1/31/18 Terri about 30
How would John the Baptist do as a youth pastor?
He was known as someone who could “tell it like it is”. He was not a respecter of persons, didn’t
care about the latest fashions, he was colorful in speech, marched to the beat
of his own drum, was not self-promoting, didn’t back down, was not a food snob,
didn’t accept excuses and didn’t promote victimhood. His was a message of repentance in
preparation for the Savior.
I’m thinking he would be just what most teenagers need, but
no church would dare hire him.
I was a youth leader for years, and I was no John the
Baptist. In my desire to share the
Gospel as a young Christian, I turned to what worked for me as a teen – Young
Life, the youth outreach ministry which specializes in reaching out to young
people on their turf, building relationships and “earning the right to be heard”
in relational evangelism.
Following the example of the faithful adults who had reached
out to me in my high school years, I did the same when I moved to Chicago and
joined LaSalle Street Young Life in the Cabrini-Green housing projects. Trying to build a consistent youth group in
the inner city, though, was a problem.
The teens who lived in the projects around the basketball courts where I
hung out all went to different high schools, and the teens who went to the high
school where I hung out and coached wrestling all lived in different
neighborhoods.
So when I moved to the south side and wanted to establish a
new Young Life ministry there, I decided to experiment with a new
approach. We built a youth center where
teens from different neighborhoods and different high schools could all meet on
common ground, and where adults could have a place to invite them to as we
reached out to them in the neighborhoods and in their schools. I was inspired at the time by a new movie at
the time – “Field of Dreams”, and its famous slogan “If you build it, they will
come.”
It was a great experiment that lasted about 20 years, from
1990 to 2010. Why do I call it an
experiment? Because I’m not sure if it
was a success or failure. I think we did
a great job of “loving on” kids, and most everyone has good memories of their
time with us.
After 15 years, I was surprised to happen upon Terri, a
former “youth kid” from years ago, at a laundromat. As she says in the video, everything she
knows about Christianity she learned from us, and I believe she knows she is
loved and accepted by God.
But she hasn’t pursued a relationship with God in the years
since, and it makes me wonder if it is because we focused too much on the “good
news” of our Savior, without the “bad news” that we are lost without Him. Maybe what our young people need is a little
more of John the Baptist in order to appreciate the wondrous gift that Jesus
is.
What would happen if our youth leaders started preaching, ““You
brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in
keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have
Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise
up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every
tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the
fire.”
Most of the teens would run to a friendlier youth group, but
I believe some would rise to the standard.
And they would hear the rest of John’s message, which wasn’t all fire
and brimstone: “And with many other
words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.”
My conversation with Terri focused on something I failed to
emphasize years ago – how our hearts and behavior actually compare with God’s
holy standard. And Terri received it
well. It makes me think she would have also
received it well years ago, if only I had been bold enough to share it.
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