A New Direction(The Bridge Youth Lesson)

I want to start off with a question tonight.

1. In the next five to ten years, what do you most look forward to in your life?
   1. Ideally someone answers: move out
2. (alternative question) Why do teenagers butt heads so much with their parents?
   • The answer is what psychologists refer to as attachment theory.
     1. The theory is that as a baby, you immediately upon arriving begin looking for safety, security, comfort in something or mostly somebody. Ideally this is accomplished by one of your parents or both of your parents, but oftentimes especially in today’s world, the baby does not grow that attached to parents. Instead they grow attached to whomever is the closest to them. So for some of you, it is grandparents, for some it’s an aunt or uncle, or adoptive parents, list goes on. Point being, from your earliest moments of being alive you are attached to someone, most likely your parent or guardian and they have become your sense of safety and comfort for so long.
     2. What then happens as you get older is you become more functional. You go from being completely dependent on your parents to learning how to walk for yourself, to learning how to get your own food when you’re hungry and the list goes on and on. At this point in your life as a teenager or preteen, you are going through a phase called “detachment.” You now view yourself as dependent or not needing your parents as much as you did when you were younger. You are now becoming your own person, you have your own thoughts and opinions on how the world should work. You likely are starting to believe that you know what is best for yourself.  You are growing to be independent. 

Youth Ministry’s Goal

Now to my next question:

1. What is the point of Youth ministry?

Youth ministry is not something we find in the Bible. There is never an example of what a youth pastor specifically looks like in the Bible because that’s not how the world worked. Over the years though, churches have organized themselves in such a way to meet specific groups of people in specific places in their life.

Sometimes you’ll see this by a group of guys getting together doing a Men’s bible study or a ladies Bible study. We see this with childrens’ ministry where leaders in the church specifically gear themselves to reach children on their level.

As some of you know I have officially become your youth pastor. And with that change there will come many others. But tonight I want to simply lay out for you guys my heart behind why I stepped up to be your youth pastor and my family’s heart behind this transition.

Along with sharing our hearts, I want to paint a picture, cast a vision so that between me and you, we are on the same page about what we plan on doing in this room on Wednesday nights and moving forward.

To be clear, I am communicating this clearly to you because I want you guys to be in on this conversation.

I am called to lead you guys, I’ve been given authority to lead you and care for you; but I believe the best way to do that is for me and you to have clear communication. So tonight that’s what this is all about.

We will split tonight up into 3 sections.

Those 3 sections being: The Vision:What we Can see, The Mission: How we will get there and the Enemy: What we have to fight against.

Vision For Youth Ministry

I started tonight off by asking the question: “what is the goal of youth ministry?”

I ask that because if you guys went around to the different youth groups in our area, they would not all look the same. Some focus more on just teaching lessons about how to be good people. They want to make sure you are not sleeping with your girlfriend or cussing at school.

Some youth groups really focus on making youth groups this super fun event that you don’t want to miss every week because this is the place to be. So they really focus on having a ton of fun games, the lesson might be five minutes and there is really no depth, it’s just a christian hang out sesh.

I have no interest in either of those two options.

My goal is not to make sure you don’t cuss at school, and I am not gonna waste my time trying to make you think the youth group is more fun than whatever else you kids do for fun during the week. I want to move us towards something greater.

Let’s turn to: Matthew 4:18-21

Jesus uses this interesting phrase “follow me” when he calls his first disciples.

I have two questions. The first is:

1. What is a disciple?
2. What does it mean for you to be a disciple and to follow Jesus?

In a short sentence, the vision for our youth group is to raise young disciples of Jesus whose lives are not just changed in the seasonal but in the eternal.

 Meaning, my goal is not to make you a christian for as long as you are in highschool and middle school.

My goal is to help you follow Jesus for the long haul. I want to equip you with the tools to follow Jesus when you are no longer here, for when you’re at college and you have to find a whole new friend group or when you get that job and you are forced to work alongside people who do not have the same values as you.

My goal is to see you guys following Jesus five, ten, twenty years from now.

Now my next question: What do you believe is your generation’s greatest struggle with following Jesus? 

Enemy Statement

This is where we get into our enemy statement. 

The enemy we are fighting in this youth group is of our own flesh, and the lies of the devil and the world. The main lie being: “You should live life based on your own desires.”

When we read Genesis 3, which is the story of Adam and Eve, we see Adam and Eve fall into sin not because they just really loved good  fruit. It’s not because they had no free will. It is because they believed the lie that they knew what was best based on what they wanted.

Our greatest enemy in this youth group will oftentimes be ourselves. If our goal is to follow Jesus, to be his disciple, the number one thing you will fight against is you wanting to live life based on how you want to live life. So that’s your enemy. 

Every good team has a rival. Someone they are trying to beat. We are our own worst enemy when it comes to following Jesus so that is what we will fight against.

Mission Statement

Lastly, our mission in this youth group summed up in two words:

Discipleship

Evangelism.

Now those are big words, so we will break it down so it makes sense. 

Our mission is how we will accomplish our vision and how we will defeat our enemy.

So this is how we will  do it.

The only way to truly find real life change is by the life changing power of the good news of Jesus and committing to lifelong discipleship to him.

So the Youth group, when we meet on wednesday nights our goal is to become more like Jesus and we will do that by coming in here every wednesday night and learning together. I teach in a way where I want to hear you guys ask questions and give answers. The Bible calls that “wrestling together.” So we will come in here and wrestle together over the text.

There are no wrong answers or questions as long as they are sincere.

Along with that, you guys are not the future church. You are the church now so we are going to train you up to lead and to serve. We want this to be your youth group. When kids at your school see you, we want them to think “oh that’s Kaylee’s youth group, that’s Archers youth group.” It is not mine.  

You guys have incredible gifts and talents and ways in which God has been calling you to serve; I want to give you those opportunities to serve, to showcase what God is doing in your life. If God gives you a spark for something, I want to help you nurture that flame to keep it going.

 So there will be moments where you guys are leading, there will be opputnunites for you guys to serve. Sometimes that’ll look like you coming to me and saying “hey Austin I think God is calling me to do this or that.”

Sometimes its gonna look like me and the other leaders noticing something stirring up inside of you and us approaching you about it.

With saying that, I do not want to just give you oppurtunities, I want to train you up for them.

You do not just get up here and teach a lesson. I started writing this a month ago, was thinking about it and getting ideas together on how it would all flow, two-three months ago. If you believe God is calling you to be a preacher or teacher, I want to give you the chance to exercise that but also pull you alongside me and show you how to write a lesson. How to study your Bible in prep for that. It’ll probably look like me and you sitting down and us writing your lesson together so that when the chance comes for you to teach it, you knock it out of the park.

Same if you feel God calling you to lead worship. I’m not going throw you up here with a microphone. We’ll sit down and talk about what worship is, how do you lead worship. We will probably bring Seth in and let him pour into you some.

Those are just a couple of examples. Point being, with this being your youth group, I expect you guys to take responsibility for it. I’m leading us in a direction, and I’m taking it serious. But you decide to come week in and week out, its up to you on how plugged in you want to be. 

You do not become a christian over night. That word christian just means Christ follower. It’s a long term word. Meaning though Jesus saves you, and that is all Him, the question you guys have to answer is will you follow Him?

And not just today, or right now in this room. Will you follow Him everyday?

To close up, I started off tonight, discussing attachment theory. You guys are at a place  in your life where you are becoming you’re own. The world would have you believe that you need to chase after every desire, every inclination, every feeling you have. You need to just be who you are, and don’t apologize to anybody about it.

I’m telling you, the way of Jesus does not allow that mindset.

Jesus says:

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

I want you to replace that word money with yourself. You cannot serve both God and yourself.

Who will you choose?

Let’s close