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Things to consider about our youth and children’s ministry

November 28, 2011 in Ministry Philosophy, Ministry Tools, Reading Notes with 0 Comments

I will be taking some excerpt from an article found here! I thought the open letter was well written and respectful. I am not qualified to get into the discussion between the men here. I simply thought as I read the article, how does this apply to me and the ministry that God has called me to lead.

I hope that Vision would fare well but I wanted to bring my concerns to all of you and let you consider with me if we need to work on improving in some areas.

I spent four years of the interim between my pastorates teaching in a Christian school well-known to you. A large-ish school run by a small-ish church provides an opportunity to observe an intriguing cross-section of evangelicalism. At our school, while there were students from many small churches around the northwest suburbs, by far the largest group was from Harvest Bible Chapel. I mainly taught older elementary students, but since I also spoke weekly in high school chapel I had ample opportunity to interact with teenagers as well.

In other words, I spent four years among kids whose religious background was in your church – a position that was both challenging and distressing. I came to realize that your church’s youth, most of whom would classify themselves as “Christians,” actually comprised the greatest Unreached People Group I have encountered in my years of ministry. This was a conclusion that I reached quite reluctantly, and one which I hope you will seriously consider. Many of those kids had no more idea of the basic facts of the gospel or of its implications for sinners than do the members of the remotest tribes in places American Christians still think of as “mission fields.”

The problem is that few of these kids had ever heard you preach, for the simple reason that they had never actually been to the adult worship service.

First, is there not a point during a child’s maturing years at which he ought to be exposed to “big church”?

And second, when he isn’t in the worship, doesn’t it matter exactly what takes place in the youth center?

While I was struggling to come to grips with what my students did and didn’t know about Jesus, I hit upon the idea of assigning everyone the task of writing a one-page description of their most recent trip to church. The first time that I read a description from one of your sheep, I wondered if he had understood that I wanted a description of Sunday church. He had written of a whipped-cream eating contest, of half an hour of songs, and of throwing pies at the youth leaders. His only mention of teaching was of “some guy” talking for ten minutes about “the music we listen to.” But yes, this was Sunday church, and unfortunately it was no rare instance. Year after year, student after student gave me similar heartbreaking descriptions of “church.”

I wondered what such children could know of the gospel. Another writing assignment asked, “What does ‘being a Christian’ mean to you?” The kids said a lot about going to youth group and having a good time, but they rarely mentioned the cross. The same boy who wrote the above account did talk about Jesus; he said that shortly after he turned ten he heard something about Jesus dying, so he asked his mom what that was all about. Sadly, after a decade of church attendance it was a new subject to him.

In fact, whenever I talked to my classes about the death and resurrection of Jesus, they reacted as though perhaps sometime they might have heard something similar. This is how I came to the conclusion above: how could one expect the members of this Unreached People Group to demonstrate any familiarity with the gospel when their religious education had consisted of food fights and infantile pranks sprinkled with the occasional virtuous platitude?

This experience sent me back to the pastorate with a sober appreciation of what it means to be accountable for souls – particularly for the young souls who are brought to my church and raised under my pastoral care. Is it not my business to be certain that they have at the very least been confronted with the realities of sin and its only cure? I realize that they have parents and Sunday School teachers, but -under Christ – I am a minister of the gospel, and I have a responsibility to them.

Don’t you agree? Don’t you feel the same way about the crowd of young souls currently growing from infancy to adulthood in your youth center?

First, if your calling is to proclaim the gospel of grace which every sinner must hear, make certain that the lost children in your congregation hear it. I am not suggesting that you do away with your nursery, nor would I presume to tell you the exact age at which kids should start coming to worship. Wouldn’t you agree, though, that at some point before adolescence a child is capable of understanding gospel preaching? Your people bring their families to your church because you are a gifted communicator and because your reputation is that you preach that Jesus Christ saves sinners. But what good does that do for the kids if they never hear you preach?

Do you know with any certainty that your youth program confronts kids with the gospel? If you have never dropped in unannounced, then may I suggest that you could do more good in the classroom than in the pulpit next week?

We must teach our children about Christ. We must get our children into adult church. We must bring them face to face with the truth about Jesus, the Cross, their sin.

I think we do but I ask you to help me evaluate Vision.

I call on all our missionary team members to do the same!

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this man was really stupid

November 27, 2011 in Biographies, Preaching, Reading Notes with 0 Comments

I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair until now had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm, one Sunday morning, while I was going to a certain place of worship. When I could go no further, I turned down a side street, and came to a little Primitive Methodist Chapel.

In that chapel there may have been a dozen or fifteen people. I had heard of the Primitive Methodists, how they sang so loudly that they made people’s heads ache; but that did not matter to me. I wanted to know how I might be saved, and if they could tell me that, I did not care how much they made my head ache.

The minister did not come that morning; he was snowed up, I suppose. At last, a very thin-looking man,* a shoemaker, of tailor, or something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach.

Now, it is well that preachers should be instructed; but this man was really stupid. He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had little else to say. The text was,—

“LOOK UNTO ME, AND BE YE SAVED, ALL THE ENDS OF THE EARTH”

He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in that text.

The preacher began thus:—“My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, ‘Look’. Now lookin’ don’t take a deal of pains. It ain’t liftin’ your foot or your finger; it is just, ‘Look.’ Well, a man needn’t go to College to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look.

A man needn’t be worth a thousand a year to be able to look. Anyone can look; even a child can look. But then the text says, ‘Look unto Me.’ Ay!” said he, in broad Essex, “many on ye are lookin’ to yourselves, but it’s no use lookin’ there. You’ll never find any comfort in yourselves. Some look to God the Father. No, look to Him by-and-by.

Jesus Christ says, ‘Look unto Me’. Some on ye say, ‘We must wait for the Spirit’s workin’.’ You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ. The text says. ‘Look unto Me.’ ”

Then the good man followed up his text in this way:—“Look unto Me; I am sweatin’ great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hangin’ on the cross. Look unto Me; I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend to Heaven. Look unto Me; I am sittin’ at the Father’s right hand. O poor sinner, look unto Me! look unto Me!”

When he had gone to about that length, and managed to spin out ten minutes or so, he was at the end of his tether. Then he looked at me under the gallery, and I daresay, with so few present, he knew me to be a stranger.

Just fixing his eyes on me, as if he knew all my heart, he said, “Young man, you look very miserable.” Well, I did; but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance before. However, it was a good blow, struck right home.

He continued, “and you always will be miserable—miserable in life, and miserable in death,—if you don’t obey my text; but if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved.” Then, lifting up his hands, he shouted, as only a Primitive Methodist could do, “Young man, look to Jesus Christ.

Look! Look! Look! You have nothin’ to do but to look and live.” I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said,—I did not take much notice of it,—I was so possessed with that one thought. Like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, the people only looked and were healed, so it was with me.

I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard that word, “Look!” what a charming word it seemed to me! Oh! I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away. There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that instant, and sung with the most enthusiastic of them, of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to Him.

Oh, that somebody had told me this before, “Trust Christ, and you shall be saved.” Yet it was, no doubt, all wisely ordered, and now I can say,—

“E’er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.”

Spurgeon, C. H. (2009). C. H. Spurgeon’s Autobiography, Compiled from his diary, letters, and records, by his wife and his private secretary: Volume 1, 1834-1854 (105–108). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

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How can a man know that he is pardoned?

November 5, 2011 in Discipleship, Outreach and Evangelism, Reading Notes with 0 Comments

There is a text which says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved.” I believe on the Lord Jesus Christ; is it irrational to believe that I am saved?

“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life,” saith Christ, in John’s Gospel. I believe on Christ; am I absurd in believing that I have eternal life?

I find the apostle Paul speaking by the Holy Ghost, and saying, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. Being justified by faith, we have peace with God.”

If I know that my trust is fixed on Jesus only, and that I have faith in Him, were it not ten thousand times more absurd for me not to be at peace, than for me to be filled with joy unspeakable?

It is but taking God at His Word, when the soul knows, as a necessary consequence of its faith, that it is saved. I took Jesus as my Saviour, and I was saved; and I can tell the reason why I took Him for my Saviour.

To my own humiliation, I must confess that I did it because I could not help it; I was shut up to it. That stern law-work had hammered me into such a condition that, if there had been fifty other saviours, I could not have thought of them,—I was driven to this One.

I wanted a Divine Saviour, I wanted One who was made a curse for me, to expiate my guilt.

I wanted One who had died, for I deserved to die.

I wanted One who had risen again, who was able by His life to make me live.

I wanted the exact Saviour that stood before me in the Word, revealed to my heart; and I could not help having Him.

I could realize then the language of Rutherford when, being full of love to Christ, once upon a time, in the dungeon of Aberdeen, he said, “O my Lord, if there were a broad hell betwixt me and Thee, if I could not get at Thee except by wading through it, I would not think twice, but I would go through it all, if I might but embrace Thee, and call Thee mine!”

Oh, how I loved Him! Passing all loves except His own, was that love which I felt for Him then. If, beside the door of the place in which I met with Him, there had been a stake of blazing faggots, I would have stood upon them without chains, glad to give my flesh, and blood, and bones, to be ashes that should testify my love to Him.

Had He asked me then to give all my substance to the poor, I would have given all, and thought myself to be amazingly rich in having beggared myself for His name’s sake.

Had He commanded me then to preach in the midst of all His foes, I could have said,—

“There’s not a lamb in all Thy flock
I would disdain to feed,
There’s not a foe, before whose face
I’d fear Thy cause to plead.”

Spurgeon, C. H. (2009). C. H. Spurgeon’s Autobiography, Compiled from his diary, letters, and records, by his wife and his private secretary: Volume 1, 1834-1854 (111–112). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

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Baptism

November 3, 2011 in Reading Notes with 0 Comments

Baptism is the mark of distinction between the Church and the world.

It very beautifully sets forth the death of the baptized person to the world.

Professedly, he is no longer of the world; he is buried to it, and he rises again to a new life.

No symbol could be more significant. In the immersion of a believer, there seems to me to be a wondrous setting forth of the burial of the Christian to all the world in the burial of Christ Jesus.

It is the crossing of the Rubicon. If Cæsar crosses the Rubicon, there will never be peace between him and the Senate again. He draws his sword, and he throws away his scabbard. Such is the act of baptism to the believer.

It is the burning of the boats: it is as much as to say, “I cannot come back again to you; I am dead to you; and to prove that I am, I am absolutely buried to you; I have nothing more to do with the world; I am Christ’s, and Christ’s for ever.”

Spurgeon, C. H. (2009). C. H. Spurgeon’s Autobiography, Compiled from his diary, letters, and records, by his wife and his private secretary: Volume 1, 1834-1854 (149–150). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

Wicked thoughts we have about God!

October 30, 2011 in Reading Notes with 0 Comments

William Huntingdon says, in his autobiography, that one of the sharpest sensations of pain that he felt, after he had been quickened by Divine grace, was this, “He felt such pity for God.”

I do not know that I ever met with the expression elsewhere, but it is a very striking one; although I might prefer to say that I have sympathy with God, and grief that He should be treated so ill.

Ah, there are many men that are forgotten, that are despised, and that are trampled on by their fellows; but there never was a man who was so despised as the everlasting God has been! Many a man has been slandered and abused, but never was man abused as God has been. Many have been treated cruelly and ungratefully, but never was one treated as our God has been.

I, too, once despised Him. He knocked at the door of my heart, and I refused to open it. He came to me, times without number, morning by morning, and night by night; He checked me in my conscience, and spoke to me by His Spirit, and when, at last, the thunders of the law prevailed in my conscience, I thought that Christ was cruel and unkind.

Oh, I can never forgive myself that I should have thought so ill of Him! But what a loving reception did I have when I went to Him! I thought He would smite me, but His hand was not clenched in anger, but opened wide in mercy.

I thought full sure that His eyes would dart lightning-flashes of wrath upon me; but, instead thereof, they were full of tears. He fell upon my neck, and kissed me; He took off my rags, and did clothe me with His righteousness, and caused my soul to sing aloud for joy; while in the house of my heart, and in the house of His Church, there was music and dancing, because His son that He had lost was found, and he that had been dead was made alive again.

Spurgeon, C. H. (2009). C. H. Spurgeon’s Autobiography, Compiled from his diary, letters, and records, by his wife and his private secretary: Volume 1, 1834-1854 (101). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

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