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As You Go: Creating a Missional Culture of Gospel-Centered Students
As You Go: Creating a Missional Culture of Gospel-Centered Students
As You Go: Creating a Missional Culture of Gospel-Centered Students
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As You Go: Creating a Missional Culture of Gospel-Centered Students

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Today’s students long for a rich, meaningful faith. They want something more than a moral code and therapeutic worship that leaves them unsatisfied and uninspired. Speaker, author, and evangelism professor Alvin L. Reid reveals a key to capturing students’ hearts for life: a missional youth ministry. Through practical teaching and powerful application tools, discover how giving teens a grander purpose and vision and encouraging them to see all of life as a mission field transforms their faith, their lives, and the world.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 27, 2014
ISBN9781612914787
As You Go: Creating a Missional Culture of Gospel-Centered Students

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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    Alvin Reid, professor of evangelism and student ministry at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, is "tired of meeting young adults who tell (him) that what they remember from their youth group experience is 'invite a friend' and 'Don't have sex.'" He wants students to begin living their lives enamored with the risen Christ as ministers of his Gospel of grace and love. He wants to see young people living their Christian lives in a distinctly Christian way, as missionaries and ministers of reconciliation.

    Me too! Reid offers a lot of practical wisdom for leaders and parents. He says we have spent so much time on the imperatives(the "do's", commands, law) and lost sight of the indicatives(the "Christ has done", Gospel). This leads to what Christian Smith coined Moralistic Therapeutic Deism and it fills youth rooms and pulpits all over the country, if not the world. The idea that God, an impersonal force more than a relational being, is here to make me feel better as long as I act good is as pervasive as it is perverse. Reid's advice, ditch this and focus on the Gospel.

    Focus on the Gospel in its grandest presentation. The typical Roman Road Gospel presentation drops the hearer in the middle of the story, assuming that Romans 1-3 is known and understood as we kick off at Romans 3:23. Reid's point is to see the Gospel from beginning to end, the good news of God from creation to consumation and restoration. He encourages the reader to teach students the "metanarrative" of Scripture, the big story. And see that the Gospel is not the "door to Christianity" that one enters and leaves behind, but rather it is the focus of all of Christianity. Allow the student to see who God is and what He is doing and let these truths be applied to them by the Holy Spirit.

    Reid makes a great point in line with this when he says,

    Much of what we do in student ministry focuses on the lowest common denominator: What truth can we teach that will apply to all? In an attractional, event-driven ministry, this approach is necessary to keep people coming. And, if your ministry focuses more on the how of Christianity (how to date better, how to witness, how to be happy) than on the why (focusing on God and his plan), it will thus be more focused on truth that applies to the widest possible audience. But the more we focus on helping students see the big picture of who God is and what he is doing and why he is doing it, the better they can learn to make application to the unique aspects of their lives.

    This leads to another one of Reid's big points. He seeks to see a more relational, mentor, discipleship type of model grow in student ministry as opposed to the typical, pizza-party lazer tag= little-to-no spiritual growth model that seems to reign supreme. Not opposing events and pizza per se, Reid sees the role of the minister as that primarily of disciple maker and mentor, someone investing in the lives of individuals and seeing these individuals do likewise and so on and so on. I think there is something quite biblical and quite Christlike to this mentality and this model.

    Reid also invests an entire chapter on the role of the family in student ministry. This could be one of the greatest weaknesses in many student ministries, and in many churches, is the compartmentalization of the church into almost little parachurch organizations. Nursery, kid's church, youth group, young adults, middle adults, adult adults, really adult adults...you could go your entire life and never have to really know anyone much more than 5 or 10 years off of your age. The need for the entire family to be involved in the growth and discipleship of students is crucial and I am glad Reid gave it a good section of his book(even if the age-integration soapbox is likely more me than him).

    This is a good book and well worth parents and youth leaders to invest the time in reading and seriously consider the points that he makes.

Book preview

As You Go - Alvin Reid

On the east coast of North Carolina, the state I call home, a windy spot named Kitty Hawk faces the Atlantic Ocean. On that site some one hundred years ago, two brothers named Orville and Wilbur Wright made a discovery that has radically changed my life and most likely yours as well. On a cold December day in 1903, these brothers tested what became the first fixed-wing flying machine in history. Their efforts marked the tipping point of a movement leading to global air travel, which has become a staple of culture now. A century later, in Atlanta alone, numbers equivalent to a small city pass through a single airport, traveling literally all over the world in a matter of hours.

Airplanes have not changed travel in its essence — the movement of people from one geographical location to another. But the means and speed of travel have changed dramatically.

We have an unchanging Word from God (the Bible) and a unique message (the gospel), but the world in which we teach and live and share the truth of a relationship with God has changed significantly in recent years:

• Fifty-two percent of the world’s population is under thirty.¹

• In the United States more youth walk our streets, ride in school buses, and fill our malls than ever in our country’s history. The Millennials (those born between roughly 1978 and 2000) number 95 million, far more than their 78 million Boomer parents.²

• The Millennial generation is the most studied and in some ways most unique generation in the history of the West.

• A flattened world shaped by the Internet and immediacy has created a renaissance in youth culture.

Student ministry in churches must recognize the new world in which we live and change — not the message but the approach — for this new world.

From the earliest days of the church in Acts until now, the Great Commission has not changed in its essence. But the approach to the missionary enterprise of taking the gospel to the world has changed dramatically. Peter and Paul had ink to pen their writings, but no blogs or Twitter feeds. Those of us who live in the West and in particular the United States must recognize the nature of the world we live in, the world which is the mission field we pray for and send missionaries to.

The United States has become the fourth-largest mission field in the world; though this is a sobering reality, it also provides unique opportunities we’ll explore. Across our nation, in most (if not all) of the following contexts, you will find more people who do not follow Christ than people who do:

• Public schools and universities

• Businesses

• Subdivisions and apartment buildings

• Government offices

• Hospitals

• Prisons

In virtually every place not explicitly deemed Christian, like a church or Christian school, you are almost guaranteed to find more who think they do not need Christ than people who walk with Him. We live in a mission field. Children grow up in a place of great need for the gospel. For many of us who walk with Christ and in particular involve ourselves with students, this means a fundamental shift must take place:

• Pastors must continue to teach the Word but also see themselves increasingly as missionary strategists helping to shepherd their flock to think and live as missionaries. This includes student pastors.

• Church planting must continue to have a high profile, especially in the major cities.

• Families must take a more intentional role in the missional preparation of their own children.

• Student ministers must recognize more students today are lost without Christ than ever in history, and the market share of students active in church is shrinking.

IN OTHER WORDS, STUDENT MINISTRY NEEDS A REVOLUTION

What I write about in these pages serves as a student-focused aspect of a much larger conversation going on in the church today. We live in a time when much is at stake and much is changing. The gospel does not change, but we live in a time as revolutionary as the Renaissance and Reformation, a time when the stakes will not allow status quo Christianity to continue unchallenged, if any season ever did. Unrest does not equal change, but it does offer an opportunity for change.

In the fall of 2011, I listened with interest to one of the founders of what is probably the largest, most influential student ministry organization in my lifetime make a startling confession regarding a generation of youth ministry. Wayne Rice, of Youth Specialties, observed, We got what we wanted. We turned youth ministry into the toy department of the church. Churches now hire professionals to lead youth ministry. We got relevance but we created a generation of teenagers who are a mile wide and are an inch deep.

That, my friends, is a remarkable confession. Student ministries and churches in general have not equipped students to be adults who understand the gospel and live as missionaries. We created a cool subculture where students could be treated like the center of the universe and given a bunch of stuff, but not enough Jesus.

I am tired of meeting young adults who tell me that what they remember from their youth group experience is Invite a friend and Don’t have sex. This book is not intended to focus on what is wrong in student ministry, however, but to offer a new (or renewed) way of thinking.

To his credit, Wayne Rice then argued for three changes. First, turn student ministry back over to the church. Youth pastors should be seeking to work themselves out of a job, he argued, as they help youth become incorporated into the life of the church. Second, we can no longer ignore the role of the parents. Third, we can offer them nothing better than the gospel.

The following pages will offer a way of thinking about teenagers for student pastors, churches, parents, and students themselves. We need a return to a radically Christ-centered focus.

SO HOW DO WE GET (BACK) TO GOSPEL-CENTERED STUDENT MINISTRY?

First, God. We need a new vision of God: His vastness, His involvement in everything, His power, His love and justice. If your students have a lot better grasp of who you are as the student pastor than who God is as the mighty Creator of the universe who sustains the world by the power of His Word, you have a problem. If your students understand the latest stats on sexuality in America more than they know the attributes of God and how He is King over all of life, you have a serious problem. We need student pastors and national and parachurch leaders who are better at theology than at new ideas. Rice noted that the founders of Young Life said that it is a sin to make Christianity boring. Agreed. And it is a greater sin to make Christianity silly, which is what has happened far too often. We must exalt a great God and give focus to His Word.

Second, the gospel. The next thing you should read is not a book on youth ministry. Read the Gospels and the book of Romans. Then read Gospel by J. D. Greear or The Gospel for Real Life by Jerry Bridges. We have taken the good news of the gospel off the headlines of our ministries where it should always be, and we have put it in the advice column part of our youth groups. We pull the gospel out to give advice rather than showing students how Jesus is the hero of all of Scripture, all of life, all the parts of their lives, and showing them how the gospel makes sense of everything. Let me remind you that in newspapers, advice columns are next to the cartoons. And that is what we do with the gospel, putting it next to an iPad giveaway instead of always showcasing it as the main event, the one thing that is constantly newsworthy in your ministry. We need a radical, Christocentric transformation, understanding the gospel is for salvation and sanctification, for saved and unsaved alike. Jesus is the answer to all of life — not the thin, superficial, subcultural Jesus, but the Jesus who cares for the broken and rebukes the self-righteous — the children-loving, disciple-calling, leper-healing, Pharisee-rebuking, humbly born, and ultimately reigning Lord Jesus.

Third, the goal. Ultimately the goal of any ministry is to glorify God. I submit the goal of student ministry is to glorify God by developing disciples who learn both to see the world as missionaries and live as missionaries — to live focused on the mission of God. The goal is not to have a great event with a lot of buzz. This means we will do less student ministry that is based on the lowest common denominator, a term I will mention often. It means you score success in long-term discipleship, equipping students for a life of service to Christ. It means helping students grow and develop their own plan for gospel impact now. If you help individual students develop a plan for gospel advance in the context of your local church, you will in fact help them hear from God and be confident in their planning, and thus be better prepared for college and life.

Fourth, the gathering. Connect to the whole church, across generations. Today’s generation of teens is not only the largest ever, it is also the most fatherless. We must connect students to the larger church and not function as a parachurch ministry within a church building. Students need older believers in their lives. We need a Titus 2 revolution where older men teach younger guys and older women teach younger ladies.

I am not trying to offer in these pages a how to do student ministry book, although I hope you will find it to be of practical help. We have spent so much time on the imperative that I fear we have lost the indicative, the why of all we do with, for, and through students. What I am trying to do is argue that every student ministry — in fact every local church, parachurch ministry, and for that matter every Christian family and individual — has a posture, a perspective from which we seek to live. And the current posture of student ministry could be greatly corrected. I suppose I am offering an orthopedic or chiropractic corrective to help those who love students — parents, pastors, student pastors, student workers — and students themselves understand the core focus of life. If we get that right, we can figure out the how-to a lot more easily. But if we fail here, no cool student building or hipster youth guy can help.

I simply argue that once a person meets Christ he or she goes on a journey to further understand the message of God and live out the mission of God, to build a gospel-centered life with a missional posture toward everything: career, family, church, economics, fitness, morality — everything.

Gabe Lyons, in The Next Christians, observes via research what I see consistently in my frequent interactions with leaders: Leaders who seek a new way forward, who want Christianity to mean something much more akin to our roots, who want to be a force for restoration in a broken world even as we proclaim the Christian Gospel.³ I, and others, call this way forward missional. Being missional means to think like a missionary, and missionaries travel: geographically to far lands, or sometimes they simply take a journey into their own communities to share Christ more effectively and intentionally. Geography does not define a missionary; the mission does. But to serve as a reminder that whatever a student’s vocation or location, as a Christ follower he or she is a missionary, each chapter will begin with a place on the globe, for at every place mentioned there are people who were created to worship and who need to see His great love. Including your own neighborhood.

The title chosen for this book comes from a significant nuance in the language of the Great Commission. Jesus’ final words in the gospel of Matthew are often summarized: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. Without getting overly technical, the only command in the Great Commission is make disciples. Everything else explains the imperative mission of making disciples. The word translated go has a unique tense and mood in the Greek (aorist participle) that can be understood as a timeless description of action. The Great Commission is not: Go someday. It is: Going and having gone, make disciples, as you go.

Creating a missional culture of gospel-centered students requires you to be making disciples as you go. It is a lifestyle. It is a movement. It won’t happen overnight. So wherever you are today, make disciples. Wherever you are going tomorrow, make disciples. Having gone into your neighborhood and to the ends of the earth, make disciples. The people of every nation need the gospel.

I am finishing this book in Kiev, Ukraine, on a mission trip. But the mission here is the same as the mission in my neighborhood. Life is a mission trip: Take it. Let’s go on the journey together. I pray we will take a whole generation with us.

CHAPTER 1

Johannesburg, South Africa

One of the great global cities of our time, Joburg was the initial stop on my first trip to the great continent of Africa. I also began a relationship with a group of people who hold a special place in my heart to this day, but I don’t mean the students who joined me or the new believers we met.

I am referring to the TSA, or Transportation Security Administration.

If you travel by air, you know the dear people who have the joy of screening passengers at airports across the United States and their peers in airports globally. Because I have the joy of an artificial hip (insert sarcastic tone), I have the privilege of knowing TSA personnel up close and personal.

Step to the side, sir. Male assist! Have you ever heard that? If you have ever heard the familiar beeping of a metal detector you just set off in an airport (and you are a male), you have. I have flown all over the world multiple times and have set off more metal detectors than I can recall. I know the airport security drill.

The drill changes through the years. I remember when you could greet your loved ones at the gate. The details change over time, but what remains constant is this: If you set off the metal detector, you will have to be screened further. Maybe you forgot the change in your pocket or failed to take off your belt. If you have set it off, you know what happens next: The personal screener gets a little more than intrusive to make sure you are safe to travel. Today, most airports have magnetic resonance machines that allow me to avoid the personal touch of such thorough customer care. And why do I have that infernal artificial hip? Why? Because of the hazards of student ministry.

I broke my hip at a youth camp in 1996. My team won the mud volleyball game, I won the trash talking, but I lost the ensuing wrestling match. Two years later, after a lot of pain and misdiagnosis by doctors (there is a reason they call it practicing medicine), I received an artificial hip. That alone will ruin your whole day. I was thirty-eight years old, still fairly active athletically, and more than a little bummed that my wrestling days with our growing children were over. I now have a piece of titanium jammed in my femur, a joy that slows me down every time I fly.

I received my metal hip in 1998. But I started setting off metal detectors in 2001, in late September in fact, on the aforementioned trip to South Africa. Why did my hip suddenly begin to set off the metal detector? Three numbers: 9-1-1. The terrorist attack on the U.S. changed a lot of lives and at some level has touched the whole world. Why?

Several years before that September a man sitting in a tent in eastern Afghanistan had become pretty ticked off at the West and at Americans in particular. Osama bin Laden convinced a couple dozen men to come to the States to attend flight-training schools to learn how to fly domestic air carriers. These men boarded flights on September 11, 2001, and armed with nothing more than box cutters and the ability to steer airliners, unleashed an attack unprecedented in American history, leaving almost three thousand dead.

For students, the specter of terrorism would affect their generation the way the Cold War affected mine.

Immediately after the attacks, the metal detectors were turned to a more sensitive frequency. For the first time in three years of having a metal hip, I set off a metal detector less than two weeks after 9/11.

Osama bin Laden started a movement of the worst kind. He led a handful of men to conduct a most sinister act, one that has led to the recognition of a global movement of terrorism just when we thought the Cold War’s end would lead to a much more peaceful world.

While many have been involved, one man started the movement.

He was not a dictator.

Nor was he the leader of a massive, organized army.

But using an idea and modern communication tools such as social media, Osama bin Laden has to some degree changed the whole world. Not for the better.

Good news: Almost two thousand years ago a band of believers, a gaggle of Galileans, a den of disciples numbering only 120, gathered in a big room in Jerusalem. They had no standing in the culture. But they had a mission so big only God could accomplish it through them. He took a man intent on leading a movement to persecute followers of Christ and turned him into one of the leaders of the early Christian movement. Saul of Tarsus became the apostle Paul because of the power of the gospel.

You are reading this book right now because these and others like them lived the mission given to us by our Lord.

Student ministry today stands at a crossroad. My purpose in this book is to show student pastors and parents, those who work with students and students themselves, what should be at the core of our ministries to students. And, in so doing, I hope to show what the entire Western church needs: a recovery of the gospel-centered, missional impulse seen in Acts and at other times in history, in particular times of great awakenings and missionary advance.

We need a vision for our youth bigger than any cultural indoctrination. We need a missional shift in students.

WHY MISSIONAL?

Why the term missional ? I use the term because students today, as a generation, stand ready for a challenge as big as life itself. Missional means to see the world with the eyes of a missionary, to look at everything and everyone from the posture of one on a mission so great that everything in life flows from that mission. Student ministry can play an integral role in helping the church meet the challenge of being missional. I respect those who have opted for a family-integrated model, or other approaches that essentially abolish student ministry as an ongoing part of the local church, but I believe student ministry needs reformation, not annihilation. I also believe the system currently in operation in many churches — more pizza parties than theological passion and more games than gospel — must be changed. The system is broken, and nothing less than a gospel infusion and cultural shift in the local church and in parachurch student ministries is needed. In the following chapters I will unpack essential features of effective student ministry for our time and for this generation.

TURNING MILLENNIALS INTO MISSIONARIES

By missional students, I mean simply this: The core of student ministry must be the mission of God, centered on knowing God and the living and loving and sharing of the gospel. Every student ministry — every local church group, every parachurch ministry, every book written about student ministry — has some idea of what the heart of student ministry should be. In practice it seems that too many focus on what I call the Big Three Es: events, entertainment, and externals (that is, behavior modification). This leads to other issues, like

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