Experience 3

Earl Kreps from Assemblies of God Theological Seminary
(this guy is incredibly funny!)

We are dealing with two kinds of students. The haves and havenots. How do we minister to two radically different tribes of kids? The haves are the kids with the ipods and the pink razors. (hee-hee) All the latest and greatest. (the book Brand Child) These children can managed 5-6 media channels at a time. They are constantly searching for more information. Mark 10 - the rich young ruler. Our response? To crank up the cool factor with them. (doesn't sound like it would work) The problem with that is that it turns christianity into spiritual attainment. Have students are not impressed anyway. The havenots are just so disappointed. They have a very different lifestyle, no family, no built in moral system at home.
Jesus hung out with the people outside of the cultural box. (translate that into today) It's not the healthy people that need a doctor.
Our young people are crying out for a new law, that is transcendant to everything they have already experienced. Our havenots don't need pat answeres. They need love and encouragement and real relationship with Jesus.
The way to move people is to model with your own life. The first person in your church that becomes the soul winner becomes the leader.
Two kinds of graduates. The disciple generation - the stereotype of christian young people. Turning christianity into an ideology. This is our church's dirty laundry.
The other face of graduates is the disappearing generation. After students leave the shelter of home only one of three stays in church. They have been there for relationships, but when the relationship fails, but they don't maintain the presence in church. These pre-adults (twenty to twenty-five) sometimes resurface, but sometimes don't. Faith has become just a life stage. Christianity has become a religion for children and older women.
The Holy Spirit is the only agent of permanent transformation. No program or small group is going to change people long term. Only God can do it. But we can do is create the environment to give the Spirit of the Lord a better opportunity. (warming kids up for what God's going to do) Consider assigning an elder to a student in eighth grade all the way up through high school. Keep in mind with your mentorship relationships that you are not God, remind your students that it's about Him and not you. We don't need to be the celebrity model. Make sure you publicly deny that.
Students aren't taking us seriously, but it's just their life stage. Don't take it personally. What we do for a living is create environments where the Holy Spirit can reach students for Christ. For people with trouble with institutions, it's going to come down to how we live our lives. (integrity, witnessing, living Jesus in front of them) Be inexplicable.
A new model for us, a new perspective. "Christianity" Go back to the basics. Know God the person, really well. Don't try so hard. Students are just looking for a spiritual person. Corinthians 12:1 Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ. Are you Christ-like??