jesus is the answer… - yfc · all experience the same degree of family crises. ... “our culture...

JESUS IS THE ANSWER…

HOW BROKEN KIDS DISCOVER PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS IN THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST

Dave Rahn with Brent Sickel

April 1, 2013

B L E N Dcrit ical conversat ions about youth cr ises

hosted by Youth for Christ/USA

Yo u t h f o r C h r i s t / U S A • • • w w w. y f c . n e t

http://www.yfc.net

http://www.yfc.net

Jesus is the Answer…There is evidence to suggest that young people today are spiraling toward more brokenness, not greater health. The irony is that this descent into despair is happening during a time in history when the sheer quantity of goods, serv-ices and resources targeted for the pleasure, health and well-being of teens is probably greater than ever.

Some kids, of course, have fewer positive assets available than others for building their lives. For example, while it may be developmentally common for adolescents to pick their way through identity crises, not all experience the same degree of family crises. Others are profoundly disadvantaged by the economic or educational hardships of their sur-roundings. Too many learn to cope with routine threats to their health and safety that no child should have to navigate.

Youth for Christ leaders step into the chaotic, broken world of today’s teens to share the love of Jesus Christ. We match the relentlessness of their life’s difficulties with authentic, consistent relationships of hope. We live among them as truth tellers and life coaches who earn the right to be heard because they know we care. Ultimately, we want them to become lifelong fol-lowers of Jesus who influence others to do the same.

For this to happen their initial faith in Christ must grow into maturity. The catalytic posture for such growth takes place when their surrender to Jesus’ Lordship becomes the dominant daily headline of their lives, rewriting existing crises as mere episodes in a brand new story of personal victory and overcoming.

Can we cast light on the uneven journey of kids in crisis when they trust Jesus as the all-sufficient Lord of their lives?

A model

It was Youth for Christ’s City Life leaders that first articu-lated a holistic community development model for their work with urban teens. The crises that neighborhood kids encounter are so severe that they need to be attacked with particular strategies, much like a football coach might game plan to counter an opponent’s strengths. Five distinct do-mains are home to most of the existing threats and chal-lenges broken young people face. They also represent arenas for practical growth and progress toward healthy living. None of these domains is isolated from the others and all are immersed in a relational context. Broken relationships char-acterize the spiritually lost teenager. In dramatic contrast,

Jesus Christ brings healing, hope and potential to every young person who trusts him. How? By reversing the trajec-tory of alienation in their relationships and establishing a foothold within them for pervasive, Spirit-powered change.

This critical issues briefing will articulate domain-specific stories of positive and practical change experienced by YFC young people when they surrender their lives to Jesus’ active control and daily direction--his Lordship.

Yo u t h f o r C h r i s t / U S A! J e s u s i s t h e A n s w e r

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The Lordship of Christ

Jesus himself framed the conditions for all who want to follow him: “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.” (Matthew 16:24-25, NLT)

There’s very little about being transformed by Jesus that is easy. Or natural. But, in spite of polling data that reveals how American Christians tailor the faith to their own comfort level, we have no evidence that the Lord himself has adjusted his expectations for those of us who want to follow him. As we read about in his encounter with the rich young ruler, Jesus is perfectly capable of loving us thoroughly while asking us to surrender our stuff (Mark 10:17-22). Francis Chan’s observation seems spot on: “The irony is that while God doesn’t need us but still wants us, we desperately need God but don’t really want Him most of the time” (Chan 59).

Christ’s Lordship is primarily a personal inward journey. It requires a surgical strike on the most common cancer known to humankind: our egos. If Jesus is in charge we are not. His su-premacy “proclaims Christ's right to keep us at the center of who He is, where He is headed, what He is imparting, and how He is blessed” (Ross 15).

Embracing the Lordship of Christ makes it possible to under-stand the Gospel. Without such awareness we mistakenly assume that we can negotiate the terms of what it means to follow Jesus. Without such surrender we are under the delusion that we are perfectly able to fashion our lives for a satisfactory outcome. Jesus disagrees, insisting that every self-shaping effort is doomed to failure (Matthew 16:25). We are not the big deals we think we are.

Such teaching has tremendous implications for adolescents‘ identity formation. This task is developmentally trig-gered during teenage years, but the quest is never guaranteed success. The question of “Who am I?” is “far-reaching, belief-revealing, life-shaping, and identity-forming” (Driscoll 2). Exploration and testing are natural to the process. But securing a young person’s identity in Christ is anything but natural. It requires a Spirit-led transformation that is rooted in Christ’s Lordship. “For everything comes from him [Christ] and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever!…And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect” (Romans 11:36 - Romans 12:2, NLT).

Without the Lordship of Christ as the foundation of identity construction, young people are bound for identity confu-sion or crisis. “Our culture talks about identity as self-image or self-esteem” (Driscoll 2). But efforts to boost one’s self-esteem don’t deal with the root cause of identity confusion. We were made in the image of God and are incapable of living into that calling until our relationship with God is properly restored. Jesus’ Lordship describes that restora-


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A teen mom from Tacoma described how Jesus became real to her after her YFC leader laid down the truth. “I took it as a game and prayed, ‘God, if you’re real--make me feel you. Help me know.’ My heart got soft at that moment--I caught on to his love. I accepted Christ into my heart then. I was 15… Lot of gang-banging. It was the only life I knew. In Chicago I had family but in Tacoma it was the streets. TF--The Family…I grew from gang-banging, the battle. Had two options. Kinda kept going back and forth. When I went back to gang I saw that they let me down. But Christ said he would never leave me. Christ’s love never let me down. Don’t wanna be holding my homies when they die. When I came to Christ I got wiser… Mom put it on us to help her out...we’ve become a family doing good stuff…Jesus Christ. He never let me down, never turned his back on me, he is always saying ‘You’re my daughter; I’m here for you’...I could depend on him. He is real and always there--doesn’t judge me, but teaches me. I forgive because Jesus forgave me. JESUS is helping me… At McDonald’s 2 weeks ago a girl got mad about a parking spot. She called me out over the argument. My son’s dad was there. Her boyfriend came with a gun and it went to chaos. But I prayed. God came through. I get people saying good things about me. I’m a good person ‘cause I love God.”

tion. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5, NIV). No fruit-producing branch in its right mind would claim to be autonomous. Kids, like all of us, need to discover that their identity is derived from their connection to Jesus.

The words “in Christ”--a pairing used 86 times in the Epistles--are pervasive descriptors of our identity transforma-tion. . R.K. Hughes says:

From my perspective, “in Christ” far outstrips the term “Christian” in describing Christianity. Aside from the fact that “Christian” is only used three time in the New Testament (Acts 11:26; Acts 26:28; and 1 Peter 4:16), the title allows for an ambiguous interpretation. It can mean one who has a specific cultural affinity, or the “western tradi-tion,” or one who lives on one side of barbed wire and is killing those on the other side. But “in Christ” invites no such abuse, because it demands reflection on a dynamic, living relationship. (Driscoll 26)

As Mark Driscoll notes, “Being ‘in Christ’ is vital for every believer to experience and understand because being ‘in Christ’ is the one thing that changes everything” (Driscoll 26).

On a day to day experience, Jesus’ Lordship makes all the differ-ence. For instance, many young people believe their sin is so bad that God will not accept them. They can’t see any way to over-come the temptations that plague them and either live in fear of being found out or simply quit trying. Sin hovers over their lives like thick clouds obscuring any evidence of sunlight. It’s near impossible for those who live without victories to see the practi-cal work of the Lordship of Christ. Immersed in an ongoing bat-tle with sinful inclinations, the realities of their immediate strug-gles claim greater prominence in their experience than the pres-ence of Jesus. Like many of us they fail to recognize how new free-dom begins when their pursuit of Jesus as Lord becomes white hot and passionate.

But when Christ exercises his Lordship in our lives he empowers our moral perseverance. He gives us the grace to stand against sin because HE has already prevailed and provides a way to escape (1 Corinthians 10:13, NIV). Jesus injects our hearts with hope even during the darkest of our daily battles. John Piper observes that “…knowing the su-premacy of Christ enlarges the soul so that sin and its little thrills become as small as they really are” (Piper and Taylor 43). It is vitally important for young people to have a right view of how to deal with sin in their lives through forgiveness and reconciliation rather than living in shame, guilt, fear, and--eventually--apathy.

By navigating the inward terms of fully surrendering ourselves to Jesus we experience a shift in the outward indica-tors of our lives. All of life merits our gratitude. We cease the strain of trying to make sense of everything and trust the Lord with all our hearts. Worship becomes a way of thinking. As Nouwen said, “[I am] drawn away from my own preoccupations and into the presence of Jesus. It means letting go of what I want, desire, or have planned, and fully trusting Jesus and his love” (Lawrence 44). Adoration entrenches our selflessness and shifts the spotlight, allowing us to recognize our place and role in the hierarchy of heaven. We gain proper perspective of who Christ is and are more inspired than ever to make him known.

Distortions in worship are common when we elevate our own importance and misunderstand Jesus’ Lordship. Tim Keller says, “Worshiping God is an instinct that's gone awry. As a result, it must be learned, but as it's learned, it feels utterly right and natural.” Worship that is full of adoration brings hope and “transforms every other aspect of discipleship” (Ross


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72). Our worship experiences can reveal our truest views about who’s in charge. As Francis Chan asks, “Can you worship a God who isn’t obligated to explain His actions to you?” (Chan 31).

Outward indicators of Christ’s Lordship are further extended to how we minister. Matthew 12:34b says, “For out of the fullness (the overflow, the superabundance) of the heart the mouth speaks” (The Amplified Bible). Our words and actions become natural expressions of the Lordship of Christ in our lives. “When we work for Christ out of obligation, it feels like work. But when we truly love Christ, our work is a manifestation of that love, and it feels like love” (Chan 108). We utterly depend on the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus through us.

However noble the cause, unless our directives flow from Jesus and are responsive to his timing we will not avail ourselves to his power for life and ministry. As Tim Kizziar points out, “Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter” (Chan 91). Renewed efforts of racial reconciliation, serving the poor, and helping “at-risk” children need to be seen, not as ends in themselves, but as declarations of what Christ’s Lord-ship looks like in the lives of his followers.

The Lordship of Jesus Christ is a viral value that is modeled before it’s embraced. It’s caught more than taught. How could we imagine that adults who are not themselves fully surrendered Christ’ rule might show kids--especially those without benefit of being connected to any church--how to live for Jesus? The integrity of our own lives will allow us to say to teens what Paul said, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ”? (1 Corinthians 11:1, NIV). Jesus on display provides fundamental evidence a young person needs to trust him without reservation. As N.T. Wright says, “The longer you look at Jesus, the more you will want to serve him” (Lawrence 42). Our relational proximity in YFC gives kids the chance to inspect Jesus’ Lordship in our lives.

Followers of Christ have concluded--by faith--that the dilemmas of this current world are no match for the transfor-mational power of God. The Bible provides overwhelming evidence to support this conclusion. Christian ministry ceases to be faithful when the solutions we offer don’t originate from the Lordship of Christ.

Snapshots from recent YFC research reveal how Jesus is the answer for some of today’s most challenging adolescent crises.

YFC research and response

How does it work for young people with uncommonly difficult lives to hear that the solutions to their struggles be-gin with the historical truth that Jesus Christ lives? Secular voices suggesting that ‘religious responses’ can’t meet practical needs miss the point. Kids don’t experience hope and help to overcome their challenges because they fol-low God-ordained dogma. They discover Jesus. Because he is alive and well he shows up with real-time aid for their real life issues.

In the fall of 2011 we interviewed 81 adult urban ministry leaders who grew up in neighborhoods like where they were currently serving. Their stories came from the Bronx, Chicago, Columbus, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, San Antonio and Tacoma. We listened to them tell how they first came to faith in Christ, what was most influential to their growth as Jesus’ followers and how they moved into ministry leadership. Excerpts from 27 of these stories illus-trate how they experienced Jesus as not only their Rescuer, but the newly-in-charge Lord of their lives who matches their challenges with practical solutions.

Educational?After a 22 year old from Columbus learned that he had to put God first he came up against the challenge of not knowing how to read. The push from this deficit was relentless. Today he testifies that “the Bible is the only reason I know how to read now.” A Philadelphia man had a similar story. He was not a reader and did not like to read.


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Then he asked Christ to give him the interest to read and desire to read. Weeks later he was reading Bible until 3 in the morning.

An LA woman described her debilitating home life. Homeless, hungry and alone, her mom’s relationships with an endless parade of men were toxic. Her dad was a drug-pushing gangster who constantly drilled into her that he had wanted a boy and not a girl. Yet she lit up as she described how she avoided the troubled paths of her brothers and sisters by turning to Jesus--that he has come through for her time and again, such that now she lives in free housing, has good friends and is even in school.

Economic?A Tacoma teen said they never had money to do anything. This was a relentless force in his life, always telling him that there was no way to win. “It was like a 16 round fight with Tyson but somehow I hung in there…I had realized that the sin of the world still creates the problems we experience so, in spite of all my friends except one telling me it was stupid, I decided to follow Christ. Now we’re starting college, trying to get our degrees, and still never have enough mon-ey…but Christ is supplying us with so much more that everything else is irrelevant; we’re overcoming and are victorious because of Jesus.”

From the Bronx came this story of Jesus’ answering prayer: “The phone rang and it was a friend with a job offer from Home Depot. I couldn’t believe it!” She offered that she is overcoming the mental abuse she went through as a child by “taking every thought into captivity for Christ.”

A 20 year old from Columbus credited the Lord for supplying her need to live and grow in a temporary home where she could escape the negative influence of her family and friends.

Another young man from Tacoma has experienced too much in his short life. A teen dad trying to do right by his 16 year old wife, his wounds from an Army tour in Iraq left him wondering if there was any justice. God hid a promise in his heart, assuring him that the Lord himself would orchestrate justice while restoring him as a hus-band and father. This included providing a job. “God fulfills his promises and keeps his word…God taught me to de-sire him alone and depend on him solely… The Holy Spirit causes me to think different every day.”

Basic health and safety?This statement from one young woman was startling…and amazing: “We are in a witness protection program from an abusive and dangerous step-dad so I’ve moved a lot. Also had to really trust the Lord with finances, so I got in the Word a lot and that was a big deal since I had ‘trust issues’ before this.”

“Faithfulness does not always lead to success,” a Philly man asserted. “But knowing Christ covers both success and fail-ure.” His father had been brutally murdered when he was 5 years old and he grew up in poverty.

A rough neighborhood was a common story. One Chicago man said that, in spite of the fact that they were homeless a couple of times, his parents resolved that they would be grateful to God for his goodness. Even so, from 14-17 he was targeted for some abuse because of his strong stand for Christ in high school. Young women wanted to sleep with him because it would be “like a badge, getting a virgin.” His sexual temptations were se-vere and he faced them alone, with Christ’s help. In fact during his senior year he had to eat his lunch in the library alone because he’d bring his Bible and people would throw food at him. “I was ridiculed. That was not a fun year! My teachers let me stay at school until 7pm or 8pm and I saw God’s grace in that because I didn’t want to go


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home.” A teen leader from San Antonio also experienced bullying, telling us how people tried to constantly put him down through verbal and physical abuse. “I needed help,” he said. “The only person that could help me was God. I went to him to ask him for help.”

We met a young man who had been sexually molested for 2 years. That experience was part of the constant filth in his life, leading to sexual addictions, struggles and not being able to figure out who he really was. Now, as he learns how to dwell on the Lord he is receiving from God’s hand the gift of a true, hopeful new identity. Simi-larly, a teen leader overcame being sexually assaulted and abused by becoming a follower of Jesus. She is now learning to trust people again.

A New Yorker told about how her eating disorder came from her poor self image. When she discovered how much God loves her she moved into the place where she says “this is what you have to work with Jesus” and feels like the Lord constantly reminds her that since He called her He will equip her. She’s not fixating on how inca-pable she feels but is “always thinking that God is capable.”

If it wasn’t for her house catching on fire one Philadelphia woman is certain she would not have come to know the Lord at her young age. She called it “A blessing in disguise,” affirming that “God knew what he was doing and used it; nobody got hurt but somebody got saved!” The way God gets our attention through hardships can point will-ing listeners to his great love for us. One young man decided to become a follower of Jesus about a week after some Bloods with an AK were driving past his brother and friends looking for trouble. This 22 year old lives actively today to rescue and shield middle schoolers with the love of Christ through YFC in Tacoma.

Spiritual and moral?One 21-year old from the Bronx told us that when she went off to a secular college she had decided to become counter-cultural by putting God first. That led her to go on a “man fast” and caused her to re-label her once-justified racial prejudice as sinful anger that needed to be overcome. It probably originated with an abusive fa-ther…but the Lord’s healing has allowed her to forgive her earthly father and pray for him.

Such progress can be uneven, at best. As one 27 year old from Columbus said, “God works kinda slow and you have to be patient to let him change you as opposed to doing it on your own. [It’s] really, really hard, but it is rewarding to see what God has pulled me through. I wanted to quit, but never did.” A Miami man struggling with substance abuse illustrated how important it is to sell out for Christ: “nothing worked…God left Christ as my only option…my way of escape.” A woman from Tacoma who said she was wired to look for love in all the wrong places turned to God because it was the only way she could be loyal to her husband while he was in prison. Her strategy? To sub-merge herself in God’s Word every night.

This theme of ‘push through to breakthrough’ is repeated by another who began trusting God in his relation-ships with women. He found out by going God’s way that God had his back during hard times. As he moved into ministry leadership this learned trust posture with the Lord served him well, allowing him to trust that oth-ers’ lives are in Gods hands not his. Untroubled by questions of self-doubt or worry, he keeps moving forward. The secret, as he says, is to “…see life and time as God’s and not my own.”

Sometimes the Lord’s active delivery is seen in a remarkably positive perspective acquired on the other side of severe loss or disappointment. For instance, a Miami man had dreams of playing football in college but wasn't recruited by any college. After high school, he thought his opportunity to play football was over. He believes


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that “…God took football away so that I could trust him with my future and my life. He put my perspective in the right place. Then the Lord allowed me to play football again!” A similar new viewpoint was acquired by a woman who had a child when she was 21. She wasn’t ready for it. In fact, if she would have realized she was pregnant before the 5th month she says she would have had an abortion. Now she is sure that such experiences should not be wast-ed…”that’s often how God lets us know what he wants us to do. I was reminded that my life was not over. God has more for me.”

Civic?It’s not easy to trust Christ when life’s circumstances are so difficult. A Chicago man explained why: “I had to put some time for studying and cultivating a relationship with Jesus Christ to separate the truth from the hype. I just had to dig deeper. I wanted to really know Christ…” As an African American male he felt like there was an unspoken pride that kept him in isolation and prevented him from asking for help. He called it the “four blocks mentality…Where I grew up, most of my friends would only stay within a four block radius of their homes. I had to teach myself that the 4 blocks was not my world.”

Here’s what one Miami man shared: “My experience has been a roller coaster ride. Everything was good for a while. I was going through the motions but there wasn't any substance in my life. In high school, I turned away from God and found what I was looking for in the streets. I went to prison and evaluated what I was living for. I ran to Christ in prison for protection. The relationship with Christ wasn't there yet--he was my protector for that time. After I was released I turned my back on God. Went back to the streets and became addicted to drugs. Through that, I started to pray and ask God to be-come real to me. Up to that point I was going through the motions. I completely surrendered my life to God to do as he pleases. I had chosen the path that was not in the will of God; because of that I had to learn the hard way. I don't want an-other kid to have to go through what I've been through. I want to be a role model for them on how to live. That shapes how I allow God to shape me as a man for Christ…”

From one teen leader: “I had to decide to take that leap to really follow Christ and get into a new comfort zone…My mom saw the change in me and then wanted to make a change in her own life to become a follower of Jesus; so to see her growth as an overcomer--that’s made me want to overcome my struggles more so now I can talk to her about the Bible and our experi-ences and now we can talk about all of this. I never had that sort of relationship with her before. So her coming to Christ strengthened our relationship together and also helped my following of Christ.”

A landscape of teenage realities

No one is offering a serious apologetic today for how American teens are better educated than ever before. Out of 27 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. ranks No. 22 in high school graduation rate (77 percent in 2010). While it’s well below the OECD average of 84 percent, this graduation rate is an improvement over 2000, when the U.S. secondary school graduation rate was 70 percent. At the other end of the public education spectrum, the U.S. enrolls 69 percent of 4 year olds in some form of early childhood education. This number is considerably less than the OECD average of 81 percent. And the story for kids from disadvantaged back-grounds is even more bleak. Children of less educated parents are much less likely to attend college than those from other OECD nations--the U.S. ranks 26th of 28 in this comparison. Approximately one in every 12 young people be-tween the ages of 16 and 19 are not attending school and are not working.

In the meantime, young people experience heightened degrees of economic uncertainty. Of those who are between 6 and 17 years of age, 21 percent live in poverty. Almost half of them live in families with incomes less than 50 percent of the federal poverty level. In fact, according to the Population Reference Bureau’s analysis of 2008-11 U.S. Census


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Bureau data, 32 percent of all children under the age of 18 live in families where no parent had regular, full-time em-ployment over the course of a year. Further, 40 percent live in families where 30 percent of all household income is dedicated to housing costs. An alarmingly high segment of our youth population grow up without feeling much economic stability.

Bullying is part of our national conversation. Sexual and physical abuse are rampant. For every hundred teens be-tween the age of 14 and 17, child protective services agencies confirmed 15 who are victims of neglect, abuse or mal-treatment. Eight percent of this same age group are dependent on illicit drugs or alcohol in a way that is dangerous to themselves or others. Nearly the same rate of females between age 15 and 19 are mothers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the attempted suicide rate among high schoolers increased from 6.3 percent in 2009 to 7.8 percent in 2011. Nearly one in every ten female high schoolers attempted suicide in 2011.

In the meantime the National Study of Youth and Religion has supplied us with a string of new descriptors to talk about the way most young people approach faith: moral therapeutic deism. Teens believe in a God who is out-there in some vague way, legitimately ruling about matters of right and wrong. This God is also caught in a bit of a bind. He is the source for happiness (and culprit when things don’t go well) but he is not viewed as a personal God who is intimately connected to and invested in the details of their lives. Consistent with postmodern thinking their faith is not rooted in historical orthodoxy nor is truth-seeking the foundation of their spiritual journey (Smith & Detoni; Dean). Rather they construct personal meaning from their existing knowledge bases to address the moral and spiri-tual domains (Smith). To further complicate matters, Chap Clark has offered compelling research to describe how teens feel widely abandoned by adults in spite of the money thrown their way through a multitude of programs (Clark).

The largest cheating scandal in Harvard’s history took place in May 2012. It resulted in around 70 students being dismissed from college. Tim Elmore observed how common cheating is and offers three insights into today’s young people that, if true, speak to the erosion of truth or faith in moral decision-making and behavior: 1) pragmatism is replacing principles; 2) individualism is replacing sacrifice; and 3) the pursuit of success is replacing the development of values (Elmore). While technology affords more opportunities to connect than ever before, there is little evidence that this has translated into greater relational health. It just works for kids, as far as they can see. What’s more trou-bling is that they don’t know what they’re missing.

A landscape of inadequate youth work

It was Kenda Dean who connected the dots with an obviously plain conclusion. If our young people embrace a faith that does not resemble orthodox Christianity, who is to blame? Churches, parents and those most invested in youth faith formation have taken their hands off the ship’s steering wheel. It doesn’t take much of a slip in direction to veer far off course (Dean). Huntington University graduate student Jen Bradbury suspected that the students she serves through the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America may have a poor understanding of Jesus. Her mixed method-ology research revealed that 58 percent of her sample (n = 369) believe that it is or could be possible for someone to be a Christian and not believe in Jesus. As she further analyzed her results she constructed Christology scores based upon the number of historically correct answers to questions about Jesus. Straightforward and uncomplicated, these seven questions were only answered perfectly by 9 percent of her respondents. What’s even more alarming, given that all of the research participants were active in ELCA congregations, is that 63 percent answered incorrectly on 3 of the 7 questions. Hardly a passing grade (Bradbury 63).

Jesus’ claims of exclusivity are disregarded in favor of pluralistic harmony. Tolerance is the new absolute. Only 31 percent of self-confessing Christians born between 1980 and 1991 agree Jesus is the only way to heaven (Rainer and


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Rainer 233). Rather than fix youths’ eyes on Jesus as the author and perfecter of their faith (Hebrews 12:2) the preva-lent strategy seems to be to coax ‘Christian behaviors’ out of kids. As a corollary to strategies of ‘sin management’ we enjoin our youth ministry responsibilities as if we were Dr. Phil’s devotees, coaching behavioral change according to a Christian code rather than abandoning ourselves to the supernatural work of Jesus Christ to bring about lasting transformation (Powell, Griffin and Crawford 31-32).

One fascinating way to assess the strength of faith formation is to listen to the content of faith conversations. A sur-prising finding from our national student leadership research linked the way grouped young people responded to interview questions to their effectiveness in reaching their friends for Christ (Rahn and Linhart 138-141). The more openly they talked about God’s activity in their midst the more effective they were in evangelism. Kenda Dean rein-forces the importance of reinforcing faith’s truths through conversational practices: “If Jesus (the Holy Spirit, sin, re-demption, or a variety of other Christian non-negotiables) does not get talked about, he soon fades from teenagers’ awareness, and therefore from their structures of meaning. This does not stop Christ from being present in teenagers’ lives, of course, but it does significantly lessen their ability to recognize or acknowledge his presence” (Dean 140). Words for those who aspire to be Christ’s followers have always been more important than the ‘lip service’ denigration they are often given. Too often current youth ministry practices are extrapolated from a dubious quote mistakenly attributed to St. Francis’: Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary. This shaky foundation justifies practices of verbal restraint in their minis-tries as they mutely point to their deeds of mercy and justice, hoping that they provide enough substance to form faith. Our integrity is not gained by our silence; we simply breed followers of our goodness rather than Jesus Christ.

Concluding thoughts

Against the backdrop of lots of youth-serving activity there is plenty of evidence that our young people are becoming less, not more, resilient. Their crises are crippling their futures. But it doesn’t have to continue.

It’s Youth for Christ’s aim to position followers of Christ alongside hurting young people with a singular message of hope: Jesus is the answer. Leaders prove that their message is credible when they live openly under the Lordship of Christ. Leaders prove that they care about kids when they love them with the love of Christ. Our strategy is simple. We want to connect as many Christ following leaders as possible with as many hurting kids as possible so that Jesus can do his thing.

Modern ministry practices are no substitute for the risen Christ’s work in a young person’s life. Too much activity simply adds to the confusion and risks distracting them from Jesus rather than attracting them to Jesus. Every day in hundreds of ministry sites across the country YFC demonstrates what has been presented as evidence in this paper. The testimonies herein confirm the power of Biblical truth: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved. As the Scriptures tell us, ‘Anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced’” (Romans 10:9-11, NLT).

Never.


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Works Cited

The Amplified Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Bible, 1983.

Bradbury, Jennifer. Unpublished Culmination Research Project. For Huntington University Masters of Arts in Youth Ministry Leadership. Submitted March 15, 2013.

Chan, Francis, and Danae Yankoski. Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God. Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2008.

Clark, Chap. Hurt 2.0. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011.

Dean, Kenda Creasy. Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Driscoll, Mark. Who Do You Think You Are?: Finding Your True Identity in Christ. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2013.

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