Generations part 2

As we launch in a new direction with our mode of ministry to youth and start ministering with youth, some might (actually have) ask, "where is this coming from?" or "what prompted this change? Is there a problem?" Truth is, there is a problem. The one I mentioned in the last post about the rate we lose students from the church after they graduate high school.

Here's a little more background.

I spent about 13 years in full-time youth ministry in four states. I served in small, medium, and large churches. I saw God move incredibly among youth and watched youth do incredible things. Today, there are youth from our former groups who are pastors, missionaries, youth workers, worship leaders, sunday school teachers, children's workers, and various other levels of involvement in their respective churches. While I can easily point to the success stories and am proud of each one, that is not the whole picture. Unfortunately, I have to say that most of the young people that attended the youth groups we led are not actively living for God today; some are flat out living very tragic lifestyles. It would be normal to claim that is true for everyone and that our percentages are better than the average numbers we read about. That would be a cop out and just trying to ease the blow.

Did we fail? Yes and no. I have stories to illustrate both. The problem is deep and has as many facets as individuals being talked about. With some we did fail, with others, nothing we could have done would have changed the choices they have made.

Several years ago I was in a conversation with a leader from what was a nationally known, very large youth ministry. We were comparing insights and talking about some of the frustrations of youth ministry and seeing students walk away. This brought up the topic os defining success. Of course, that conversation came down to the fact that real success is defined by God not man and numbers do not tell the whole story. Every endeavor to reach and raise up people for God will have the gamut of stories to tell, leassons learned, mistakes made, and lives affected.

As I walked away from that conversation, there was a real uneasiness in me that I couldn't shake. I didn't want to take the cop out approach and "feel better" because even the largest youth ministries were experiencing the same issues we were.

We started to take some hard looks at how we were doing youth ministry and realized we were very top heavy. Meaning, it was mostly adults who were doing ministry and the youth were spectators. We immediately started making changes. Teams were formed from among the young people to get them more actively involved in actually doing ministry on an on-going basis and the adults were adjusted to more of a mentoring and guiding role. I even had a group of youth who met at my house regularly to help me brainstorm, plan, and even present the messages. This creative team took our services to a new level.

We saw some success as youth became much more involved in the overall life of the church as children's workers, tech crew, in the music department, taking part in outreach, and on and on. As youth pastor, I was limited in the full impact of these changes on the church as a whole, but it was a step in the right direction.

Since that time, I have been rethinking youth ministry as a whole and wondering what if we built a youth ministry that was focused on youth doing ministry and made it part of the churches DNA to have the generations working side by side. Much time has been spent in prayer, conversation, and meditating on this.

That is just a bit of the background for the changes we are making.

This post is long enough, so I will wait until the next one in this series to start putting some structure to this new endeavor.

Yesterday & Tomorrow

The yesterday is literal, the tomorrow is more figurative.

What an incredible day we had at Capital City Church yesterday! It's always a blast to have the children open our service! The rest of the praise time was great. My favorite worship leader of all was up there. She's got a fantastic voice, awesome heart, and she's beautiful too! :-)

We wrapped up our vision & direction series with a look into James chapter 2. Faith without action is dead. Action without faith is dead. I don't remember where I first heard this quote, but it is very good, "Faith without action leads to narcissism. Action without faith leads to despair." The two cannot be separated successfully any more than a man can be cut down the middle and continue on. Action, works, deeds, whatever word you use, are a result of our faith. They are born out of it. The fruit of faith if you will. Action does not earn us salvation or God's favor, He has given freely to us. However, action does prove that our faith exists.

I announced yesterday a couple of things in our future. The move to cross-generational ministry is one that I have been talking about in this blog already. We are going to take some aggressive steps to pay off our debt and to make major increases in missions and outreach monies and resources. Very soon we will be announcing the details for adding a second service. The time frame is not yet set, but when I say VERY soon, I mean it. It has been burning in me for a while and the time is about here for it.

We ended the service a bit differently, I had people write their names on an offering envelope and then, after some prayer, had them write on that envelope what their "action" offering was going to be. What was it they were committing to obey God in by putting feet to their faith. This included opportunities to serve in the church as well as serve people outside the church in the community. Then everyone came forward and laid those envelopes on the front of the stage. I can't wait to process through the responses.

After a little time of relaxing in the afternoon, we had our church picnic. Fantastic turnout! Great food, great conversations, and lots of fun. Nearly perfect weather, too. I was a bit nervous after announcing no rain and then have a light rain falling as I am greeting people in the lobby at the end of service. But, it cleared up and was beautiful by the time for the picnic. Nathan and I did go down to a couple of teams in cornhole. Our undefeated streak is over. We had a blast with some good clean competition.

Well, I'll post more later, but I have some training to do to reacquire our position atop the CapCity cornhole whatever. :-)

P.S. Breawnn took some great photos of the picnic. You can find them by clicking here.

Generations

Last night was the first night of the transition we are making in our youth ministry. We are moving from a rally/spectator model to involvement. We have no specific model we are following. This is an experiment. I am going to post about this new endeavor off and on as we work through this.

I had a great time last night sharing with our students the "why" behind the changes and casting some vision with them to get them ready for what is about to happen.

Too many churches and people push student ministry off to the side as more of a babysitting service to keep them out of the way while the adults do the "real" ministry. There is too much talk about the "church of tomorrow" in referencing youth in church. The church is losing too many upon graduation. Upwards of 90% of our high school graduates will walk away from church in the four year of college and not come back.

Young people are full of potential. Most would agree with that. The problem is, too many see that as future potential vs present potential. A healthy and vibrant church is one that merges the generations to serve together. The church that is going to touch their community in unprecedented ways is the one that has children, youth, and adults working side by side growing and learning from one another and allowing the strengths of each individual and generation to add value to the whole.

We are not going to keep youth on the sidelines watching. We are not going to have a nice little youth group that keeps students separated. We are going to engage youth and give them significant opportunities to use what God has given them and to see Him move in and through them. We are going to challenge them, resource them, train them, and send them. We are going to incorporate all the generations in the DNA and life and activities and outreach of Capital City Church. The adults need the youth and children. The youth need the adults and children. The children need the adults and youth.

Will this always be smooth and seamless? I hope not. If it is, then we have not accomplished anything worthwhile because we took the easy road and didn't really change anything. God is speaking to His people and His church. It is time we stepped up and finished the task He gave us. That is only going to happen together. We must come together in unity across generational, social, denominational, racial, economic, and any other lines we have allowed to divide.

In the next post, I'll give a little more background and start to reveal some of the practical things this will entail.

The Return

We had a wonderful vacation! But, it is good to be home. We have never taken a full two week vacation as a family like that. I am sure we will be doing it again.

That said, I am ready to jump right back in and charge ahead. That is one of the points of vacation after all; recharge and refresh for the next season.

It wasn't planned beforehand, but I ended up taking a break from blogging as well. Even my activity on Facebook and Twitter was greatly diminished. I'll be picking back up this week. I have several posts I want to write about some of the observations and experiences coming out of General Council and our time away.

For now, a couple quick thoughts:

We MISSED Capital City! It was even more evident as we were talking with people in the lobby and halls today. During the service this morning, I was very aware of how much of a privilege it is to pastor here.

While we were away, we had a couple of different approaches to filling in for me being gone on Sunday. The first Sunday, Lou Scalzo, youth pastor at Highway Tabernacle in Youngstown, filled in. Lou is my successor at Highway and he is a good communicator and storyteller. Many have shared some very positive feedback from his message. Lou was quite complimentary of the people of CapCity. He thoroughly enjoyed his time here. The second Sunday, we showed a video message from Craig Groeschel. Again, I have heard very positive feedback from the message and even the effectiveness of video. One of our board members and missions director, Don Rowles, wrapped up the service. Nathan did a great job covering things in my absence. God is putting together a fantastic team here.

This morning was incredible in so many ways! Elena led the songs; of course she is my favorite worship leader! She did awesome as always. The whole band sounded very good and they handled things well.

We had a full service with communion, a missionary guest, a couple of videos, and I was pumped up after not preaching for two Sundays! We went a little longer than normal today. :-)

Missionary Guy Deal and his family joined us today to share what God is doing in intercultural ministries here in Columbus. Very cool to see people from different cultures coming together to grow and serve in unity.

It was a very impactful service as God was speaking very specifically to some folks and we took a few moments in the middle and at the end to give them on opportunity to respond. The communion time today was significant in itself.

I won't rehash the message here, but I started sharing on our vision and direction covering the core value of courage. The next two weeks, we'll cover some other areas of the vision and direction that I believe God has set before us. A line was drawn in the sand. And when the challenge was given to cross that line several did boldly! There are some families and lives that will be impacted greatly because someone said "yes" to God today and stepped out in spite of fear. You can listen to the full sermon online tomorrow (hopefully, the podcast will be on the site then). I will also make sure the podcast from the Sunday Lou spoke as well as a link to the video from Craig gets posted.

As I said this morning Capital City, hang on it's about to get very exciting!

I could ramble on here all night, but I have done enough of that today. ;-)

Will post more later...