The Well

For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with what we should teach at Merge (our Wednesday night, multi-generational worship gathering).  What we teach is a big deal.  A REALLY BIG DEAL!  We carry with us the ability to shape a given student’s Godview.  Much of what our students will come to believe about God will come from what we teach them.  What an awesome and scary responsibility!  James said it this way, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” James 3:1.

The more I have wrestled with the reality of what to teach, the more I have felt compelled to ensure that students are not getting some watered-down talk that was thrown together with little forethought or strategic thinking.  As a student pastor, I have constantly lived in the tension of teaching stuff that I think students want to hear verses teaching them the things that I believe they need to hear.  I have wrestled with whether to focus more on relevance (those things that seem most urgent to students right now) or on significance (the rich doctrines that sustain us and ground us).  Unfortunately, I feel like I’ve never gotten it right.  There have been times when I felt like we were too focused on the relevant and never got deep enough, but there have been other times when I have felt like we stayed too heavy for too long.  I have longed for a way to discover balance in our teaching.

This year, we will be implementing what I am going to call the RED Strategy.  My prayer is that the RED Strategy will enable us to give students an accurate, balanced picture of what is happening in Scripture.  I hope it will allow us to meet the felt needs that we find in the youth culture and at the same time help our students establish a firm, doctrinal foundation which will allow them to thrive in the face of a skeptical and cynical world.

The RED Strategy breaks each message series down into one of three categories: Relevant, Expository, and Doctrine.  Our goal will be to provide students with a balanced number series from each of these categories throughout the year.

Here is a brief explanation of each category:

Relevant – In these series, we are teaching to a relevant need in the lives of student.  These messages tend to be more topical in nature.  These help us to handle very specific issues through a thorough examination of Scripture.

Expository – In these series, we focus on a particular text over an extended period of time.  Sometimes this takes the form of walking through one of the lives pictured in Scripture, and other times this is simply walking through a book or passage.  This is a great opportunity for students to grasp a greater appreciation for the richness of God’s word and to uncover truths that are easily passed over with the naked eye.  Expository messages are able to place students in the context of the passage so that they can sense, feel, and absorb the magnitude of what is happening.

Doctrine – A recent study by the Nehemiah Institute shows that 85 percent of self-described Christian students do not hold a Biblical worldview.  The Barna Group has discovered that the majority of students graduating from local youth ministries are not able to articulate the basic tenets of the faith.  In a doctrine series, we dive into the depths of these basic doctrines.  It is the foundation of these doctrines that will allow these students’ faith to persevere through the skepticism of college and difficulty of life.  Some of the basic doctrines we have already handled are: the doctrine of sin, God the Son, and God the Father.

Let me know what you think!  Leave me a comment.

Student ministry is a lot like riding a roller coaster with its ups and downs and with its moments of overwhelming exhilaration and moments of devastating discouragement.  But, even more than being like a roller coaster, I think student ministry is like waiting in line for a roller coaster.  You stand, and you wait.  Then, you stand, and you wait some more.  All the while, you remain focused on the amazing thrill that comes when months, or years even, of waiting finally come together as you finally see the lightbulb go off for a student.

And, there are no Flashpasses in student ministry.  There are no shortcuts that allow you to skip ahead to the front of the line.  As a matter of fact, most veteran student pastors will tell you that you spend a lot more time in the line waiting than you ever do enjoying the breath-taking thrill of watching a student “get it.”  However, another thing most veteran youth pastors will tell you is that the waiting is absolutely worth it.

However, if we are not careful, the waiting can crush us.  It can push us to the brink of insanity, and it can cause us to question everything from our call into ministry to our ministry philosophy and strategy.  That is why it is critical for every student pastor to know what he unquestionably believes about student ministry.  Knowing what we believe and why will help us to make it through the long lines of student ministry and will allow us to easily remind ourselves of why we do what we do.

Below, I have charted out 10 of my student ministry convictions.  These are the truths that I find myself coming back to again and again while I wait.  Take a look and see what you think.  In no particular order:

1. Missions teach students the heart of Christ.  I have found nothing the draws students closer to Christ than serving others.  Mission trips and projects do not produce the synthetic highs that are often associated with youth camps (although I believe these have their place), but they instead allow students to experience the unexplainable satisfaction that comes from being exhausted in Christ.  This creates growth and maturity, not false highs.
2. Families have more influence than I do.  A study shows that the most committed students allow us 40 hours a year to invest in them; excluding sleep time, school time, and practice time, parents have an average of over 3000 hours in a year to invest into their children.  Every youth pastor likes to feel as though they are the most important spiritual influence in the lives of their students, but the reality is that God didn’t design it that way.  Parents are intended to be the primary disciplers of their children.  We need to figure out how to invest our 40 hours into their 3000 hours.
3. Student ministry works, and it’s worth it.  Student ministry is hard, it’s frustrating, and it’s often brutal.  But, I believe it works, and I believe it’s worth it.  When I find myself discouraged, I often remind myself of the stories of students that I have witnessed God transform in front of my eyes.
4. Teaching can be deep and heavy.  Teenagers don’t need Christianity-light.  They can handle God’s word…..ALL of it.  There is no need to water down weighty teachings.  There is nothing wrong with humor or object lessons, but there is something wrong with avoiding diving into deep truths.  It is these deep truths that will allow students to have a foundation which they can build a life-long faith.  I would rather students grow into the teaching than never grow past it.
5. Discipleship happens one-on-one.  John Ortberg says that disciples are hand-crafted not mass produced.  Jesus invested one-on-one into his disciples so that they would in turn do the same.  While you can’t be one-on-one with every student, you must be one-on-one with some students, and you must enable every student the opportunity to be one-on-one with an adult who is mature in the faith.  If there is no one-on-one disciple-making, there is no disciple-making.
6. Having fun is not sinful or insignificant.  While I believe that students can handle the deep and heavy, I also believe there is real value in having fun.  Having fun allows students to grow closer together and allows them to better connect with their leaders.  Having fun breaks down barriers and enables conversation.  Having fun shouldn’t take center-stage in our student ministries, but it definitely has a place.
7. Relationships enable accountability.  Accountability is necessary for the maturation and sanctification of any believer, including teenagers.  However, attempting accountability without the presence of a relationship is devastating.  Students will not respond and will most likely withdraw altogether.  Relationships are time consuming and take a lot of work, but they empower us to bring healthy accountability into the lives of students.
8. Success is measured in time, not numbers.  Every student pastor has struggled with playing the numbers game, and every veteran youth pastor has played the numbers game and lost.  If you gauge the success of your ministry upon the numbers that attend, you will be miserable.  There will be times of mountain-top highs and rock-bottom lows.  We don’t gauge the success of our families based upon how many people are in them, and we shouldn’t gauge the success of our student ministries based solely upon how many are attending.  The real success of our student ministries will be discovered by the types of husbands/wives, fathers/mothers, and church leaders that they produce.
9. Behind every great ministry is a great team.  By great, I’m not really referring to talent, even though that doesn’t hurt.  I’m referring to true greatness; the type of greatness that Jesus taught his disciples.  A humble leadership team consisting of small group leaders, parents, and staff members is a necessity for the effectiveness of any ministry.  There can be no lone rangers in student ministry.  It takes a team.  A great (humble) team.  One of my greatest pleasures is serving with a great ministry team.
10. Teaching moments are everything.  One of the constant truths that our ministry team talks about most often is the importance of taking advantage of the teaching moments.  We often teach, hoping that something sticks.  However, divine teaching moments simply require our obedience, and they are almost guaranteed to stick.  Teaching moments are everywhere; we must be intentional in seeking them out and making the most of them.

Across America, churches are changing.  They no longer have stained glass, cathedral ceilings, and steeples.  They are much more likely to have intelligent lights, costly projector systems, and large production teams.  Worship services seem to more closely resemble rock concerts than the more liturgical services of the past.  Over the past several years, there has been a revolution of new church philosophy and an explosion of church plants.  The driving force behind this transformation seems to be hinged upon the overwhelming belief that church, as it was, was broken.  While there are aspects of this I strongly agree with and some aspects that I question, the church buildings and services are not all that have changed.

This new movement amongst church leaders has also created a new language.  The idea is that people have become so disenfranchised with our Christian clichés and jargon that they have become utterly meaningless.  Words like “Christian” have been replaced with words like “Christ Follower.”  ”Worship services” are now “gatherings.”  We have attempted to redefine the way outsiders view the church in a way that breaks down the barriers associated with old church language.  As our churches have strived to become more relevant in the presentation of the Gospel, it seems obvious that the language we use to communicate the Gospel would transform as well.  I agree.

However, I see a similar problem with the new jargon.  We have to ask the question: Why did the words we are replacing come to mean so little?  I mean, there had to be a time when those words were effective.  Nonetheless, over time words like “saved” have seemingly ceased to resonate with a new generation of outsiders.  How did this happen?

While there are probably a plethora of contributing factors, I would have to argue that there is one overwhelming factor: OUR WORDS HAVEN’T MEANT ANYTHING BECAUSE OUR WORDS HAVEN’T DONE ANYTHING.  Over time, people have been beaten and beaten and beaten with words that have come to have a negative connotation not because they are bad words, but because they are communicated through inauthentic lives.  As churches have built empires and “Christians” have hoarded wealth, words like “serve” and “missions” have come to mean very little.  Believe it or not, outsiders know enough about Jesus and the Bible to know that our words and our lifestyles are not matching up with our supposed beliefs.  The result has been that our “church words” have become mere rhetoric over time, disgusting the unchurched rather than reaching them.

Was it time for new words?  Perhaps, but what happens when words such as “Christ-follower” are just as powerless to people as “Christian?”  As we have strived to make our ministry language more relevant, it seems to be following the same path as its replaced ancestors.  The reality is that our terminology will not become relevant until our lives become relevant.  If we do not become the hands and feet of Jesus, our words will always be rhetoric regardless of how cool or post-modern they sound.  Truthfully, outsiders are not looking for a new language from Christians; they are looking for a new life from Christians.  Until they begin to see the Gospel changing us, they will not be interested in anything we have to say.

My prayer is that our words begin to mean something because our words begin to do something.  I want my life to more relevant than my words.  I’m actually not sure it is even possible for irrelevant words to be spoken from a relevant life.  My heart is broken over the fact that I know that people have seen my life and saw anything but a reflection of Jesus.  Who cares how well-schooled I am in new-age church lingo until I get that right?

Please share your thoughts.

Cody