This morning John Long made our team a delicious breakfast of eggs, hash browns, and grits. Josiah was the first student up, and he led our morning devotions, sharing from Romans 1. At 9am we left and boarded the train and headed up to the Hunts Point section of the Bronx. We met up with Pastor Reggie and Ibelsa Stutzman and Real Life Church in the projects outside of one of the buildings their church has “adopted” to show God’s kindness to and see the people come to know Jesus. A few of us walked up and down 6 flights of stairs several times announcing “Free coats and shoes” to the tenants. In spite of the temperature of 9 degrees (the wind made it feel like -6 degrees!), we set up tables in front of the building right out on the street and gave away 200 coats, pairs of shoes, and Bibles to people. After cleaning up we took a few remaining coats to a shelter and donated them, then we took our team for some authentic Mexican food. Want to know just how cold it was? The water in the toilet at the restaurant was frozen! Wow! So proud of our students that even in this bitter cold they were willing to go out on the streets and show people the love of Jesus!
Jr. High NYC Mission Day 1
Today our Jr. High mission team met at the Mineola train station and headed into Living Waters Fellowship in Brooklyn where we will be based for our NYC mission trip this week. Our train and subway rides were fun and overall non-eventful. When we exited the subway station we met our first challenge. It was bitterly cold outside (temps in the low teens), and the GPS said we had a 12 minute walk to the church. Unfortunately we thought we had turned up one street at a 5 point intersection, when in fact we had turned up a different one. We ended up walking in a nice big circle, and it ended up taking us about 40 minutes to get to the church. Our legs, faces, and hands were so cold and numb. It sure was nice to walk into a warm building! After getting thawed out and settled into our rooms, the team met my dear friend and chef John Long, who is on his 95th mission trip and is here to cook for us this week. He had some delicious hot chocolate waiting for us. After a time of sharing our team had dinner with John and Pastors Ron and Ana. After cleaning up we enjoyed an evening of fun playing Dutch Blitz and relationship building using questions from my book What Would You Do?. Tomorrow we are heading up to The Bronx to work with Pastor Reggie Stutzman and Real Life Church.
Youth Winter Fest 2015 Recap Video #YWF15
Youth Winter Fest 2015 was absolutely incredible! It was awesome having 16 churches together in one place to meet with God and grow in our relationships. Best of all, we have heard stories of dozens of students who made decisions to make Jesus the leader of their lives, and that is what it is all about! Our theme this year was Honor, and our speaker Lamont O’Neil challenged us to be men and women who honor God in all we say and do. We had a great time of worship with Mitch Parks, Daniel Bashta, and the Fellows. We also experienced a powerful time of ministry by the Nubian Gents and Feminine Fire – the ministry Lamont O’Neil started 20 years ago to mentor and disciple students. Many reports have been coming in about the impact our morning seminars had on them. The three seminars were on Honoring God in our media habits, Honoring God through music, and Honoring God in our relationships. The prayer room was also a major hit with students. And, of course, we had tons of fun on Saturday playing football, table games, hanging out in the snack shop and playing volleyball, basketball, and dodgeball tournaments. Everyone’s already asking about next year. Here’s the recap video. Enjoy! #YWF15
New PK Dizzle Rap: “Choose To Grow” (Winter Fest Rules Video)
Enjoy the latest of my comedy rap videos. lol!
Which One Do You Need? (5 Types of Retreats)
This coming weekend we are taking our students away for the weekend for Youth Winter Fest – a weekend retreat where over 400 students from churches all over our area will gather together for an encounter with God, and to deepen relationships. I believe there is tremendous power is disconnecting from the everyday, ordinary to connect with God and others in an extraordinary way. A little over a year ago I shared 5 different types of retreats that I find are very significant and meaningful. Here they are:
“You Were Once A Sperm”
OK, I am reading a great little book by Tony Campolo called Stories That Feed Your Soul. You should get it. Yesterday I shared one of his stories. Today, I must share just one more. Then, you’re on your own to get the book. So good! Be encouraged today.
“When speaking to young people, I always enjoy telling them, ‘Do you realize you were once a sperm? That’s right. You were once a sperm, and you were one of five million sperm all together in a group. Do you remember? All of you lined up at the starting line and at the end of a long, long tunnel, there was one egg. There was a race, and you won! Stop to think about that. The odds were five million to one and you came through. Your victory makes an Olympic gold medal look like nothing by comparison! You came through! You’re a winner! You are here by divine appointment. You are no accident. Think about that. If your mother had had a headache that night, you wouldn’t even exist. You are a very special person!”
– Tony Campolo
Share Your Story: At What Point Did Your Faith Become Your Own?
I am currently reading a book by Len Kageler in which he mentioned a question he often asks his students. I thought it was an interesting question, and I would love to hear your responses to it.
At what point did your faith become your own? That is, do you see your Christian faith as a carryover of what your parents told you, or has there been a point when you realized it is now your faith, not theirs. Be honest. Tell me your story.
Youth Ministry in a Post-Christian World
I recently read Brock Morgan’s book Youth Ministry in a Post-Christian World. In the book Brock discusses the major shifts we have experienced in our culture over the past couple of decades and how that has affected the students we work with in youth ministry. Because the world is a different place, by necessity, how we relate to and minister to students must change. Many of the ways we did ministry just a decade ago are no longer effective, and the expectations we had of students and our programs are no longer valid. But rather than sit back and miss the good ole’ days of youth ministry, Brock offers us a fresh perspective and a hopeful way forward.
One of the things that stood out to me in the book was the recognition that there seems to be a sad increase in the number of youth workers being fired these days. While there are certainly very legitimate reasons that some are released, more often than not, it is due to the perceived inability of the youth leader to get large numbers of students to come out to their programs. Morgan makes the astute observation that many of the senior pastors and supervisors in the church today were either youth workers or students themselves in the 80s and 90s when it seemed that all one had to do was offer pizza and some messy, crazy games, and kids from all over the community would come out to youth ministry programs en mass. In that era, success was defined in terms of numbers. What many overseers and decision makers today often fail to recognize is that those days are long over.
At the National Youth Worker’s Convention I attended last week, Dr. Kara Powell noted: “When I was a youth leader in the 80s and 90s, parents would call and ask us to have more activities for their students. Now when parents call, it is to apologize that their students can’t come because of they’re too busy.” In the book, Morgan does not suggest that counting is unimportant or that we should just resign ourselves to running programs no one will come to. Rather, he challenges us to change what we are counting. Success in today’s youth ministry should be measured much less in terms of attendance at our events, and much more in terms of individual care, how often we are getting out of our offices and connecting with students one-on-one or on campus, how we are encouraging and helping students become authentic members of the larger church body, how we are getting students involved in compassion and justice, how we are investing in families … These are things that matter and have lasting impact in students’ lives.
He also calls on youth workers to remember that we are engaged in a spiritual battle, and that as people on the front lines contending for the hearts of a generation, we need to be doing battle on our knees in prayer, and we need to be living in purity. Whenever there have been significant moves of God throughout history, the leaders were people devoted to passionate, faith-filled prayer and right, God-honoring living. Youth leaders must remain faithful to their primary calling of ministering before the Lord. Our ministry to students must overflow from our intimacy with the Father.
I highly recommend this book. I am looking forward to having Brock speak to our entire youth leadership team, and perhaps even our entire church leadership team. I believe he has a word for the church in our generation.
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