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What Is Your Vision For Your Ministry?

Today we move to Nehemiah’s second step for transformation of his community.

 

Step 2 – Nehemiah developed a vision of restoration that symbolically connect to those hurting today

 

After praying and fasting he moved to creating the desired future state.  He didn’t just launch out and start doing things; he thought through – were do we need to be?  Where are we trying to take people?  What does the end game look like?

As we watch the news each day and live out our lives, we see significant moral breakdown in communities across the country.  Issues may not be the same in every neighborhood, but every neighborhood has issues.   We as leaders have to be the light for our community and provide the moral compass for our young people to follow.  We have to teach them what the Bible says about the conditions of this world  (You must know the times . . .).

To rebuild our communities we need the Word of God, continuous prayer, faith in God’s ability and the Holy Spirit to guide us.   We have to be willing to step up and say there is a better way.  The church has to show the hope and purpose that can be available to and for people.  In the process of bringing hope to our young people we must understand their discouragements and how it affects them.  And help them understand that any improvement effort will face challenge.   We must realize, as Nehemiah did, how we can be productive in the positions we occupy within our community.  What is your vision to bring change to the lives of the young people under your care?  We can’t be scared or shy about stepping up, speaking up and bringing truth to power.  For I believe we have been placed in our positions to affect those who have power to make change.  We must stand strong no matter what others think.

To be successful we must know our purpose.  The devil is clear, his purpose is to kill, steal and destroy our lives, our hope and our future.  We must be focused in our approach to ensure success.  The church, not political leaders must lead the change.  Without God all efforts will go astray.  As leaders, you will need to reach back and lift someone up.  We have to re-teach young people the values of respect for self, property and life.  We must as the church, live a life of caring for people believing our communities will rise again.

 

Again; our young people are depending on us to step up and equip them to be able to discern and make Godly decisions.  Stay encouraged. Stay engaged. Stay upon the Wall.  Our young peoples DESTINY demand our diligence.

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Does The Burden You Have For The Young People You Serve Lead You To Your Knees Or In Search Of Another Curriculum Or Program

 

Today we begin looking at the details of Nehemiah’s four step process for dealing with the burden he had for the people in Jerusalem.  We as leaders should have a burden for the conditions our young people face and an action plan for supporting them.

 

Step 1 – Nehemiah heard the report of his city.  In response, he spent four months of fasting, praying, weeping and mourning.

 

Our communities are deeply broken by the conditions society, some self-imposed, others that have been created.  We face economic breakdown with parental loss of jobs or the inability to acquire employment.  Businesses are struggling or closing.  We face family breakdowns in two family homes, parental relationships and the relationships between parents and kids. Single family homes are overburdened by the responsibility of the one parent.  Our educational system now pits teacher union reps against administration looking to get control of massive budgets; while neither is really focused on the education of our young people.  The young people themselves don’t see the true value of education and the capable ones dummy down to fit in and avoid peer pressure, thus affecting their long-term prospects of economic self-sufficiency.  Our men are being broken by a system that has devalued them and targeted them in a way that makes high school to prison the norm for a large number of our men.  The political system is run by power brokers whose self-interest sacrifices any other efforts.  The little man with few financial resources has no voice.  Services and assistance are being cut or redirected to those who don’t have the greatest need.  People have lost hope and see no way out and are giving up.

The challenges described above are not just in the urban communities; I am describing all communities.  Unfortunately, we don’t always want to face up to the reality of trouble existing in our own community.  By not addressing these head on we leave our young people exposed to deal with what they see, in their own way.  I conducted a workshop, last week, at a suburban youth ministry and after the workshop the adults were amazed at the attitudes of their young people and the experiences they were having.  The youth workers assumed the issues were in the other communities, not theirs.   They said they have “the good kids” but learned they were not equipping the young people to effectively make Godly decisions.   The young people began to discuss not only their issues but also how they felt the youth workers didn’t understood them, were not equipping them or living as an example for them.  This was incredibly eye opening to these youth workers.  This upper middle class, suburban, curriculum rich ministry learned they had not spent much time in collective prayer seeking God’s guidance in equipping their young people to deal with the issues they face.  Now don’t confuse my point; curricula is necessary but not the end all be all to helping our young people grow.

As youth workers and leaders, we have to engage more in the lives of our young people to understand what they are dealing with day-to-day and not assume everything is ok.  Issues may not be the same in every neighborhood, but every neighborhood has issues.  Your burden for the young people should lead you to find your neighborhoods issues.   That search starts with prayer and fasting on their behalf.  Engaging them in conversation about their challenges and taking those issue to the Lord for guidance.

 

The Bible says when Nehemiah heard about the challenges of his people he was grieved –

3And they said unto me, The remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire.

 4And it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted, and prayed before the God of heaven,

 5And said, I beseech thee, O LORD God of heaven, the great and terrible God, that keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love him and observe his commandments:

 

Nehemiah was a middle class person who had a seat at the table with those in control.  He was considered successful and set.  Even though, he was concerned about his people and felt he needed to take action. He knew that phrase the old folks us to say and we must understand today that – “but for the grace of God, go I”.  People have to care and we are the people who have to lead the caring.  Our young people are depending on us to step up and equip them to be able to discern and make Godly decisions.  Stay encouraged. Stay engaged. Stay upon the Wall.  Our young peoples DESTINY demand our diligence.

 

Next week we will look at Nehemiah’s next step after praying and fasting.

 

What is the burden you have for the young people?  How is your team collectively getting it’s understanding?  How are you engaging them?  Join the conversation and be a blessing to someone else.

 

 

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Your Diligence Determines Our Young Peoples Destiny

I would be remiss if I started into this blog without first recognizing the birthday of Reverend Martin L. King who would be 84 today.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience.

Now to the ministry . . .

Today I am writing to encourage those of you in the trenches of the new urban ministry.  As I explained last week, the new urban is a life style that permeates all segments of life.  It’s non-geographical; it’s multi-cultural, multi-racial and multi-generational.  It’s looking through a prism with each layer being non-parallel.

I want to start today’s focus with a statement that is extremely relevant for those serving on behalf of young people – Behind every social problem; there is a spiritual solution!  Our young people are facing incredible moral challenges.  Whether they are watching the Game on BET or Whitney on NBC; the media makes casual sex, living together and all other forms of sin seem exciting and ok.  Gay marriage has become a cornerstone of network television. NBC calls its new comedy about a homosexual couple adopting a baby “The New Normal,” and that kind of understates it. This season they are not only normal they seem de rigueur.   Actors and entertainers, in Hollywood, are changing relationships like we change underwear.  Kim Kardashian makes out of wedlock pregnancy “in fashion”.  The music industry, of which everyone is listening, still glorifies sex, violence, money power and respect. We must be the counter to all of this for our young people.  Violent shootings are in every community.  In reality, this kind of violence is in many ways a part of our violent history and culture, and we have to start recognizing that there is no “typical” face of violence — it is not just the black kid killing people in gang shootings, the Mexican cartel member, or the “Muslim terrorist.” It can be, and often is, the white, suburban kid next door.  Over 917 deaths from shootings have happened since the Sandy Hook shooting.

 

Lives that are void of spiritual commitment are more willing to accept social response to spiritual problems.  We have to break the cycles, educating our young people on the structural roots of their suffering; historically rooted in structures of apathy and dependence.  J.F. Kennedy once said – Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.  We must help our young people lift themselves out of a self-centered; mentality that says they are victims rather than as the Bible says – we are more than conquers.  Our vision of the community must be God’s vision.  Our mission is to reach our cities and make them places where God’s presence, God’s way and God’s Word flourish and is understood to be the only way to solve problems.  Yes, young people in our cities face numerous challenges.   But WE are called to minister and serve in these environments because this is where God had placed us.

 

We must see our cities as it really is today before we can reach what we hope it to be.  God has a vision for our cities to become places of shelter, communion, purity and hope.  We must understand God’s sovereign purpose for our lives and the communities in which we live.  We must speak positive words and cease denouncing the city and being negative about its problems by beginning to addressing them through prayerful strategic action.

 

The Book of Nehemiah, and the burden he had for his city, lays out a model for us to address this deep spiritual burden for our community, neighborhood and city.  The purpose of your ministry is to bring healing and wholeness to a broken people and a broken generation.  God takes the broken pieces of humanity and transforms them into building blocks for His creation. The opportunity to become builders and arise up out of the ashes of brokenness is upon you the youth worker, a part of God’s church.

 

Over the next few weeks I will break down Nehemiah’s four-step action plan and how it perfectly ties into your responsibility to the young people in your communities:

Nehemiah heard the report of his city.  In response,

1.  Nehemiah spent four months of fasting, praying, weeping and mourning

2.  Nehemiah developed a vision of restoration that symbolically connects to those hurting young people today

3.  Nehemiah witnessed firsthand the terrible conditions of the city

4. Nehemiah purposed to arise, restore and rebuild.

 

Our young people are depending on us to step up and equip them to be able to discern and make Godly decisions.  Stay encouraged. Stay engaged. Stay upon the Wall.  Your diligence determines our young peoples destiny.

Join the conversation, share some of your challenges in the new urban that it may strengthen other youth workers . . .

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Youth Ministry Has Taken An Exciting New Directions — It’s Called The New Urban!!!

Happy New Year everyone.

I have just returned from a couple weeks vacation in Paris with my wife’s family.  My time away allowed me to reflect on the past few years and where I see the future of youth ministry.   As I said on facebook the other day – My wife asked me to step away from the IPad, IPhone and email while we were away.  I was able to do some deep reading, contemplative, reflective, introspective thinking and I was able to spend some incredible downtime with God in prayer and fasting.

 

As a result of this time, today we are re-launching our entire Platform – our ministry, social media, workshop series and sermons under the forward looking focus on Leadership in the New Urban.  We will focus on the new models required in ministering to all young people, in keeping our sanity and in networking outside our familiar circles.

 

These are exciting times for those of us who labor in the vineyard.  The urban landscape has changed in such a way that nothing is what it use to be.  The challenges our young people face are so expansive and can no longer be approached through our previous methods.  So what is the New Urban?  The new urban is a lifestyle that permeates all segments of life.  It’s non geographical.  No longer viewed through the lens of suburban, urban or rural.  Check out your young people, everyone’s into the music, the dress, activities and the talk of the new urban.   It’s multicultural, multiracial and multigenerational.  It’s cosmopolitan meets the thug, its hip-hop with a violin and everything in between.

 

 

MINISTERING TO YOUNG PEOPLE

For Youth Workers, the New Urban will require us to be at the top of our relational, relevant and revelatory game.  Young people don’t want to be entertained, taken for granted or spoon feed.  They are living in a world where everything goes and are questioning why they shouldn’t participate.   Peer pressure to conform to the world view is intense.  The world is telling them there are no limits, no morals and no judgement of anything they do.  Yet they want to know how to make God honoring decisions in a world where morality seems to be fading.  They want to see us “Walk The Talk”.  They don’t want us to be their best friends; they want adults who will walk along side them through their mess, guiding them along the way.  Pizza is great, but presence is better.  Lights are nice, but loving is more impactful.  Gimmicks are interesting, but grace is more desired.  Entertainment is fun, but equipping is long lasting.   Dodgeball is engaging,but destiny is the focus is.

 

 

UNDERGIRDING YOUTH WORKERS

Let’s face it, we are challenged with the new urban also.  This world is waxing worse and worse right in front of us and we are about two steps ahead of the young people in keeping up and understanding what’s going on in the secular culture.  We are dealing with situations we never expected the young people we minister to would be involved in at this age.  Our only advantage is our spiritual maturity and experience in dealing with the idols of the world.  The Bible tells us, “we must know the times. . .”.  Even though, I have to admit, sometimes I struggle with the burden of our young people. The weight of their plight brings me to tears.  But we know all of our problems, all of our pain, all of our situations, all of our heart ache can be left at the feet of Jesus.  Place your cares upon Him, He will hear your call.  We serve a God who is able to do exceedingly and abundantly above all we can imagine.  Trust in His Word, you know none of this is new to Him.  Stay encouraged and on your knees.

 

 

NETWORKING TO STRENGTHEN EACH OTHER

If we are willing to share our gifts, talents, resources and knowledge we will prevail.  If we are willing to network with other ministries in and outside of our normal circles; if we stay unified in the Kingdom building, holding each other up, praying for each other, strengthening each other in our walk, we will prevail.  Building strong networks take time, energy, empathy, open minds and passion.  In a world of social media, it is easy to make connections, but these connections are not a network.  The strength of your network is more important than the size of your network because, in the end, a strong network is something that you carry with you.  Today’s youth workers need to be able to build networks and work with others to address our young peoples challenges.  In the past it was possible to minister on your own and stay in your personal circle but today, requires sharing information and collaborating due to the overlapping of our young people’s experiences. Where we live is irrelevant, the size of our church is irrelevant, what we did in the past is irrelevant.  To assist parents in the spiritual development of their children, we must press toward to the mark . . .together.

So my brothers and sisters in Christ, stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel.  I offer this prayer of encouragement from the words of the songstress Laura Stong’s Blessings   :

Dear God;

We pray for blessings
. We pray for peace.


Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
.  We pray for healing, for prosperity.

We pray for your mighty hand to ease our suffering

All the while, You hear each spoken need
 yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

We pray for wisdom
. Your voice to hear
.

And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near

We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love,
 as if every promise from Your Word is not enough

All the while, You hear each desperate plea
 and long that we have faith to believe

.

What if our greatest disappointments
 or the aching of this life,
 is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy
.

‘Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
, what if your healing comes through tears.


What if a thousand sleepless nights
 are what it takes to know You’re near

And what if trials of this life
: the rain, the storms, the hardest nights
 are Your mercies in disguise.

In Jesus name . . . Amen.

 

Welcome to the New Urban, ready or not here we go . . .

 

 

Actions                                    Preferences

 

                         Attitudes                                     Perspectives

 

Aspirations                                    Principles