Cars, Conferences, & More!

Well things still haven't settled down much with Easter this weekend but we have finished race week and the student conference. The size of the race crowd was mind numbing with cars and campers literally as far as the eye could see. I preached in 26 degree temperatures (see picture) the day of the kickoff and thawed out later that week to join in an exciting Family Day. We had campers in our yard, lined down the street, and up the road. As little as I know about racing we still had fun with some of the lesser intoxicated individuals in our area. The Spring Student Conference went well overall with a few bumps along the way. There were roughly 1,500 students and adults in attendance and I felt like I met most of them at some point. I'm relieved that we are done (for now) with some of those areas so we can turn our attention to some new opportunities for parents and volunteers at our church. Bethany is doing more work with our small groups and teenage girls. She is also singing several times in our Easter Cantata this Sunday which should come as no surprise! We pray you have a wonderful Easter week celebrating the death and resurrection of our Savior. Never lose the wonder!

March Madness

With all due respect to college basketball, I think the activity at our church the next couple of weeks will generate plenty of excitement as well. Raceway Ministries is in a full charge to make preparations for the people coming in to watch the races in Bristol. I have a great opportunity to speak at one of the early chapel services this weekend during the official kickoff to race week. There will be tens of thousands of cookies spread throughout the area and a lot of opportunities to help the medical crews as first responders. As many of you know I'm not exactly a racing fanatic, or even a casual fan. Ok, so I don't know much at all about racing and wouldn't recognize most of the drivers if they walked by me going down the street. Don't people just go for their driver and to watch the others crash anyway!? I am excited about the opportunities going on with Raceway Ministries and can't wait to see what all the fuss is about. We are also putting the final touches on planning a Spring Student Conference for our Association with well over a thousand students in attendance. There are also plans in motion for the Mission Trip that need to be finalized in the next couple of weeks. In other words, March is madness and I've got to get busy! We'll let you guys know how everything goes once we've survived!

A Growing Sense of Urgency

It has been a while since we've updated on anything so some of you would be interested to know what is going on this weekend. We are meeting with parents and volunteers to discuss some important issues for the student ministry at First Baptist Church. There is a growing sense of crisis in this thing called youth ministry. I'm not a big stats person but, when legit, some of these can be quite alarming. We are losing the overwhelming majority of our youth by the end of their freshman year in college (75-88% according to Glen Schultz, Kingdom Education, and the 2002 SBC Council on the Family). Also, other research suggests less than ten percent of churched teens have a biblical worldview (The Barna Group, Nehemiah Institute Peers Test). The cry from youth minister land is how they can possibly go to battle against so many hours of school and home influence that is a direct contradiction to what they teach a couple of hours a week. While there are plenty of new trends and approaches, the results have been all too much the same. Former youth ministry guru Mike Yaconelli lamented:

The curtain must be pulled back. If we are to keep young people involved in the church and if we are to renew our congregations, we first must acknowledge that any of our current forms of youth ministry are destructive." (Mike aconelli,"Youth Ministry: A Contemplative Approach)

While I don't always agree with some of the methods utilized by groups like Youth Specialties, I really respect the openness of a former leader about their struggles. The current evangelism rate of this generation is 4%. The adolescent years are such a critical time for this because such a high percentage of believers made that decision during those formative years. There are as many opinions as noses out there (and probably more) of what should be done but it should be clear that our starting place is Scripture. Spiritually connecting students to their home family, when possible, and their church family must be a priority in any lasting ministry. Unfortunately, at times this mindset will end up losing teens to the church on the other side of town that does anything necessary to bring in the numbers while offering less substance. I don't claim to have all the answers but I do know that we need to start asking the right questions. For example, what percentage of our church's teens will be active in a church body and a committed disciple of Christ 5 years after they leave the youth group? 10 years? 20 years? How many of them are being poured into now by people in the church other than the youth pastor? Are we as a church strengthening families or fragmenting them? How are we reaching out to families of our youth who don't attend?

I'm looking forward to a good conversation on some of these issues this Saturday. I pray that others that are involved in student ministry of some sort (hopefully the majority of you) will begin or join in the conversation at your church as well.