Critical Issues Session

with our pal Steve Pulis.

8 out of 10 kids who graduate from our youth ministries will never set foot into a church again.
What do we do??

National Youth Alive Missionary, Professor of Youth Ministry at CBC, Steve Pulis.

How do we keep kids involved after they graduate? How do we help them with dicipleship?
Luke 9: Luke gave us God's discipleship model. Gave the disciples power and authority to go preach the gospel. Who is this Jesus?? after seeing Jesus perform miracles, the disciples are still overwhelmed at the job before them. They still didn't understand who Jesus was and what He could do.

Your commitment level to Jesus is equal to your understanding of Jesus and who He is as Lord. 'Jesus is my homeboy?' It's convenient to hang out with him, but I can take him or leave Him. If Jesus is truly LORD then you are a slave to Him in every area of life. We are missing the mark in communicating this to our students, therefore the level of commitment isn't what it should be. How do we communicate who Jesus is to our students? {open discussion} not being afraid to go deeper. be a model of living under Jesus' lordship. talking about that with the students, more than just modeling it. Discuss what lordship means, what it means to be sold out for Jesus. (find images to back this up, to share this idea with students) Grow in our own understanding of who Jesus is. Research it more, ask for God to show you more of him. Think Moses on the mountain, seeing God and how it changed him and he in return changed other people.
{back to lecture}
Who do you say that I am?? (Jesus asked) We need to understand that He is the messiah. Jesus defines discipleship. deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me. Jesus calls us to this.
Deny Yourself. Give up your identity. Walk away from how you are known. Thinking about the cross pre-Jesus, the cross only meant death. Jesus was asking a lot. The cross was for condemned criminals. He called for a change in identity. A shift takes place in your spiritual identity. When people see you, do they see Jesus? That is the commitment level Jesus is looking for. Radical self-denial, daily cross-bearing. To be discipled means to be with Jesus. Luke views discipleship as a journey. Jesus takes his disciples on a journey, geographically random, but spiritually intentional. This journey is not an event, but a process that you go through.
How do we emphasize process and not event in youth ministry?
As God uses us we should see the opposition in the world around us. It will cost us. To gain your life, you must lose it. God's economy and justice is different than the worlds. Following Jesus requires everything. Do we make that clear to our students?? Do we effectively communicate what it is we are asking students to do?? We need to ask for a real commitment. Otherwise we are pushing people farther away from God by not asking for a real commitment. Instead of me leading people to Jesus, training students to ask their friends for real commitments.
You need to be able to define 'take up your cross' in a way that a teenager understands. Often times our students won't understand what we were talking about until they've moved on. When things level out a bit, then they will get it. Think about the disciples, when they combined the mission with the things that Jesus told them and they get the big picture. Involve students in the ministry, so it can grow fruit in their lives and get passed on to others.
What you do to reach students is what you should do to keep students. Focus their discipleship on flushing out their faith at school. Their world is their school. Live for God in their world, while still under our covering.


Just a personal aside - I am so amazed at all I am learning this weekend. This is probably the most intelligent conference I've been in so far - and I've been to a fair share of conferences! Anyway, I am super impressed - very excited about taking all that we are learning and taking it home and implementing it.