I didn't post last week and from the response I got you would have thought that I had forgotten to show up on Sunday to teach. Between the emails, phone calls, mean looks and lazy brute comments I figured I better post this week or I might not live to see next Monday. So here I am, promptly at 9:45am blogging for my life.
Not blogging last week has given me the opportunity to think of some good stuff. Which means in the end you win. Sure you had to wait for it, but I think you will find that the waiting was worth it. Unlike the time I waited all night to get an X-Box 360 outside of Best Buy with Josh Leyden only to find that they only had 66 of them and I was number 67 in line. That story still makes me mad. But unlike me in that story, you will find you weren't waiting for nothing.
First of all, let me get a few side thoughts out of the way:
Side thought #1: I can't believe A&M has lost back to back games by 1 point. I mean I really can't believe it. I can believe they lost back to back games. I have no problem at all believing that. It is the one point thing that is throwing me off. I mean, come on!
Side thought #2: My team, The Austin Weirdos, is sitting pretty in second place in my long standing fantasy league I am in with my old roommates. I love Willy Parker. In the other league I am in I am feeling pretty confident that I am going to be victorious over fellow youth leader Lindsey Thomson. All is good in the world.
Side thought #2b: Next year we need to have a youth ministry fantasy league.
Side thought #3: This Thursday Krista and I are celebrating our 4 year dating anniversary. I don't know if you are supposed to still celebrate dating anniversaries when you are married but we are and so take that. Plus I never thought she would still like me after 4 years. Turns out she does. I am one lucky guy.
Final Side thought: Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away. That is crazy. It seems like this Fall is flying. I guess it helps that I am not in school everyday, but still, it seems like time is flying. Also, did anyone else notice the Christmas Tree tents already popping up? I think there should be an universal rule that when Christmas Tree tents go up the weather turns cold and stays cold. You should never be able to buy a Christmas Tree in shorts. Never ever ever.
I feel better having voiced those thoughts. Now I can move on to my big thought from last week. Now I feel the need to warn you that it is a little deep and might come across as a little preachy. That is not my intention. But being a pastor it seems like I cannot talk about God or spiritual things without people thinking it is preachy. Which is a shame because I would be talking about this stuff even I wasn't a pastor. For the stuff that I have been thinking about is the passion of my heart. It is what really gets me going. And so having thrown in that little disclaimer, here it is... Are we really reaching people with the life-changing reality of Jesus Christ? That is what I have been thinking about. I read a book last week called "The Present Future" and it got me thinking about that question and I have not been able to get it out of my head. As a church (and a youth ministry inside of that church) we say we are committed to reaching people for Christ. But I wonder how well we are doing that. From an outsiders perspective looking in to our student ministry I think it would appear that we are doing a good job. I mean we did have over 60 students at the Dodgeball Outreach, which at the time was double our youth group and we had 24 students commit to come to the Murder Mystery outreach which was almost double our high school group. So yeah, that looks good. But the thing that has me is this: How many of those students that are coming already know Christ or even more, already go to another church? Because we don't say we are committed to reaching people that are already reached with the life-changing reality of Jesus Christ. That doesn't make sense. You don't try to get someone to become an Aggie that goes to A&M. They are already one. When we try to reach people for Christ we shouldn't go looking for people at other churches. That doesn't make sense. What we should do is look around at my apartment complex or your lunch room. Most of those people need Christ and don't have Him. That is where it should start. And what that means is we have to go to them. We have to befriend them. Get to know them. Invest time and energy into building a relationship with them. It means outreach has to primarily be something you do personally and not something we as a ministry team do a couple times a semester for you. It means you commit to reaching people and I commit to reaching people and we do that. And I think we have a lot of room to grow in that area. I think we are taking steps, but I don't think we are there yet, not even close.
I think when it comes to going out to others and reaching them it means we have to try different things. I was just thinking this morning how awesome it would be if we had a ministry team of leaders whose job was to drive around and pick-up students who need rides to church because their parents won't take them. How awesome would that be if we were reaching students so well with the gospel that we needed a driving team to get them into church. We already have 4 students I think we could do that for. But what if we had 25? What if you were inviting students to church and you knew that if they said yes you would have a way to get them here every week. Would that help? What if we had a meeting after church once a month (with pizza of course) where we would hold each other accountable to be reaching our schools for Christ and we would have a time of equipping where you would be trained in different ways to share the gospel or reach out to your friends. But you would be held accountable to actually do it. Would you come? Would it help?
Our youth ministry has grown by over 400% since June of 2005 and that is great. But I lay awake at night and think about the thousands, literally thousands of students in range of our church that attend Clint Small and Bailey and Bedichek and Austin High and Bowie and Crocket that need to know that God loves them so much that He died for them. I think about them and I think about how we need to reach them. I think God is at work in our youth ministry and He wants to do this thru us. My question is do you want to partner with Him in it? What can I do to help you do that?
Let me know because it is what I have been thinking about these days.
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5 comments:
wow...ouch. As any girls that were in our awesome discussion time on Sunday heard me say, it is so much easier to talk the talk than to walk the talk you are talking and to talk the right talk so you can be walking the walk that is the right walk, and not just talking the right talk and walking a walk that is like the right talk. I think it came out sounding like that on Sunday. But you are so right. And I am so at a loss because I know I fail at this most of the time. But you know, I like your ideas. We did that Way of the Master thing this summer, and it was really a good thing for me. In the end, we all decided that we wanted to do more evangelical training courses, to get a second oppinion if you will; We didn't totally agree with Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron's method. But it totally changed my thinking nonetheless. And I really like the idea of an equipping/acountability monthly thing.
I am glad you blogged. Yeah, your blog is like our happy monday thing, and I've gotta say it threw us off when you didn't do it. So out for this week.
First of all, why do you start a fantasy league once I'm gone. The moment I, the most sports minded individual in the youth group, am outta here you start up football fantasy? Makes no sense.
If you allow me to dig deep as well, I think I'll challenge your thesis to an extent. To say the least Jake, you haven't been alone in questioning how effective our outreach as a church, or any church for that matter, has been in the last few years. Your preaching to the choir when you say that we should "target" the unchurched and acting to the contrary only results in a constant exchange of "believers."
However, I've pondered through this many times and always come away with the same conclusion. God doesn't care about numbers or immediate results. No, we don't have a large, constant influx of students that have never heard the Gospel, but I don't think that's how God works in the lives of others. I'm sure Northwest gets a much greater number of "unbelievers" in the door each week, but who's to say how effective the are as a witness to Christ? Certainly not us. I've been a part of both self-centered churches and churches that live for others and I have never seen more of a heart for the surrounding community than right here at SW. I know that this probably wasn't your point, but saying the results of our outreaches weren't worth the effort in foolhardy and almost self-centered. God works in his own sweet time.
I don't have to remind you either that just because they attend church does not make them a Christian in the slightest. So ruling out all churchgoers is a bit foolhardy as well. Overall, our outreach should never slacken and the love of Christ should always be shown; but let's let God worry about the results.
However, I think its always important to try to impact even more. That's why I think that church drivers are an excellent idea and you can sign my vehicle up in heartbeat. (I don't know do you trust me though?)
That sums up my input; again, you probably didn't write it the way I saw it. (Dang, I feel like I just wrote my own post)
I think that sounds great but you did fail to mention Dripping Springs as always. My poor school... all the children who wont ever get to see Jake there...sigh... But otherwise it sounds great!
Man, that would be great. It is always hard for me because, as a homeschooler, I am not in the same situations as you public schoolers: being around thousands of students my age every day. I am around three (somtimes really annoying) kids, the same three kids every day I might add, all the time, and the only other people I hang out with are my neighbors, and other kids who go to bible studies and church (those church kids really get on my nerves). I'm not around that many kids that need Christ. And it's really discouraging sometimes because the ones that do have heard the gospel multiple times and know where me and my family stand when it comes to who God is, and they don't seem to care. They come and hang out, and I would take a bullet for them, but it just bugs me when the people I know don't care about God and their souls as much as I do. So I can be an avid pro more-gospel-sharing-youth-ministry guy, but I don't have the same oppertunities to actually share the gospel as you public schoolers. You public schoolers have no idea how much you are blessed because you have the chance to share the gospel every day. The main reason I would want to go to public school would be to have the kind of oppertunities you guys have to share the gospel every day. I also want to say that as long as we are preaching the gospel (to church goers as well as non church goers), we are being obedient to God. Church goers are not Christians. Christians love God, and so they go to church. Church goers need to hear the gospel as well as non church goers. But it is up to us to try and get people we know for sure have not heard the gospel to come to these things. I know that was a whole lot of talking, but thats what I think on the subject Jake.
I think that you need to post before midnight!
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