How do you preach the unchanging gospel in your context?

I’m writing a series of talks and studies on Lost and Found. These aren’t talks or studies… just some of my thinking in preparation. Stay tuned for the talks on talkcast.ccecyouth.com

• Lost and Found 1: Who is Jesus?
• Lost and Found 2: The Fishermen
• Lost and Found 3: The Paralytic
• Lost and Found 4: The Prostitute
• Lost and Found 5: The Rebel
• Lost and Found 6: The Pharisee
• Lost and Found 7: The Rich Man
• Lost and Found 8: The Tax Collector
• Lost and Found 9: The Criminals
• Lost and Found 10: The Fellowship of the Found

In #1 we see that Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. Throughout #2-9 we meet a whole bunch of different people – both real and fictional – who were lost. Some realised it. Others didn’t. If you aren’t a follower of Jesus and you’ve stumbled onto my blog (or you’re a regular reader) – let me encourage you to see yourself clearly: you are lost… and see Jesus clearly: he died and rose so that you could be forgive and have life eternal.

Shout out to James and the peeps at Central Espresso – the Best Coffee in Gosford – it kept me going with all my early starts (6am in Gosford is very early for a night owl!) over the last couple of weeks.

I’m sure that there people out there who are thinking about starting up a youth group, but might feel like getting on the bike is just too daunting a step. So I thought I’d share some advice that I’ve picked up in my time involved with youth ministry.

The first step is always to pray and commit your plans to God, but what next?

1. Work out your goals

Often youth groups are running a certain way because that’s ‘the way it’s always been’! When you start a new group however, you have a chance to begin with a completely fresh slate. So think about what you’re trying to do. Set some goals and pray that God may use you to meet those goals. If you don’t aim to do anything, it’s pretty likely that you’ll get what you aim for. There’s no guarantee that you’ll achieve your goals either, but it’s far better to be aiming at something, rather than nothing.

No Guts, No Glory published by Matthias Media has a great chapter on setting goals. Read it, set some goals and then work out a plan that will help you to achieve those goals.

2. Make it all about Jesus

Soph and I recently visited a large youth group that was reaching lots of young people, growing, full of excitement and led with enthusiasm, but simply wasn’t about Jesus and his gospel. If your work is going to have any real or lasting impact upon the lives of young people, it will need to be driven by Jesus and his gospel. We are not seeking to just ‘get them through the door’, we are seeking to grow God’s kingdom, and God grows his kingdom through the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our programs need to reflect this. We need to think about our activities and ask ourselves: are they focused on Jesus?
Jesus and fun are not incompatible. In fact, if you think that Jesus is the boring bit of youth ministry, then perhaps you should rethink your decision to start up a group!

3. Know your own context

Every youth group is different. What works in one group may not work in another. Some groups need to be on Friday nights, others work better on a Sunday afternoon or morning. Firstly, think about who you are trying to get to come along. Then think about what time to run the group. Think about their parents. Think about your location. Think about your local youth culture. Make your group one that will reach the young people in your local context. Don’t just try to import what some other group does somewhere else.

That being said, you don’t always have to re-invent the wheel. Talk to other youth group leaders. Visit other groups and take notes. There’s no copyright on most youth ministry ideas – only think about whether they will work in your context.

4. Pick the right leaders

Choose faithful, servant hearted, Christ-loving and teachable leaders. Your leaders will do so much of the ministry alongside you, so make sure that they are doing it for the right reasons. Youth leaders need to be of the same standard as any other leader in the church. They need to be committed to Christ, and to living in a godly way (1 Tim 3).

Don’t choose leaders ‘because it will be a good thing to help them get serious about Jesus’. Choose them because they are already serious. Doing youth ministry may well help them grow in many ways, but make sure they are on the right page before you invite them to get involved. Better to have fewer quality leaders, than a large team of leaders who cause you problems or who aren’t committed to what you’re doing.

5. Train for the future

Even as you start up the group, be thinking about the future leadership of the group. This is helpful for a few reasons. Firstly it stops you from building the group to rely upon one person too much. If you have in your mind that you are only overseeing this group until God puts another person in that role to do this work (even if that’s ten years from now), it will stop you from becoming ‘indispensable’. A good question to ask is ‘Who will be in the leadership team in two years from now?” Once you’ve worked that out, it’s time to think about what you’ll do now to equip the leadership team of the future for the task.

Secondly, youth groups can be a fantastic training ground for enthusiastic young leaders to hone their skills in ministry. Even if you stay around long term, by training your leaders, you are equipping them with skills that they will be able to use in many other ministry contexts in their future. So teach your leaders to preach, to pray, to lead, to write bible studies and to think biblically. Think about how you can use your youth group to train up people for gospel ministry beyond the youth group.

What do you think?

This post isn’t some deep analysis of cultural or theological concepts, it’s just jelly – and lots of it.

Last week we had a jelly night, and it worked really well. Jelly relays, jelly wrestling, jelly fights. You can see some photos on the youth group site.

So here’s the secret of a good jelly night: water crystals.

Water crystals are much cheaper than real jelly (I got 2.5kg of crystals off ebay for $38 delivered. That’s enough for 200L of jelly). You don’t need a fridge to set them (just add water a few hours in advance), and they don’t melt when you wrestle in them.

They have a blog set up counting down to the camp this year. I think it’s a great idea. Check it out here. I’m not sure who is running the blog – but I found the link on James and Anita’s blog.

Youthworks Holiday Camps are great for Christian teenagers and for their non-Christian friends. They are great for Christian teenagers in that they can hear the gospel clearly proclaimed and be certain of their stance before God. They are fantastic for non-Christians to hear the glorious news of Jesus death and resurrection in a super-fun context. Youthworks Holiday Camps work hard at seeing teenagers followed-up into local youth groups.

For more info click here. Download the rego form here. And encourage any teens in your youth groups to think of friends they can take along.

Have you been on a Holiday Camp before? What’s your fondest memory?

Congrats Matt & Tash on the engagement!!

• Explain who did the study and why
• Give you a summary of the main findings
• Link to more detailed stuff about the study, and link to the study itself if it is available online.
• Link to newspaper articles that have referenced the study

They also categorise all the material for easy access. Of particular interest is the Religion & spirituality section.

Enjoy.