Three Signs You're Doing Well in Youth Ministry

Sunday night was my first real affirmation that I've been doing Youth Ministry the right way (or at least well enough!) One of my students approached me a couple of weeks ago and asked if he could host a night of prayer and fasting after youth group.  This dude is a hardcore disciple, so I expected this from him - he's a huge leader. This is number one.

1) You see students stepping up into leadership roles without prodding. 

Now this night of prayer/fasting took place this past Sunday.  I admit - I didn't expect a large amount of people to show up.  We have a 6th-12th grade youth group (the majority of which are middle schoolers), so a lot of them are still getting to know God for the first time.  A lot of them come for the games and fellowship at this point more than God - or so I thought.

2) People show up - not only for the games and fellowship - but for God.  About 75% of the youth group stayed after youth for the night of prayer and fasting.

Now this last part is my favorite.  I had my guitar out and I was leading the youth in some worship.  The student leader, after a song, asked me to keep playing.  While I was playing "mood music" he wanted everyone to pair up with someone they would usually not feel comfortable with and pray together.

3) People prayed for each other.  No regards for cliques, popularity, crushes, etc...just prayer.  At the end, they prayed for me.  I didn't ask - I just got prayed over.  And it was awesome.

Now I"m not saying I'm the best youth minister in the world or anything like that - don't worry.  I am just blogging this because it's pretty awesome that I'm seeing the fruits of God's ministry on a large scale.  It's exciting to get that little extra motivational push to keep me excited about ministry.

Grow Some Balls.

I've been playing around with this idea for pretty much the entire summer.  The idea that our faith in Christ should be more than our faith in what culture says.  Here is where it all came from:

I was at Ichthus in June with a group of Churches.  As always, Ichthus is a great time.  I love going there. I love the atmosphere, the people, the music - all of it.  Every year it seems as though we get sent back to our vehicles in the middle of a concert because there is a severe weather alert of some kind.  This year was no exception, but it was a bit different.

We were at the evening worship session.  The speaker was giving an inspiring message.  At the end of the message, he challenged us to run to the cross.  I waited to see if my youth would lead me there.  They did.  They said, "We're going Tom.  Are you coming?"  Man was that awesome.  We got there with thousands and thousands of people crowded around two crosses.  We were praying, weeping, rejoicing - how amazing.

Then - in the middle of all of this - in the middle of the prayer - the director of Ichthus came up and said something like this "Wow, God is awesome.  He is doing great things.  Unfortunately there is a severe weather   warning and I need to send you all back to your cars for your own safety."  I was a bit bummed, but student safety is important, right?

So we sat in the cars for about an hour, the weather cleared, and we went back to concerts.  I am so lucky I went to the right concert.

The band was Sleeping Giant.  An awesome, mosh-worthy metal band.  Thom Green is the lead vocalist for the band.  Before he started playing his awesome metalthatcanmeltface-ness music (yes, it's a word...look it up) he spoke some of the most inspiring and true I have ever heard.  He said something like this:

"What kind of believers are we if we trust the weatherman more than Jesus Christ?"

He went on for awhile talking about this concept and literally told all of the Christians in the crowd that they needed to grow some balls and worship Jesus - rain or shine.

Wow. How amazing is this?  I was so challenged by his words.  Our faith has become so weak.  In Luke 8:22-25 Jesus says "Where is your faith?" in regards to a storm while the disciples were on a boat.  The boat was "filling with water and they were in real danger".  Yet Jesus still called them out on their faith.

Why should it be different today?


Think about it.  Yes - student safety is important.  But what would Jesus have done at that cross if He was leading them?  Would He have gone back to the car, or stayed and continued to worship?  Would he have submitted to the authority of the weatherman, or to the authority of His father?  Why should we do anything different than Jesus would have done in this situation?


I am still inspired by Thom's words that night.  They still inspire and convict me.  After the fact we learned that the storm literally went around the festival.  It just split in two and went around us.  But that was just a coincidence, right?  It surely was not God working.  *wink wink*