When You Don't Have a Youth Pastor
Can a small church have a successful youth program? When the same few young people look at each other each week in Sunday school, can they possibly match the dynamic quality of eighty or a hundred? I learned a valuable lesson a few years ago from a small Baptist church in San Bruno, California. The youth sponsor was a high school math teacher named Clell. He and his students traveled forty miles to meet with me about a special one-week outreach. They asked me to come speak and bring a seven-member musical group. When we arrived some months later, I was amazed. About fifteen young people, unified in purpose and direction, had invited their friends. The first night we sang and spoke to about thirty young people; the second night, about fifty came for a night of games. On Thursday night more than a hundred young people came to the church for an all-night volleyball marathon, and a local TV station covered the event. At the end of each evening, the music group sang and gave testimonies and I spoke. What brought those young people out? I am convinced it was the vision, prayers, and enthusiasm of a small group of teenagers and a math teacher who loved kids. Their unity and spiritual depth was exciting. From this experience I began to see some things I hadn't realized before: 1. A Small Church Can Think Big.
When I first met with the San Bruno young people to pray, they impressed me with their vision for their peers at school. This group of fifteen, along with their sponsor, wanted to see their friends come to Christ, and they were convinced they could be used by God to reach out. In their prayers they named friends and kept talking about each activity of the week and how it would appeal to kids at school. Not once did they mention they ...
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