There is no question that young people need to be discipled to grow in their leadership abilities. The implications of the pandemic have disoriented and discouraged many leaders. I encourage you to rest on God’s sovereign involvement and leadership of your life as a leader. Scripture shows us the Lord determines your place, people, and purpose, even when you may not understand or have planned for it.
Recent studies from the Pew Research Centerb and Springtide Research Institute show something significant happening in peoples’ spiritual lives. People are turning from religion. Millennials are raising their children without the church. People have lost trust in religious institutions. However, even though people are walking away from religion, they aren’t necessarily abandoning spirituality. How are faith leaders going to meet this reality as they evangelize and disciple young people in their relationship with Jesus?
Springtide Research Institute has one of the largest datasets on the state of youth in America. The data undeniably points to the need for discipling leadership from adults. Springtide summarizes their enormous dataset like this:
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. – Mark 1:35
Blue Zone is the category of Full Spectrum Ministry that brings life to all the rest. Sadly, Blue Zone (rest and retreat) is the type of ministry that leaders neglect the most.
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The consequence of neglecting our need to retreat from the busyness of life is painful. Leaders who don’t develop a regular rhythm of rest and retreat suffer from emotional, spiritual, and physical burnout. They lose their ability to share grace and truth with the people around them.
Let me ask a question. When was the last time you told someone the story of Jesus Christ? Can you remember?
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A disciple’s desire is to joyfully spread the good news of Jesus with others. Yet many followers of Jesus struggle to share the gospel story on a regular basis. Why? Since the gospel has the power to restore people to a right relationship with God, it encounters the most spiritual resistance of any story. Satan wants to stamp it out before we share it with other people. But as disciples of Jesus, we have no excuse to keep God’s good news to ourselves. We must push past the enemy’s resistance and our own inhibitions so we can proclaim the good news even more boldly to a world that’s literally dying to hear.
In this post, I’ll offer 3 strategies to help you spread the gospel story with confidence.
Youth group is full of young people. Where do these youth come from? How do they arrive to be under your discipleship?
Research conducted by the Pew Research Center (published in September 2020) examined the religious lives of US teens. It showed that most teens attend religious services with at least 1 parent, but the majority attend with both parents. Just 7% percent of the surveyed teens reported that they attend services with other family members or friends; only 1% reported attending services alone. a
It is probably safe to say that students who attend youth groups mostly come from Christian homes or have exposure to the Gospel. This is excellent news when thinking about discipleship, but there is a huge gap of young people who are not being shown an accurate picture of who Jesus is. How are youth leaders going to reach young people who are not Christians if they are not showing up to church?
When we look at the call of youth ministry, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the scope of such a calling. Before he ascended to heaven, Jesus called his disciples to, “go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). This is no small task! As Christian leaders, we too have been invited to proclaim the good news of Jesus to the whole of creation. Jesus asks us to think big. But how do we even begin such a giant mission? The only way to understand Jesus’s design for mission is to learn from his perfect example of life on earth.
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