Student Ministry Leadership
In 1978, Francis Schaeffer, who inspired and gave inception to this ministry, said:
Youth Ministry is perhaps the most important ministry of the church and it is essential that we are willing and committed to reach students for the Christian faith before they enter College!
Our founder and Director and many of us on staff are still actively involved in Youth Ministry.
Youth Ministry Discipleship Curriculum
These are the studies for students that Schaeffer said are the most essential to learn, our thirty years of research and practice concurs:
"There is perhaps nothing more important in Real Effective and Effectual Youth Ministry than teaching Youth how to study the Bible." F. A. Schaeffer
How well do you know the Bible? Most Christians may say "fairly well," and most youth perhaps not at all. Even those who are leaders in their youth group! Maybe secretly, we may be in fear that others will find out that we do not know His Word so well after all. Many of us may...
Mmemorizing a passage of Scripture is an essential way not only to know His Word, but to know and grow in our Lord and Savior. Yet, many Christians and young people too have neglected, even negated this discipline...
The great wonder is not so much in how we pray, but that God is willing to listen to us! The great, wonderful fallout from our being saved is our ability to pray real and effective prayers that God actually hears and to which He responds!
God does give us a pattern as a checklist to make sure our time and attitude are lined up to more of His will and less of ours. We must make sure we use our payer time with purpose and effectiveness.
This ACTS guide is a help center for us to keep us on His track. This is not meant to be a rigid blueprint or for us to have canned prayers; rather, it is a method and guide to help us build our prayer time.
How to have a Quiet Time, your goal is to become complete in Christ...
This is about integrating our prayer and Scripture life for greater spiritual stimulation that leads to greater understanding of our Lord and then greater application of His precepts.
Here is a chart that lists two sets of Fruit and ways of living. One side represents Christ's redemptive work that we comply to continue by being grateful, pursuing His Grace and applying His Fruit into our daily lives.
Read Psalm 15 then ask yourself if your faith is more than just fire insurance from Hell?
God calls us, not to conform to the world, but to Him. This requires conviction, and the willingness to peruse through difficult times and people who have opposing ideas.
It is our duty as Christians to recognize the role of the Holy Spirit to find out our gifts that all have been given.
Why should you believe the Christian faith?
More here: Youth Ministry Lessons
The bottom line is that most people do not want to be bothered by religious things or be under conviction; yet, the purpose of our existence is to be reconciled to Him. We have to come under conviction in order to receive His Grace. The Spirit is the One who convicts; it is our...
To build an effective Emerging Church we have to understand the mindsets that infiltrate the thinking of most people these days. There are three predominate mindsets, rooted in history, that define individuals as well as generations. They are called Postmodernism, Modernism, and Premodernism.
Did you know that after a student leaves the safe and fun youth culture of a caring church, even a great one, there is a 70%+ chance they will never come back to any church? Why is that? There are a multitude of reasons, but from our research and experience during over 30 years of doing Youth Ministry, we have found the number one reason to be that most churches and youth pastors spend very little time in mentoring and teaching their youth. Thus, few youth learn to take their faith seriously. (Of course, there are phenomenal exceptions. Our Director was a high school student when he helped start this ministry 30 years ago!) Many youth are not being taught to read and study the Bible or how to pray or understand Christian basics, and thus they tend not to develop a firm foundation of faith. So, when they are occupied in college life and in the world, they get clobbered and lose what little faith they have built up!
Much more to come.....
