UpstateNYI

The mental torture of not knowing what to do with the youth group, not having a plan, was driving me crazy.  Oh yeah, we had a great teen retreat last March.   We had a great turnout, it was a blast and the kids responded well to the talks.  The 30 Hour Famine was a success.  Our whitewater rafting trip down the Lehigh River in Pennsylvania was amazing.  I love those class three rapids and really love it when the raft does a nose dive into one of those haystacks.  Our trip to Darien Lake was a success.  I rode 7 roller coasters in a row and I was feeling rather off, if you know what I mean.  Joe is extremely cool and does a great job of leading youth group.  Yet, I knew I didn't really have a plan.  We weren't really going anywhere as a youth group.  I bet you'll never guess what I did.  I prayed.  I mean I spent a lot of time in, large blocks of time, in prayer and Bible study, asking for God's guidance.  Well, God answers prayer.  When we take the time to listen He whispers back.

 I'm excited about some of the resources I discovered and want to share them with you.  I discovered the Dare 2 Share (dare2share,com) web site and bought this book, Ministry Mutiny by Greg Stier.  It's a fable about a youth pastor who was resigning from his position because he felt like a failure.  He regularly had 100 kids in his youth group.  Everyone else thought he was a success.  Teens were coming to Christ.  But he saw the lack of change in their lives.  They weren't being transformed.  He knew he was failing.  But then he meets his mentor - and then comes the rest of the story.  One thing I got from this book was a plan for how to put the five purposes of the church into practice in our youth ministries. I also bought their evangelism training on DVD - "The Gospel Journey".  I've been previewing it and I'm impressed with the way Greg Stier shows us just how to relate the gospel message to atheists and agnostics and wiccans and people of other belief systems.  It's done like a reality show.  We are starting it October 18th.  They also have a "Deep and Wide" ministry to help us teach our young people 30 core truths that they need to know before they graduate from high school.  

Josh Webb found Battle Cry for My Generation by Ron Luce in Greg's room.  He stole it.  But Greg doesn't care.  Josh, who never reads a book unless he is forced to, read this book from cover to cover and was transformed by it.  He gave it to me and I read it and am sharing it with our teens.  It wakes them up to the fact that we are in a spiritual war and we must act like soldiers in this war, not club members of a church.  You can go to battlecry.com or acquirethefire.com.