Youth Evangelism and Discipleship

However Scripture says, “Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe” (1 Tim. God has historically used young people to spark a movement of spiritual awakening. Alvin Reid stated, the lord often uses the youth in His religious movement among the people as they are young at heart. Ministering to youth and discipline them will help them change lives by sharing Jesus with others. Teens have to understand that following Jesus is something that is done daily. Creating trust is vital. They need authentic relationships that they can learn from and grow through. Also, the most critical relationship of all is the one that a student has with Jesus Christ.

Jesus focused on close relations with the disciples. Student ministry should have a vision and strategic plan for discipleship. The minister prepares saints for the role of a minister. Therefore, the youth minister equips parents to lead their children at home. Reid argued God advised that a home is the best place for spiritual training as opposed to just the church. Parents are primarily responsible for raising their children (McDowell 67). Spiritual maturity can be developed through relationships. Jesus is considered to be the head of the house of the lord, and hence it needs to be on His mission of sharing the gospel. Based on the activities that have been highlighted on our activity schedule, the church attempts to devise programs aimed at allowing the youth to experience exponential growth in Christ’s footsteps (June 34).

During the first three months; August, September and October, the program will be inclined towards allowing the youth at our church to learn more about the bible as they also get a glimpse of the various issues affecting the modern society. Some of these include; awareness of anger management, how to become better men and women before the lord, servant leadership as well as sex education. The preceding three months; November, December and January, more seminars continue to be held in the church to ensure that the youth are adequately engaged in church learning activities. I believe that this is because it is a relatively smaller church without a history of people being a mission together. I would personally like to see it move to a more organic structure since it is more relationally based.

The church is part of the Southern Baptist Convention; it is great that we can contribute to a group that can facilitate missions locally, nationally, and globally but it would be great to see the church grasp the vision that the Kingdom of God is more significant than just that. In my personal opinion, it could be said that we are a church with small groups. There is understanding that small groups are important, but there has not been any centralized leadership in casting a vision for how the church can become a church that is small groups. All this should be under a common plan, set definitions, and overarching mission of the church. We are currently working on all aspects of the church to simplify and get on the same page.

Balance and Blend Our vision statement for our small group ministry is: We desire that the disciples of Jesus would worship together and share their homes with each other. The vision is based on the example of the early church. The first church was highly relational, and they shared food, homes, and their lives with each other. Our small group ministry is focused on connecting people into meaningful relationships as part of the discipleship process. At our church, when someone joins the church either by membership change, baptism, or salvation, the person begins the discipleship with a mentor. Together the mentor and mentee go through the book, Finding Your Way Through Faith, by our senior pastor. This is a great book to go through scripture systematically.

The mentor also helps the mentee get connected with a small group. Jesus modeled this for us by building relationships with His disciples, training them, and then sending them out to do the same that He had done. The apostle Paul also did this and trained pastors and sent them to churches all along his missionary journeys. The present-day church has to understand what their unique vision is, what they value, what are their views in ministry, what vehicles are they going to use to conduct ministry, and what verifiers will be used to see if their ministry is fruitful or not. Many times churches do not seem to have this plan, and they remain stagnant. Churches must be prepared to reach the lost and disciple those that come to faith in Jesus.