iWitness (part 1 of 2)

by Shan Smith of the Agape Christian Church in Terre Haute, IN.

Several years ago I pulled a man from the inside of a car that had flipped over after hitting an embankment and a deep ditch.  The car was on fire and the man was barely conscious.  When the police arrived, I was asked to testify on what I had witnessed.  Later, I found they were more interested in the drugs and alcohol they found in the car.  You guessed it!  I had to go to court to witness for the prosecution at the trial.  After being sworn in, I had to tell the court four things: what I saw, what I heard, what I did, and what I felt.

John’s testimony of Jesus was very similar and clearly defines the word “witness.” In 1 John 1:1-3 he states, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”

Matthew 28:19-20 and Acts 1:8 directly command Christians to share the Gospel message of Jesus Christ.  This is at the heart of the Deep and Wide Strategy of Dare2Share Ministries.  As Christian witnesses, our commanding orders consist of being able to tell what Jesus has done for us and telling everyone we encounter.  The misconception and fear comes when we feel we must have all the answers to every biblical question a seeker might have.  On the contrary, we are simply called to be faithful to the sharing of what we have seen, what we have heard, what we did, and how we feel as believers and followers.  The blind man healed by Jesus was only able to share, “I was blind, now I see (John 9:25).

The two-fold approach of the Deep and Wide model is to take our students deeper and wider at the same time. Many other youth ministry formulas and programs lack the balance of the Deep and Wide strategy resulting in a lack of personal growth and lost opportunities to share the Gospel for our students.  As so frequently quoted following the “GO” in Matthew 28, we are to make disciples and teach them to obey everything He commanded simultaneously. Greg Stier writes of this synergy in the Deep and Wide Philosophy, “evangelism and discipleship work together like nitrogen and glycerin and result in explosive spiritual growth.”

to be continued…

Shan Smith
Student Ministries Pastor
Agape Christian Church

 

D&W: a Chapter a Week

This week’s idea for going “Deep” in your Youth Ministry:

I love using curriculum when teaching my high school small (we just got done with Gospel Journey Maui).  Assuming that it’s theologically sound and allows you to discuss with your teens scripture and biblical truth like GJM, then it’s all good.  I have found an additional benefit to using curriculum is that it typically takes less prep time so it allows me to tend to other priorities in my ministry (and I know we all have seasons of ministry where we feel like we don’t quite have the time we’d like).  There are times where I find it necessary to take my kids deeper into God’s Word.

When I want to take my kids deeper, there’s nothing better than simply discussing a chapter of a book in the Bible each week.  A good friend of mine and co-laborer in Youth Ministry, Sam Holmes, is just now wrapping up the book of Romans with his small group.  Yes, I said Romans.  Jam packed with rich theology and deep truths, Sam and his teens have jumped in head first into this amazing book of the Bible and are unpacking and discussing it each week.  They have a deeper understanding of Christianity and their own faith as a result.

As I get ready for next fall when the school year kicks off I am thinking of diving into the book of Acts with my teens and exploring with them what the 1st century church was all about.  I want them to see and experience what it was like immediate following Christ’s resurrection when the first believers responded to the grace of God and what they were compelled to do with a new purpose and mission in life.  As we navigate through Acts, I will be teaching using the ALT-ernative teaching style from Dare 2 Share.  It allows the teens to ask questions, share ideas, and then dive deep into God’s Word.

For those of you who are already implementing this practice into your ministry setting, how is it going?  What have you studied?  How have your kids responded to reading a chapter a week?

For those of you who are doing something different with your teens to disciple them and get them growing deeper in God’s Word, share what your doing.  We’d love to hear other ideas here at Deep & Wide Youth Ministry!

Cool Video from YS featuring Greg Stier

Check out this cool video devotion featuring my friend (and boss) Greg Stier and the president of YS, Marko.  Pretty cool video worth the few minutes it will take to watch it.  Enjoy!

HS Small Group 4/7/09

It was so good to be back with my high school small group this week.  One week we were off due to Spring Break and last week I was out of town for Dare 2 Share as Greg was speaking at Jeanne Mayo’s Epicenter event in Dallas.  I have missed my kids and it was great to get together with them tonight.  We wrapped up Gospel Journey Maui a few weeks ago and are now looking ahead to something new.  To kick things off tonight we watched clips for the new Blaze Promo DVD.  After that, I had a few ideas I was going to lay on them, but as God would have it they actually had a better idea. 

One of my 12th grade girls actually led a night of our Gospel Journey Maui study and the teens loved it.  She loved it.  I loved it.  What I learned tonight is that just about all of them want the opportunity to teach a night of study before the school year is over.  As we discussed this possibility, it also came up that not everyone in our group feels super tight with each other.  So, I combined the ideas and paired everyone up with someone they may not have opportunity to spend much time with during the week and it will be their responsibility to lead the group’s discussion for the week.  Here are some of the guidelines that we agreed upon:

1. The pairs are made up of 1 guy and 1 girl.
2. They will check in with me at least twice the week they lead to go over their lesson.
3. Our small group is driven by discussion, so they must use the ALT-ernative teaching style.
4. Each member of the teaching pair must present the GOSPEL during group.
5. Every point they make or that is discussed needs to be supported by scripture.

Here’s the cool thing – none of the balked at the assignment or guidelines.  They embraced them.  In addition to that, they are looking forward to the weeks that I throw them a curve ball and we cancel study and go to the mall or an afterschool hang out to share their faith with their friends.  They are actually looking forward to all of these opportunities.  All I can say is that God is amazing and is doing something special through this group of teens.  I can’t wait to share what happens over the next several weeks as these teens continue to relationally and relentlessly share the Gospel with their peers and dive deeper into their relationship with Jesus…

D&W: ALTernative Teaching Style

The ALTernative teaching style is something that grew out of Dare 2 Share’s recent project, Gospel Journey Maui, that was filmed in January of ‘08 and release October of the same year.  Greg Stier, founder and president of D2S, applied this method throughout the week of filming and has since put these ideas to paper and shared them with Youth Leaders nationwide.  It had a radical impact on the week he spent with 7 teens and twenty-somethings of various religious worldviews as they discussed some of the BIG questions in life and is sure to have the same type of effect in how you do Youth Ministry.  It has definitely been transformational in how I do it!

The following overview will definitely give you enough information to begin implementing this into your Youth Ministry, but nothing will prepare you more than simply diving in and applying the following principles.

ASK - Ask questions.  Ask questions without expectation or an agenda.  You need to ask questions and truly want to know what your teens have to say.  It may take a few attempts at this, but it won’t take long to create an environment that is open and where teens feel the freedom to share their responses.  It might take them back at first if this is not normal for your youth group setting, but you continue to encourage them that they have the freedom to share and while everyone might not agree all the time they certainly need to respect each other and not take things personally.  Dare 2 Share’s Gospel Journey Maui does a great job posing some incredible questions (and laying out this entire teaching style).  I have also asked the teens in my small group on occasion to write questions they have on 3×5 cards and we actually use their questions as the foundation for our discussions.  They even get more engaged in the conversation if they realize you are using one of their questions.

LISTEN – Listen to what your teens have to say.  The more you listen to them, the more likely they are to listen to what you have to say in return.  This is extremely valuable in this process and how you do here will translate into your overall effectiveness as a teacher to your teens.  In addition to earning their respect, by listening you will better understand where they are at and exactly what they need to learn.  As the conversation progresses, your teens may even have additional questions that they will want you to answer.  There is nothing like being asked by your teens to answer their questions and teach them the things they are wanting to learn.  How many of us as Youth Leaders / Teacher wish we walked into a room each week with our teens and wished they asked us more and more questions.  Personally, this is what has amazed me the most as I have implemented ALTernative teaching into my small group…as I listen and we have true conversations, they actually ask more and more questions.  I no longer have an issue having to fill our entire 90 minutes each week.  I have a problem keeping us within the 90 minute time frame.  Great problem to have!

TEACH – While this step sounds simple, it can be the most complicated in the process.  You need to have some flexibility here.  If you started your lesson by asking, “Who is God?” and in your mind had prepared to support Him being Creator, but as your teens responded to your question they landed on the fact that Jesus is God and began wrestling through the Trinity and Jesus being fully God and fully man, your refernces to God being Creator and having scripture passages to support that won’t resound well with your kids.  In fact, they’ll probably think you didn’t listen to a word they said because the point you are trying to teach has nothing to do with where they went with it.  While we can try to prepare for everything our teens will throw at us, the truth is we can’t.  Here are a few suggestions:

1. Stay in the Word daily.   The better you know God’s Word in general, the better equipped you will be to speak to the various questions your teens will ask or the points they will want to learn more about.
2. Be honest with them.  If you don’t know the answer, tell them you don’t but commit with them to find the answer in scripture and come back the following week to discuss it after some research.

This format isn’t necessarily new news either.  You can actually find examples of this all throughout scripture, especially in the New Testament.  Several times we read Jesus asking a question of the crowd, listening to their responses, and then teaching them where they are at.  One of my personal favorite examples of this in scripture is the discussion Philip has with the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8.  You see Philip ask the Eunuch some key questions, listen intently to his responses to better understand where he was at, and then teach him truth based on scripture.