A little over a fortnight ago the Lord laid it on the heart of my wife and I to get back into youth ministry.
Trust me… this was a total God thing, as I don’t have the desire, the patience and definitely not the time to take on a responsibility such as this out of my own accord.
We attempted to start a youth group a few years ago when we welcomed a half dozen unsaved teens into our home on Friday nights to watch movies, listen to music and eat pizza (which we all paid for out of our Tithe money, because it was… “minstry” ya know?) and awkwardly bring up God every now and again.
We called this thing ‘Black Friday’ which we envisioned as a youth movement for Gisborne City as a counter reaction to what we saw happening at Primal Youth Church where Helen and I were both youth pastors until we left, due to not seeing eye to eye with the direction of it’s activities and some of it’s members.
Needless to say, this didn’t last long and fell over very quickly with the kids disbanding and choosing to follow the wider path, with little or no revelation of why God needs to be revered, feared, worshipped or glorified.
The kids went about their lives going to parties, getting into drugs, alcohol and girls, all the same stuff that I was doing when I was their age.
Looking back at those days now, it’s evident to see that God didn’t honor what we were doing because we tried to create it, take it and lead it on our own strength, and we also dishonored some friends of ours by leaving Primal they way we did when they asked us not to go.
You live, you learn…
So, a couple of weeks ago we got to talking with some friends involved with youth ministry work in Gisborne, and seeing as Primal Youth Church has recently disbanded in Gisborne, a few dozen kids have basically become ‘orphans’ and have been meeting on Thursday nights in parks and such to continue to fellowship.
We wanted to offer them a place to come and to get real with God, seek His face and His direction and wait on His instruction and really be obedient to how He wants to do things, as opposed to having set structures, expectations and other general ‘spiritual barriers’.
We met with the former youth pastors and offered for them to partner with us to host a Thursday night service in our church, keeping it simple with absolutely no agendas aside from wanting and welcoming God to show up and minister to us.
We have been struggling a lot with our own church lately, Helen and I and feeling that God really hasn’t been evidently showing up on Sundays for a long time now (as is the case with most stagnant and burnt-out-by-religion churches in our day and age) however we love a lot of people in our tiny congregation and have built some very strong friendships with these people, particularly our elders Ray and Grant and their wives.
We felt that any kind of youth ministry work that we take on should have a strong backing of a church or at least eldership accountability, as I see the main reason for Primal not working out and eventually falling over is because so much emphasis was placed on the fact that it was “not church” and the leadership had no ‘wise counsel’ or scriptural accountability structure to fall back on.
The bible calls us to be the church, Ekklesia, the called out ones. (See Matthew 16:18)
Not a geographic location or a building with four walls, but rather a corporate body of believers in the truth and saving grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ, living their lives to glorify Him and working out salvation with fear and trembling. - Philippians 2:12
Having said that and having invited everyone to begin the first meeting this Thursday night at our current church, our last visit to a Sunday service reaffirmed that both ‘Sunday Morning’ and ‘The old local’ have both “had their whack”.
God is doing things differently now and if we really want to see Him move and be a part of something real, something that can impact and reach out to the unsaved in our community and the world, we need to get out of those dusty church pews and on our face, otherwise we will miss what God and The Holy Spirit are doing entirely within our generation.
These are the days for which we were born, and we are here on this earth with God given purpose and responsibility and it is heart breaking to see so many people hurt, let down and driven away from the real Jesus Christ due to years of organised religion which has said “We’ll take it from here God, we’ve got it down” while all of the annointing, fresh vision and Heavenly manifestation happens in cafes, bedrooms, hardcore shows and city streets.
We got in touch with everyone last night with a last minute ‘Change of Plans’.
Tonight, 15 of us met in our garage where we read scripture, worshipped, prayed, prophesied, ministered and wept… all under the anointing and almighty power of the loving Father who simply showed up to hang out with his kids, because He was expected, He was welcome and He was the reason why we were there.
Praise be to Him!
These are exciting times.
