Reaching People...

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.