Youth Ministry Quotes

GenerationS are Not Replacements. GenerationS are Reinforcements.

Youth are leaders TODAY, not just tomorrow!

Youth are leaders TODAY, not just tomorrow!

If you BABYSIT the youths, you will get BABIES. If you LEAD the youths, you will have LEADERS!

A youth church is built by youths, for youths, to reach youths!

Don’t just think local or global, think generational. Think GenerationS!

Traditionally: Believe → Become → Belong This Generation: Belong → Believe → Become

We have created youth ministry that confuses extroversion with faithfulness. We have effectively communicated to young people that sincerely following Jesus is synonymous with being 'fired up' for Jesus, with being excited for Jesus, as if discipleship were synonymous with fostering an exuberant, perky, cheerful, hurray-for-Jesus disposition like what we might find in the glee club or at a pep rally.

Don’t just invite youths to the party, give them a seat at the table.

Empower the youths, Don’t Entertain them!

Going beyond “Every nation in my generation” to “Every Generation in my nation

Strong GenerationS Churches do not fight tomorrow’s war with yesterday’s strategies.

If you don’t captivate youths now for Christ, something else will come in to carry them captive!

Don’t just invite youths to the party, give them a seat at the table.

Don’t use people to build the church. Use the church to build people.

Don’t use people to build the church. Use the church to build people.

Do the Important, Not the Impressive.

From your generation onwards, it will be different.

Fathers don’t just reproduce sons. Fathers reproduce fathers.

The young generation is not here to push you OUT but to push you UP!

GenerationS is not just reaching My Generation or even the Next Generation. But it is reaching many GenerationS.

GenerationS is having layers and layers of leaders at the same time.

Be a Kingmaker, Not Just a King.

Instead of laying a red carpet for yourself to walk on, lay a bridge and let the young people walk over to you.

There are Miracles in the Mundane, Beauty in the Banal and Riches in the Routine!

Our next generation leaders should walk in our footsteps, not in our shadow.

Youths need to be invited, included, involved, before they can be influenced and impacted.

Moving from “I belong to HOGC” to “HOGC belongs to me

HOGC is the place where friends become family and family become friends.

Church is not ‘Where’ but ‘Who’. Church is not about the Place but the People. Church is our HOME. Church is about the People & Relationships.

Empowered Youths become Producers. Entertained Youths become Consumers.

Once youths are awakened by Christ, they will be ‘woke’ to the cause of Christ.

Home is not ‘WHERE’ but ‘WHO’.

Though no one can backtrack and create a brand new start, Everyone is capable of taking their life in a brand new direction.

Mentoring is the cultivation of young adults, the tender caring for and nurturing of them so that they will grow, flourish, and be fruitful.

If your ministry can't work without you, then it is no longer Christ-centered. Minister toward Jesus, not yourself.

Serving my generation with excellence will in turn mean my generation can lead with excellence.

God knew He had to create you in a way that would suit your story.

The students in your youth ministry don’t need your clever ideas and great programming skills. They need a living model—a man or woman of God who is passionate about his or her faith.

Ministry, then, is not about "using" relationships to get individuals to accept a "third thing," whether that be conservative politics, moral behaviors or even the gospel message. Rather, ministry is about connection, one to another, about sharing in suffering and joy, about persons meeting persons with no pretense or secret motives. It is about shared life, confessing Christ not outside the relationship but within it. This, I learned, was living the gospel. I

When you try to be someone else, you’re not only neglecting your true self; you’re also sacrificing the potential God has planted within you. The potential to rise to your calling, reach others through your gifts, and make a difference.

that simply teaching doctrine or preaching on a matter does not equate to actual ministry. Further engagement is required.

Serving my generation with excellence will mean in turn, my generation can lead with excellence.

Yes, it's important to inspire the next generation but let's not forget to inspire the now generation too.

People often joke about how they’re unable to make conversation until they’ve had their morning cup of coffee. What if we treated our daily quiet time with the same importance? What if we decided not to speak to anyone until we spend time with our Creator and allow Him to fill us with His Spirit first thing in the morning?

The gangs filled a void in society, and the void was the absence of family life. The gang became a family. For some of those guys in the gang that was the only family they knew, because when their mothers had them they were too busy having children for other men. Some of them never knew their daddies. Their daddies never look back after they got their mothers pregnant, and those guys just grew up and they couldn’t relate to nobody. When they had their problems, who could they have talked to? Nobody would listen, so they gravitated together and form a gang. George Mackey, the former representative for the historic Fox Hill community in The Bahamas.

Part of our skittishness about Christian perfection is linguistic confusion. The English word "perfect" has absorbed the Greek notion of "teleos". When the Greeks looked at a building's blueprint, they pictured the building whole and complete. They envisioned the blueprint finished down to the bathroom tile and announced, "Ah, this is perfect." The problem is that "teleos" suggests that perfection is something we can build or achieve. The Hebrews looked at the same blueprint more practically. They envisioned the process of building from hard hats to hammers, from scaffolding to skylights. "Ah," the Hebrews said. "This is perfect." The Hebrews and the early Christians understood perfection as a process, not a product. Our identity as Christians depends upon life lived in relationship with God, not upon the quality of our achievements.

This conference on religious education seems to your humble servant the last word in absurdity. We are told by a delightful 'expert' that we ought not really teach our children about God lest we rob them of the opportunity of making their own discovery of God, and lest we corrupt their young minds by our own superstitions. If we continue along these lines the day will come when some expert will advise us not to teach our children the English language, since we rob them thereby of the possibility of choosing the German, French or Japanese languages as possible alternatives. Don't these good people realize that they are reducing the principle of freedom to an absurdity?

All truth is from God and belongs to him. And since we belong to God, all truth is ours.

C. S. Lewis said it this way: “In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. . . . I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.”12

We encouraged volunteers to think of themselves not as people who run errands to keep a program going but as spiritual directors in the lives of students. Chris Folmsbee

When the one is sacrificed, the many are also deprived!

Apathy sets in when our passion for the future is miscarried.

Ministry is about joining God where God can be found.

Friendship means we are obligated to one another, but obligated in a way that doesn't destroy our freedom.

If God’s grace and blessing only rest on Christians, we have a problem because there is no statistical difference between Christians and non-Christians in terms of fertility.

Teenagers don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Before you teach them about the Faith, you must earn the right to be heard.

Let’s strive to become as protective over our time with God as we are with our daily cup of brew. Let’s become addicted to our “spiritual caffeine fix.

We don’t have to wait for the sunshine of spring to splash color into our days when our relationship with Jesus illuminates brightness to every day.

One day a young fugitive, trying to hide himself from the enemy, entered a small village. The people were kind to him and offered him a place to stay. But when the soldiers who sought the fugitive asked where he was hiding, everyone became very fearful. The soldiers threatened to burn the village and kill every man in it unless the young man were handed over to them before dawn. The people went to the minister and asked him what to do. The minister, torn between handing over the boy to the enemy or having his people killed, withdrew to his room and read his Bible, hoping to find an answer before dawn. After many hours, in the early morning his eyes fell on these words: “It is better that one man dies than that the whole people be lost.” Then the minister closed the Bible, called the soldiers and told them where the boy was hidden. And after the soldiers led the fugitive away to be killed, there was a feast in the village because the minister had saved the lives of the people. But the minister did not celebrate. Overcome with a deep sadness, he remained in his room. That night an angel came to him, and asked, “What have you done?” He said: “I handed over the fugitive to the enemy.” Then the angel said: “But don’t you know that you have handed over the Messiah?” “How could I know?” the minister replied anxiously. Then the angel said: “If, instead of reading your Bible, you had visited this young man just once and looked into his eyes, you would have known.” While versions of this story are very old, it seems the most modern of tales. Like that minister, who might have recognized the Messiah if he had raised his eyes from his Bible to look into the youth’s eyes, we are challenged to look into the eyes of the young men and women of today, who are running away from our cruel ways. Perhaps that will be enough to prevent us from handing them over to the enemy and enable us to lead them out of their hidden places into the middle of their people where they can redeem us from our fears.

Wesley cast a vision of the world that was unlike anything before or since. It was a world where God actually cared about everyone, not just the chosen few who believed the right thing.

Hope trusts in the promises of God. Hope seeks the action of God that brings forth a new reality. Optimism stands in the current reality, wishing to make the best of each individual experience. But hope stands knee deep in the history of this reality by yearning for the action of God to bring forth a new reality in which everything in this reality is reconciled and redeemed.

we have faith to sit in a chair, and continue to believe in its foundation that holds us up. If we have faith in God, the foundation will hold us both up, so its our decision to take the seat and trust him.

Jesus didn’t pay such a huge sacrifice so I could say the prayer of salvation, attend church, and get into heaven. He paid this sacrifice so I could receive the abundant life that comes through knowing Him personally.

Ministry is not about helping these kids be better Christians; it is about helping them be what God created them to be-human. And it is the degradation of their humanity, brought about by broken and abusive families, violent neighborhoods, failing schools and poverty, that caused them to lash out so forcefully. Ministry is about suffering with them in their dehumanization, celebrating their human endeavors and in all things pointing to the true human, Jesus Christ our Lord. Having

Grace is costly because it calls us through our person to the person of Jesus Christ. And when we follow the person of Jesus Christ, when we follow his call through our person, we're sent to act for the concrete person of our neighbor in the world.

This world and everything in it will pass away in the blink of an eye. Yet as long as we’re still here, and as long as we’re living for God, we have a reason for being alive. And that’s to fulfill our mission as believers—to love God and love others.

The resurrection is the promise that death will not prevail, that nothingness does not have the last word. God promises to overcome it with life... We can trust that God will overcome death because Jesus is the resurrection, because on the third day Jesus rose again, as the first of many.

There is a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as satisfying as statistics; but in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells. —FLANNERY O’CONNOR9

Universal Blessing: You do not do elements that focus on negative feelings of shame or embarrassment. • General Revelation: You do not do elements that require some prior knowledge of God or the Bible (Bible drills, etc.). • Imago Dei: You do not do elements that require students to utilize the ungodly attributes within themselves (Yo’ mamma joke contest).

If you give the average teenager a choice to go to the Amazon to build a mud hut for the poor while fighting off hungry pythons or going to their school cafeteria and dropping the “J Bomb” on a group of their friends, most teenagers would pick the pythons. Why? Because the average teenager would rather risk getting choked by a giant snake than getting choked out of their social circle!

Over the years I've found it much more helpful to follow the advice of Sister Liebert and seek to treat each young person as a teacher from God, someone God has placed in my life in order to help me grow in faith. When I encounter a young person, I find it much more helpful to think that she (or he) may be the only Jesus I'll ever know. Perhaps by seeking to encounter the presence of Christ in young people, we'll find ourselves better able to see them, hear them, feel compassion for them, and respond in kindness.

The ministry was the profession that suffered most—and still suffers, though there has been great improvement—on account of not only ignorant but in many cases immoral men who claimed that they were “called to preach.” In the earlier days of freedom almost every coloured man who learned to read would receive “a call to preach” within a few days after he began reading. At my home in West Virginia the process of being called to the ministry was a very interesting one. Usually the “call” came when the individual was sitting in church. Without warning the one called would fall upon the floor as if struck by a bullet, and would lie there for hours, speechless and motionless. Then the news would spread all through the neighbourhood that this individual had received a “call.” If he were inclined to resist the summons, he would fall or be made to fall a second or third time. In the end he always yielded to the call. While I wanted an education badly, I confess that in my youth I had a fear that when I had learned to read and write well I would receive one of these “calls”; but, for some reason, my call never came.

We decided to attend to our community instead of asking our community to attend the church.” His staff started showing up at local community events such as sports contests and town hall meetings. They entered a float in the local Christmas parade. They rented a football field and inaugurated a Free Movie Night on summer Fridays, complete with popcorn machines and a giant screen. They opened a burger joint, which soon became a hangout for local youth; it gives free meals to those who can’t afford to pay. When they found out how difficult it was for immigrants to get a driver’s license, they formed a drivers school and set their fees at half the going rate. My own church in Colorado started a ministry called Hands of the Carpenter, recruiting volunteers to do painting, carpentry, and house repairs for widows and single mothers. Soon they learned of another need and opened Hands Automotive to offer free oil changes, inspections, and car washes to the same constituency. They fund the work by charging normal rates to those who can afford it. I heard from a church in Minneapolis that monitors parking meters. Volunteers patrol the streets, add money to the meters with expired time, and put cards on the windshields that read, “Your meter looked hungry so we fed it. If we can help you in any other way, please give us a call.” In Cincinnati, college students sign up every Christmas to wrap presents at a local mall — ​no charge. “People just could not understand why I would want to wrap their presents,” one wrote me. “I tell them, ‘We just want to show God’s love in a practical way.’ ” In one of the boldest ventures in creative grace, a pastor started a community called Miracle Village in which half the residents are registered sex offenders. Florida’s state laws require sex offenders to live more than a thousand feet from a school, day care center, park, or playground, and some municipalities have lengthened the distance to half a mile and added swimming pools, bus stops, and libraries to the list. As a result, sex offenders, one of the most despised categories of criminals, are pushed out of cities and have few places to live. A pastor named Dick Witherow opened Miracle Village as part of his Matthew 25 Ministries. Staff members closely supervise the residents, many of them on parole, and conduct services in the church at the heart of Miracle Village. The ministry also provides anger-management and Bible study classes.

The good part about these areas that we were taking over, was that all of them had parks where a lot of guys were just hanging out playing basketball. So I used those parks to make a good first impression with my gun, then I followed up with a speech presentation. At the end of the day, we were able to win over the entire park, and eventually their community….. It was as if these fellas from different areas were just waiting for this, because no one else was going around to them. No one else was telling them that they were needed, only us. Scrooge, former leader of the Rebellion Raiders street gang that once boasted of having some ten thousand members

I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable robustness entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation, sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the whalemen, among whom he was a very great favorite. He had been a sailor and a harpooneer in his youth, but for many years past had dedicated his life to the ministry. At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age; that sort of old age which seems merging into a second flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom— the spring verdure peeping forth even beneath February's snow.

The cane is just not going to cut it. I shared with some of my colleagues that these brothers live in neighborhoods where they are getting whapped with a piece of stick all night, stabbed with knives, and pegged with screwdrivers that have been sharpened down, and they are leaking blood. When you come to a fella without even interviewing him, without sitting him down to find out why you did what you did, your only interest is caning him, because you are burned out and frustrated yourself. You say to him, ‘Bend over, you are getting six.’ And the boy grits his teeth, skin up his face, takes those six cuts, and he is gone. But have you really been effective? Caning him is no big deal, because he’s probably ducking bullets at night. He has a lot more things on his mind than that. On the other hand, we can further send our delinquent students into damnation by telling them they are no body and all we want to do is punish, punish, punish. Here at R.M. Bailey, we have been trying a lot of different things. But at the end of the day, nothing that we do is better than the voice itself. Nothing is better than talking to the child, listening, developing trust, developing a friendship. Feel free to come to me anytime if something is bothering you, because I was your age once before. Charles chuck Mackey, former vice principal and coach of the R. M. Bailey Pacers school.

MY PROCESS I got bullied quite a bit as a kid, so I learned how to take a punch and how to put up a good fight. God used that. I am not afraid of spiritual “violence” or of facing spiritual fights. My Dad was drafted during Vietnam and I grew up an Army brat, moving around frequently. God used that. I am very spiritually mobile, adaptable, and flexible. My parents used to hand me a Bible and make me go look up what I did wrong. God used that, as well. I knew the Word before I knew the Lord, so studying Scripture is not intimidating to me. I was admitted into a learning enrichment program in junior high. They taught me critical thinking skills, logic, and Greek Mythology. God used that, too. In seventh grade I was in school band and choir. God used that. At 14, before I even got saved, a youth pastor at my parents’ church taught me to play guitar. God used that. My best buddies in school were a druggie, a Jewish kid, and an Irish soccer player. God used that. I broke my back my senior year and had to take theatre instead of wrestling. God used that. I used to sleep on the couch outside of the Dean’s office between classes. God used that. My parents sent me to a Christian college for a semester in hopes of getting me saved. God used that. I majored in art, advertising, astronomy, pre-med, and finally English. God used all of that. I made a woman I loved get an abortion. God used (and redeemed) that. I got my teaching certification. I got plugged into a group of sincere Christian young adults. I took courses for ministry credentials. I worked as an autism therapist. I taught emotionally disabled kids. And God used each of those things. I married a pastor’s daughter. God really used that. Are you getting the picture? San Antonio led me to Houston, Houston led me to El Paso, El Paso led me to Fort Leonard Wood, Fort Leonard Wood led me back to San Antonio, which led me to Austin, then to Kentucky, then to Belton, then to Maryland, to Pennsylvania, to Dallas, to Alabama, which led me to Fort Worth. With thousands of smaller journeys in between. The reason that I am able to do the things that I do today is because of the process that God walked me through yesterday. Our lives are cumulative. No day stands alone. Each builds upon the foundation of the last—just like a stairway, each layer bringing us closer to Him. God uses each experience, each lesson, each relationship, even our traumas and tragedies as steps in the process of becoming the people He made us to be. They are steps in the process of achieving the destinies that He has encoded into the weave of each of our lives. We are journeymen, finding the way home. What is the value of the journey? If the journey makes us who we are, then the journey is priceless.

But won’t political involvement distract us from the main task of preaching the Gospel? At this point someone may object that while political involvement may have some benefits and may do some good, it can so easily distract us, turn unbelievers away from the church, and cause us to neglect the main task of pointing people toward personal trust in Christ. John MacArthur writes, “When the church takes a stance that emphasizes political activism and social moralizing, it always diverts energy and resources away from evangelization.”83 Yet the proper question is not, “Does political influence take resources away from evangelism?” but, “Is political influence something God has called us to do?” If God has called some of us to some political influence, then those resources would not be blessed if we diverted them to evangelism—or to the choir, or to teaching Sunday School to children, or to any other use. In this matter, as in everything else the church does, it would be healthy for Christians to realize that God may call individual Christians to different emphases in their lives. This is because God has placed in the church “varieties of gifts” (1 Cor. 12:4) and the church is an entity that has “many members” but is still “one body” (v. 12). Therefore God might call someone to devote almost all of his or her time to the choir, someone else to youth work, someone else to evangelism, someone else to preparing refreshments to welcome visitors, and someone else to work with lighting and sound systems. “But if Jim places all his attention on the sound system, won’t that distract the church from the main task of preaching the Gospel?” No, not at all. That is not what God has called Jim to emphasize (though he will certainly share the Gospel with others as he has opportunity). Jim’s exclusive focus on the church’s sound system means he is just being a faithful steward in the responsibility God has given him. In the same way, I think it is entirely possible that God called Billy Graham to emphasize evangelism and say nothing about politics and also called James Dobson to emphasize a radio ministry to families and to influencing the political world for good. Aren’t there enough Christians in the world for us to focus on more than one task? And does God not call us to thousands of different emphases, all in obedience to him? But the whole ministry of the church will include both emphases. And the teaching ministry from the pulpit should do nothing less than proclaim “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). It should teach, over the course of time, on all areas of life and all areas of Bible knowledge. That certainly must include, to some extent, what the Bible says about the purposes of civil government and how that teaching should apply to our situations today. This means that in a healthy church we will find that some people emphasize influencing the government and politics, others emphasize influencing the business world, others emphasize influencing the educational system, others entertainment and the media, others marriage and the family, and so forth. When that happens, it seems to me that we should encourage, not discourage, one another. We should adopt the attitude toward each other that Paul encouraged in the church at Rome: Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God…. So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother (Rom. 14:10–13). For several different reasons, then, I think the view that says the church should just “do evangelism, not politics” is incorrect.

Ministry is God’s work; we only participate in it. And as God’s work, it can neither be forced nor be prevented with absolute certainty. The wheat will grow right alongside the weeds. So the church’s obsession with human activity and the exertion of energy toward development and maturity turns out to be a scam.

We are watching as human beings are being encountered by God in unexpected ways, and we are waiting to discover how we might be able to join that drama by saying yes to God.

Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." Luke 18: 16-17 The kingdom of God belongs to these people-these children. Not 'they are the future of the kingdom of God' but that it belongs to them right now. In fact, Jesus goes further, by saying that no one will enter the kingdom of God unless they receive it like a child. God is the true heavenly Father, and we are all his children. Unless we are willing to receive his good gracious gift of salvation and eternal life, as a good Father giving gifts to his children, we cannot enter his kingdom.

Along with leading praise and worship, I was also the youth pastor at the church. Our youth ministry had been growing by

It isn't the numbers that matter. It's each and every teenager we are entrusted with to help them grow into disciples of the living Christ.

The longer he stayed home, the more he felt like a social misfit—and he soon was seeing no one. Eventually he got help toward recovery by visiting a youth club called an ibasho—a safe place where broken people start reintroducing themselves to society. What if we thought of the church as an ibasho? Without a doubt, we are a community of broken people. When Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, he described their former way of life as antisocial, harmful, and dangerous to themselves and others (1 Corinthians 6:9–10). But in Jesus they were being transformed. And Paul encouraged these rescued people to love one another, to be patient and kind, not to be jealous or proud or rude (13:4–7). The church is to be an ibasho where we can find God’s love. May the hurting world experience Christ’s compassion from all who follow Him. Poh Fang

It's a privilege to serve GOD, after all, serving GOD is joy and Happiness

Career. Desire. Dream. Poetry. Love. Youth itself. Dying became just another way of living.

to hire a “strong leader,” as she put it, with the hope that whoever it was would take charge of an inefficient staff. However, within months some were complaining of Jim’s bullying. Sandy, who directed the youth ministry, said, “I’ve never seen a worse bedside presence. He has no empathy, only opinions.” Dick, a longtime pastor of discipleship, cited Jim’s condescension in their meetings with one another, even though Jim was younger and had no ministry experience prior to this role. When Denise sat down to discuss these issues with Jim, he allowed little time before he launched into a

The cross reveals this Jesus: not a magical one but a suffering one, not a God who takes away pain but a God who joins us in it.

The world grows increasingly noisy,” President Boyd K. Packer observed. “Raucous music, with obscene lyrics blasted through amplifiers while lights flash psychedelic colors, characterizes the drug culture. Variations of these things are gaining wide acceptance and influence over our youth. . . . This trend to more noise, more excitement, more contention, less restraint, less dignity, less formality is not coincidental nor innocent nor harmless. The first order issued by a commander mounting a military invasion is the jamming of the channels of communication of those he intends to conquer. . . . No one of us can survive in the world of today, much less in what it soon will become, without personal inspiration.

But if you are looking for true fellowship, give yourself to the gospel at home and around the world. Serve together with others in women’s Bible studies, children’s ministries, youth ministries. Do short-term missions. Join mercy work to alleviate suffering in places like the vast area devastated by disasters like Hurricane Katrina. Take the good news to the poor. Join a band of brothers and sisters to pray for the world. That is how you will experience genuine Christian fellowship.

the larger the staff, the more important it becomes to make sure responsibility is owned by individuals and not by the group.

Just as “good fences make good neighbors,” clear delineations of responsibility can prevent the kind of turf battles that break down staff relationships.

We build loyalty not by giving out job descriptions and offices, but by giving ourselves.

What feels like a family to those on the inside can feel like a clique to those on the outside.

Mark DeVries observed that the church had become the place where teenagers “are most segregated from the world of adults.”2 Churches had unwittingly cultivated an environment where teenagers were being cut off from the very adult relationships that would sustain them through the turbulence of the adolescent years and by which they could learn about mature Christian faith. We were, in effect, nurturing in teenagers an appetite for a youth group from which they would soon graduate, while weaning them from involvement in the broader church life that would sustain their spiritual growth as adults.

Patterns of interaction are transmitted, more or less faithfully, from one generation to another. Thus the inheritance of mental health and of mental ill health through the medium of family microculture is certainly no less important, than is their inheritance through the medium of genes.6

Mission is not a trip or a youth activity, a silent cousin to evangelism, or an optional model of youth ministry. Mission is the business that congregations are in.23 Christ views young people as participants in God’s mission rather than as targets of ours.

Obama declined to hold public services in the White House commemorating the National Day of Prayer, which had been the practice of his predecessors. • In September 2011, his Department of Health and Human Services terminated funding to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for its extensive program to assist victims of human trafficking and modern-day slavery. The reason? Objections to Catholic teaching on abortion and contraception.7 • In 2013 Obama’s inaugural committee forced pastor Louie Giglio, whose Atlanta church was nationally known for its efforts to combat sex trafficking, to withdraw from delivering a prayer at the inaugural ceremony after an audio recording surfaced of a sermon Giglio delivered in the mid-1990s referencing biblical teaching on homosexuality. When it came to praying at Obama’s second inaugural, no pastor holding to an orthodox view of Scripture had need to apply. • His Justice Department canceled a 30,000 grant to a program for at-risk youth because it allowed voluntary, student-led prayer, and the oath recited by its young charges mentioned God.8 • He advocated passage of a version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act prohibiting private employers from declining to hire gays and lesbians that granted no exemption for religious ministries and charities. • The Defense Department canceled an appearance by Franklin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse at a National Day of Prayer observance because of Graham’s alleged anti-Muslim bigotry. • Obama’s campaign removed a reference to God from the Democratic Party platform and only moved to reinsert it after news outlets reported the exclusion and controversy erupted. In rushed proceedings at the party convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, the name of God was reinserted to boos from the delegates.

Pushing a volunteer into a position for which he or she is not spiritually, emotionally, or temperamentally equipped is like trying to build a tree house in a small tree. It’s bad for the tree house, yes, but it also crushes the tree—a tree that in time, with proper nurture and care, might have provided a sturdy and capable support.