Youth Rally...
Case Study
Steve Argue
It’s coming and it’s all the talk of the community. The “Jesus Take Me- Take America” event is coming to your town and your youth ministry team is deciding whether or not to go. The six of you are meeting at Jason’s house. Jason is the youth pastor, brought on at the beginning of the calendar year. Its your church’s first ‘professional youth pastor’ and the team has been encouraged by Jason’s enthusiasm and the church leadership’s commitment to the students the team has loved for many, many years.
Jason has proposed that the youth ministry get behind this event. He’s explained that many of the larger churches in the area are on board and this would be a great way to let our students experience something that’s bigger than their youth group. “It might encourage them to see other students who care about their faith,” says Jason. Further, Jason said he did a similar event at his last youth ministry and said he saw half his group commit their lives to Jesus.
Three of the team members were excited about it. They saw the potential of taking the group, and the whole event seemed pretty cool for teenagers. If this event can speak to teenagers through music and a youth message, this certainly would be a great thing.
Jeff and Linda who were still in college and were helping out as small group leaders, seemed a bit bothered by the whole event idea. Jason noticed their reaction and asked what was up. “Well,” said Jeff, “I’m not sure if this is a really good move.” “Yah,” said Linda, “I’m not sure I want to communicate to the girls in my small group that following Jesus is about some big, cool, rally.”
“What do you mean?” the others said, ”Don’t you want the opportunity for students to commit their lives to Jesus?”
“They also teach you how to get prayer back in your local school and give students some great teaching in apologetics, you know, like why the Bible has no errors and is the our manual for life, how to turn conversations toward spiritual things, how to share the gospel, and how to know for certain you’re going to heaven,” Jason said; “The important stuff.”
“That’s not what I’ve been teaching my guys,” Jeff said. “Me neither,” said Linda.
“What do you mean?” asked the rest of the group members.
“Well, we’ve been talking. We’re not sure apologetics is even necessary because faith seems so much bigger than a belief in some intellectual argument. It’s all about who’s right and wrong, too, and seems so arrogant to us. Further, we’re not buying the whole inerrancy argument. It seems like it was sort of made up, and we don’t think that’s why the Bible has authority. We think the Bible has authority because God chooses to speak through the Bible. As for turning conversations to spiritual ones, it feels manipulative. And we think the gospel is more complicated. Seems messier than that. Most of all, we don’t like the idea of some outsider coming into our community and rallying all these churches when they’re not even part of our community. Feels like a commercial.”
Jason started to get nervous about this conversation. He wondered if he rushed to quickly to bring these two on as leaders. He was reminded that in Paul’s letter to Timothy, leaders should not be too young or too immature. He worried about their outlook on the gospel and on the Bible. After all, if the Bible isn’t inerrant, everything’s up for grabs. And if students didn’t get saved as teenagers, statistics proved that more students come to faith in this opportune time of life as compared to any other time.
He was already worried about Jeff. One of the parents called Jason a few weeks ago, complaining that their son came home talking about their small group. Their son thought it was cool that Jeff said that there is truth in all faiths, not just Christianity.
Jason determined that he was going to have a one-on-one talk with Jeff, and probably with Linda too. As for now, decisions had to be made, and Jason really felt this event was really needed.
“We’ll, let’s pray and vote,” Jason said. They all prayed with passion for their teenagers. Then they voted…
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