“Have You Ever Thought About Darwin?”
Thirty years later, my former youth group leader still cares for me, making time to catch up with me and pray for me.
Thirty years later, my former youth group leader still cares for me, making time to catch up with me and pray for me.
Our church members had received faithful Bible teaching for years, believed the gospel and wanted their friends to come to Christ. But we felt fearful and inadequate when it came to evangelism. Where do you start? In this article I’d like to share what we did as a church to address this.
Okay, so here’s my hot take: I reckon I could accurately guess when your church has been without a youth pastor.
Contextualisation needs to consider not merely questions of faithfulness to gospel truth and persuasiveness. We also need to assess which patterns of life, modes of communication and styles of rhetoric are fitting for the gospel of the crucified Christ.
I happen to know a few ‘unicorns’ who don’t view youth ministry as a stepping stone to ‘real’ ministry. But they’re certainly a rare breed. The fact that this seventeen-year-old pastor’s kid made this observation is a sad but telling sign.