The Deep and Wide Leader

by Phil Bell of Life Church in Canton, MI.

It stands to reason that it’s not a good idea to buy hair products from someone with no hair. It stands to reason that you should not go to a dentist who has teeth like Austin Powers. It should stand to reason that our students will not likely pursue God passionately if it is not modeled for them. It should also stand to reason that students will not intensely pursue their friends for Jesus if they do not see key people in their lives doing the same. Therefore, If you and I want to see students become passionate about God (Deep) and passionate about reaching their friends for Him (Wide), we need to ask some honest questions of ourselves:

• How are we modelling this for them?
• What passion for Jesus do the students see in us?
• What do our lives display to make the gospel worth intensely following? 

Before I go further, let’s pause for a minute… I want to be clear that you and I ultimately are not the answer to what students need. Jesus is! But we are certainly a guide and shepherd to help them discover and embrace Him.  Therefore, do students see someone before them who can be trusted to lead the way? They need someone who will navigate an exciting path with and for them. Do they see passion and authenticity evident in our lives and will they follow us as we follow Jesus? 

I believe that when we read 1 Thessalonians Chapter 1, we are given a great picture of the power of example to the students around us:

You know how we lived among you for your sake. ⁶You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. ⁷And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. ⁸The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere.     – 1 Thessalonians 1:5b-8

In this chapter I am challenged by the idea that faith is caught more than it is taught as students become imitators of us and of the Lord. And the key is not to be their hero or best friend. The key is to be an authentic Christ follower who students want to become like. As you and I imitate Him, our lives become magnetic to them and they begin to discover and embrace Jesus. What’s more important is this: When these students themselves are living out the deep and wide principles, they too begin to impact their friends, families and communities in ways we would never had imagined. Their faith in God will be known everywhere… Can you begin to dream of what that could look like in some of your students lives in the next few years? 

So, what kind of imitators are your students becoming? Today, take a look at some areas of your leadership and consider what small and important things you can do to model authentic faith to your students. But most of all, take some time today to allow God to fill you up with His presence. What is God saying to you today about who He wants you to become? How will that impact your students? How will impact God’s Kingdom?

Phil Bell
Pastor of Student Ministries
Life Church
www.youthworktalk.com

Follow-up Post to a verse a month…

So every since I posted the D&W Idea of the week about memorizing a verse a month I have been convicted to memorized God’s Word myself.  I still advocate that our teens need to memorize scripture as it is my perception that this is a fading discipline in the church.  That being said, I need to memorize scripture as well for my personal spiritual benefit as well as owning my responsibility and setting the pace for teens that I influence in my small group and the Youth Ministry at Northern Hills.

All of that to say, you should notice a new feature in the upper right hand corner of the Deep & Wide blog page entitled, “MEMORY VERSE FOR JUNE.”  Each month I will provide a new memory verse and invite you to join me in memorizing that verse.

This month’s verse is Ezekiel 33:7, “Now, son of man, I am making you a watchman for the people of Israel. Therefore, listen to what I say and warn them for me.”  It was inspired by today’s Dare 2 Share chapel that Greg share with our staff. 

Beyond memorizing this scripture, my prayer is that I will heed the words of James and apply this to my life as well (James 1:22).

D&W: a verse a month

This week’s idea to help you go “Deep” in your Youth Ministry.

I know, this idea seems so basic and elementary, and it totally is.  Scripture memorization is so simple, yet it seems like it is a fleeting discipline in most Christian circles, let alone Youth Ministries.  Imagine what it would be like if you challenged your teens to memorize one verse a month. 

• In a school year, your teens would be challenged to memorize 8-9 verses.
• In a calendar year, your teens would be challenged to memorize 12 verses.
• By the time your junior high teens passed into high school they could have 36 verses memorized (6th-8th grade).
• By the time a teenager completed 4 years of high school in your ministry they would have memorized 48 verses.
• Think of the teens that just graduated that have been in your group since 6th grade.  They would have memorized 84 verses.

Will all of them memorize every verse?  Maybe not.  But if a few of them memorized all those verses or even if most of them memorized a several of them, you would have an army of teenagers that could recite one verse out of every book of the Bible.  Depending on where you pulled your verses, you could have teens that could recite entire chapters, even books of the Bible!  Think about it.  How cool would it be if we restored the discipline of scripture memorization back into American Youth Minstries.  It could be one step of a journey on the road to changing a generation.

How many verses of the Bible have you memorized?  What’s the first one that comes to mind when asked to recite a verse you have memorized?  I dare ya’ to share it!

God’s Word is not an Appetizer

written by John Byrne of the Rock of Southwest in Littleton, CO.

On May 29^th my wife and I celebrated our 16^th wedding anniversary.  It was a good night.  Our plans were pretty loose, but we ended up at Olive Garden one of my wife’s favorite places to eat.  I enjoy their food as well, but the bread they bring out right when you get there is amazing.  If I am not careful I will be full by the time the real food arrives.  I have to pace myself, and by that I mean eat one loaf and ask them not to bring another.  As I think about taking students deeper into God’s word I often wonder if we spend too much time serving appetizers and not enough time serving the main course.  Students may go away full, but have they really been fed?

It is much easier to serve chips and salsa than it is to serve a healthy meal and more often than not that is what the students want.  A message built around a cool story with a verse pulled out of context is much easier than taking a passage of scripture and doing old fashioned exegesis.  For years I did the cool story bit.  Over time I began to realize that I had been taking verses out of context and using them to fit my message.  Even when I wasn’t using these verses in the wrong way I was still just serving appetizers.

How do you serve just the right amount of appetizer and make sure students are still hungry for the main meal?  It might be easier than you think.  Let me suggest a few things:

• Use what you are studying personally for your messages.

When I was in Bible college I had professor after professor tell me I needed to have personal study that was different from what I was teaching or preaching on.  Fortunately God designed me to be a rebel.  I just couldn’t figure out why this was a good idea.  Now I study a text and it is both personal and it is what I teach on.  This is better because the text hits home with me first before I teach on it.  It is better because I am not trying to study two things.  I can combine my efforts.

• Read the text when you preach.

Maybe your students are different than the ones in my youth group, but mine barely know where the New Testament is and they often are confused as to whether a book is in the New or Old Testament.  Reading the text and having them actually open their Bibles is important.  The word of God is what is sharp, living, and useful.  My stories, jokes, and illustrations are only useful as appetizers.  God’s word is the main course.  If my presentation is terrible, but I got students to open up God’s word and actually read it, that’s a win!

• Teach through books of the Bible.

It sounds boring and irrelevant to teach through a book of the Bible.  Well, it is old but it is definitely not irrelevant.  We make a big mistake if we think we have to make the Bible relevant, it doesn’t need our help.  Our job is not to make scripture relevant, but rather to help people understand it so they can see its relevance.  Last fall I did a relationship series using the book of Ruth.  The students who were there could probably still tell you the basics of that story.  Not only did they learn about relationships, they learned God’s word.  I just finished up a series on Haggai.  Most of them didn’t even know Haggai was book in the Bible and now they can tell you the basic premise of the book and probably a little about its historical context.  They are building a foundational knowledge of the Bible and learning to go deep in their faith.

• Use stories and illustrations strategically.

I have not always done a good job of using illustrations.  It isn’t because I forgot to use them or I didn’t tell the story well, but because I would find a funny story and force feed it into a message because I wanted to tell the story.  If you want to tell funny stories, be a comedian.  If you want to preach the word of God, be a pastor.  Stories, jokes and illustrations are helpful as long as they don’t become the focus.

As youth leaders we need to always point to Jesus.  The writer of Hebrews puts it this way, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith…”

John Byrne
Pastor of Student Ministries
The Rock of Southwest
www.pjs-web.net

How to write Bible study lessons for youth group

I got the idea for this blog topic from my friend Tim Schmoyer.  He offered up 100 blog post ideas for others to write about so I grabbed this one of the list.

I actually enjoy writing Bible study lessons for my high school small group.  It is a process I have been working on and refining for several years now.  When I was a full-time Youth Leader I was a huge proponent of writing lessons for 1 of my 2 weekly meetings with the teens.  This is the process I currently use that has become the most effective way I have ever led a Bible study.

A little over a year ago Greg Stier introduced me to the ALT-ernative teaching style which has since revolutionized the way I do lessons.  The idea is that you follow the ALT acronym: Ask, Listen, Teach.  You ask a question of the group to get discussion going, you listen the teens as they share their ideas and beliefs, and then you teach what God’s Word has to say about the topic.

ASK.  When my buddy Sam and I kicked this off in our small group we had each teen write 3-5 questions on a 3×5 card.  They simply needed to be spiritual questions that they desired answers to.  As we sorted through the cards we saw various types of questions: what is God like, why do bad things happen, how far is “too far,” what do I have to do to be saved, what’s the point of prayer, etc.  Each week we would rifle through our stack of questions and determine what we would study the following week.  We could have come up with spiritual questions on our own to kick-off discussion in the group, but found it was a great move to let the kids do this for us.  1) the questions were from the teens themselves so they spoke to their personal needs AND 2) they more readily engaged in conversation because they were their questions, not ours.

LISTEN.  This was sometimes the difficult part.  The temptation was to hear what teens said and jump all over it, but this only led to squashing the conversation before it ever started.  The awkward moments kicked in when we did ask questions that they didn’t immediately dive into and discuss.  This really requires you as the Youth Leader to stop and practice patients.  The other thing to keep in mind is that you don’t have to agree with what the teens are saying but you want to cultivate an environment where they feel they can freely share their thoughts.  Sometimes you simply have to say things like, “Isn’t that interesting?” “Tell me more about what that means to you,”  “So what your saying is…” “Does anyone else agree or disagree?” “Why do you believe that?”  All of these questions encourage further discussion without affirming a particular view.

TEACH.  Each week I would actually get the kids to agree to the fact that we would dive into God’s Word to understand what it had to say about our question/discussion.  By getting them to agree to this part of the process, they were more engaged when we would read Scripture.  Also, because I had listened to them and heard them out they were more willing to hear me out.  You will have to be on your game and come prepared with multiple passages to go to.  When you throw out a big question like, “What are views of God?” you will get a variety of answers that might take you down different roads.  Depending on the conversation you might need to address God’s holiness, His forgiveness and love, the trinity, Jesus, the Creator, etc.  It can be a little messy, but your teens will love the rawness and authenticity.  If you get stuck, don’t lie or gloss over it.  Simply communicate that whatever point they have brought up is a great question that you don’t have the answer to and then commit together to find the answer in God’s Word.

Preparing lessons like this will be the easiest and most difficult thing you will ever do.  It’s easy from the standpoint that you won’t have to write a three point teaching outline, make fill-in-the-blank handouts for your teens, etc.  It will be more difficult in that you can’t always control where the conversation goes, you will have to be in the Word daily to have a stronger working knowledge of the text, and if you are working with volunteer leaders it will require more of them in the same way.

This is the most non-traditional approach I have ever taken to writing Bible study lessons for my teens but it has offered the most indepth discussions and incredible learning opportunities.  My teens have kept the discussions going outside of our meeting time and frequently reference previous conversations we’ve had much more readily and easily than any teaching outline they have ever been taught through.  I challeng you to give it a try and see what God does through your conversations.