy movies)

*  Teach the book of Nehemiah

*  Read together:  The Mission, The Men, and Me

© 2009, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.

NAU Mark 9:24 Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief.”

Recently, many of my Christian students are entering the “doubting phase”.  I am a big advocate that all students take ownership of their faith.  It is one of my YM goals to encourage the mid-late adolescent to deconstruct the faith that has been handed to them via parents and youth pastor.

Some questions some students may ask:

How can we trust the NT?

Is there evidence of homosexuality in animals?  And if there is, then why would God put that in them and doesn’t mean human can legitimately practice homosexuality?

Isn’t the Bible full of myths and God’s vengeance?

Have anthropologist actually located the exact location of the Garden of Eden?

Why cannot Gandhi go to Heaven?  He was a great man.

Why would an all-powerful God need prayer?

Deconstructing is essentially questioning and intensely examining what has been given to you. 1 Thess 5.21 talks about how it is imperative to test and question everything and find what is good and true.

For the student to seek, doubt, question, explore, and examine his/her faith is a great thing.  Youth pastors shouldn’t be afraid to let their students struggle with their faith.  Force them to struggle and don’t give them the answers, especially when they are really wanting them.

To be honest, I thoroughly enjoy when students start wrestling and struggling with the Bible, the Christian worldview, the Church, and what it means to be a follower of Christ while in high school.

Don’t get me wrong I also enjoy the super-excited mid to late adolescent Christian too.  Although it is only a matter of time, until their over zealous feelings about God slowly start withering away.  This is why we don’t model that “the over zealous-passionate mid to late adolescent” is what a passionate Christian looks like.  And we especially don’t tell what our students to do or how to channel their over zealous passionate emotion.

I argue that a student really starts living for Christ, when he/she begins to search and seek out their faith on their own.  Students can really experience God through their doubt.

Encouraging students to either share or doubt their faith, it still is a gamble.  Encouraging students to doubt and question is a risk because they may land on a Christian faith that looks very different than what their youth pastor’s faith loos like .  But there is a real beauty in that.  Our precious youth group student, still can be a Christian but disagree with their youth pastor, on a few theological points.  Weird…embrace theological diversity.

I don’t want students who are robots of their youth pastor.  I want students to have their own autonomy and identity in the Kingdom of God.  In the end it will be better and healthier for them.  Our students have different personalities, thought processes, and experiences that will greatly influence and shape how they understand, experience, and serve God.

I found this prayer in Brian McLaren’s book:  A Search For What Is Real, that leads the doubting student through a real honest dialogue with God. 

Prayer

There are times, God, when I struggle in my faith. I may even become angry at you at times. It is childish, but I sometimes feel I need someone to blame for things I do not like, and you become the target for my anger. Help me not to become trapped in my anger. Thank you for the freedom to be honest about it. Thank you for being like an understanding parent to whom I can open my heart. I believe, but when I doubt, help me doubt with you and not against you, God.

© 2009, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.