Author: youthguysteve

Do you feel God?

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Do you feel God is a question many students have asked this question in their lives. Students, adults, and everyone in between struggle with this issue of feeling God. It is a tough question because often is reveals how people are doing in their faith life. When we forget about who works faith in us we start to ask the question do we feel God.

Your emotions are what make us human. We cannot follow Jesus without at least thinking about our emotions. I get very frustraited with Lutherans who say emotion has no part in the life of a Christian. Chrsitians will always have emotional responses to the world around us. We will respond in worship with some emotion. Think about the last service you went to and tell me you didn’t have some response to the music, liturgy, readings or sermon. You can’t avoid emotion but you can put it in the proper context. Emotion is a gift of God but it isn’t what saves us.

So how do I feel God. I think it is the wrong question. What people are really saying is I don’t feel God do I have faith? So here is my answer. Remember your baptism. Remember in your baptism God declared you his child. In my life I have had moments of ups and downs. I have had moments of time when I struggled in my faith and wondered if it is really there. I remember a professor I had in college who reminded us all one day that when we have those moments we should remember our baptism because it is the one thing we couldn’t mess up, it was done to us. You see in baptism we don’t have to trust in our works or how much we feel Gods presence. We receive the gifts of forgiveness of sins purely by the Grace of God connected to the word. We are saved not because we feel God’s presence but because of what Christ has done for us in that moment. Remember your baptism it will help when you are going through those moments of doubt.

Why Youth Ministry isn’t destroying the Church!

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Recently I have been seeing more and more articles on Facebook from Christians bashing youth ministry because we are segregating teens and destroying their faith. I do understand that in blog posts we can all use a title that is a little over the top in order to get a point across. My problem with these articles is they seem to throw the baby out with the bath water and attack us in ministry who are dedicating our time to try and reach youth with the gospel.

These articles seem to come to the concussion that any segregation will lead to youth having shallow faith focused solely on themselves. Having a youth ministry that focuses only on teen’s leads to problem in the Church as a whole. I totally agree but this is not the goal of most youth ministries. The problem with this view of youth ministry is twofold. First almost every youth ministry I know has seen this problem and been addressing it for years. Most of us in youth ministry have for a long time now been working to get more adults involved in our ministries. We have been focusing on bringing adults and students together in meaningful ways. Not just manual labor but real ministry. We in youth ministry take very seriously the faith of the young people God, parents and the congregations have entrusted to our care. To say we haven’t been doing this misses out of the goal of every good youth ministry to bring kids to a greater faith in Christ.

So here is my problem with the no segregation crowd. It just doesn’t work in real life. My experience of trying to do family based bible study and everything else together has problems all the way around. First we struggle to make something that is meaningful for all the age groups. Whatever group we gear our bible study or other activity for we miss another group of people. The second issue I have is that most parents are very ill equipped to share and answer questions of faith they have not grappled with themselves.

We currently live in a very de-churched culture with little biblical knowledge to pass on to our children. Youth ministries are there to help parents share the faith. When we don’t segregate we can’t always speak to that group. I have found that in our confirmation ministry is has been most helpful making parents attend class as well. It allows them to grow in faith and have chances to share faith with their kids. But it isn’t the whole answer because many of our families don’t have two parents or even one parent that this is where having other adults, and teens to speak to each other can be very helpful. Also many students are not willing to ask us questions when their parents are in the room. They need to deal with these issues with adults and teens together. You just can’t expect teens in a group of adults talk about issues in a group where they aren’t the majority and feel safe to talk. Youth ministry needs to have adults who can share faith with them but saying we have to do everything in a large group setting misses this dynamic.

Lastly the biggest problem I have with no segregation is it seems to assume all kids and student have two parent homes. My experience is that many of the youth in our youth ministries do not have two parents at home. Many times in my experience they may not even have one parent who is Christian. This youth ministry you are so quick to attack for many kids is the only adult and teen in their life who can speak Jesus into their lives. Youth ministry can be a safe place they can attend in order to hear the gospel when they don’t hear it at home.

So I guess what I am saying is stop trouncing youth ministries. Stop attacking those who are dedicating their lives to share the gospel with students in a way that speaks to them. Don’t pretend like sitting us all in a room when we will teach like all adults will work. When having events geared to youth is some kind of bad thing. Sometimes it is the only way we can reach them. To my youth ministry friends. Let’s make sure our youth ministry programs don’t get in the way of our youth participating and experiencing the greater Christian Church. We have a lot to learn from each other but it is ok to have things geared toward our students to help them grow in faith.

Life will not be better with Christ.

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I like shocking statements.  I enjoy throwing things out there to students to get them to think.  Sometime I think we need to be shocked in order to hear the message.  So here goes.  Life is not better with Jesus in fact it ruins your life.

I know most of you who are reading this are screaming at the screen… By the way you shouldn’t ever scream at your screen it is weird… But I said it being a Christian and follower of Christ mean your life will be different.  When you know Jesus your will be scorned by the world around you.  When you stand up for what is right in the world you will be mocked.  When you speak with family and friends you will be ignored and people will walk away from you.  You will look with empathy on those around you who do not know Jesus and his work for you.  The way you lived your life and it being all about you will change to a life of looking out for others…Well maybe all of this will happen.  You will still have days when you will be about you.  Your sinful nature will make sure of that.  However Jesus will continue to work on you.  And that work will be hard.

So I guess what I would like to share with you today is that God is faithful.  God in his work reminds us that when we are experiencing this persecution that Christ is faithful.  He will continue to come after you.  He will continue to chase after your soul through His Word and sacraments.  He is coming after you.  Just remember this doesn’t mean your life will be better but it will be one with Christ.

I don’t want to listen.

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I don’t like to listen. I never have been the best at it. I know some of you know me and know that I can be a good listener but I will tell you it takes a tremendous amount of work. I, like many extroverted men, want to solve problems and think I have all the answers. It makes it hard at times to listen.

So the question I have been asking myself is how am I doing. Am I listening to my wife, my kids, my coworkers, my friends, my students? The answer all too often is no. I know I should but just don’t do it. I am reminded often when I think about listening, about Jesus’ ability to listen. I know the scripture is full of stories about him jumping into action and about him teaching. Lately however I have been noticing the instances where he is listening in the gospel lessons. (John 4)  I am struck by how often he listens. He listens to their gripes, complaints, needs and wants and then responds with more questions and answers to understand them. He was a very good active listener, and springs into action to help them in their need. I want to be more like Jesus.

In a world today that almost always seems to spring to action first or just plain forgets to listen to the other side I would say. Maybe we all just need to listen to each other a little more. When you think about relationships, politics, family and all the people around you, maybe you should think about listening more and acting less. I know I need to start.

Answered prayer….Or just a wall

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I have always wondered if students and more importantly I believe in the power of prayer.  It is a tough question to ask yourself as someone who thinks it is important to share faith with the students God has put in my life.

I don’t know if I have the answers yet but I decided this year as part of our youth ministry we are going to focus on prayer.  Not, we are going to pray at events and times together for a few minutes. We are going to spend time, 2 times a month and take 25 minuates to pray as a group and see how God answers.

To help us do this we decided it would be good to have a wall of prayer.  We as a group of students, parent helpers, adults and myself take time to be in prayer every other week to write down and take prayers off the wall and pray for them. On the other side of the wall we have added a sign for answered prayer.  This will be the hard part.  Students have been asked to move their card as God seems to answer their prayer.

Maybe God will say yes, maybe he will say no, maybe he will say not yet, maybe he will say it is time for your loved one to come home, and maybe he will just say rest in me.  I don’t really know how this will turn out.  I don’t know if this will work out, or how it will work out, but I know it is important to see this not as just a wall but a wall of Christ’s answered prayers for us.