Youth Find Their Place

This is an article I wrote for our church Newspaper “The Light and Truth”. Visit www.lakelandbaptist.org to view the whole paper.

March 2009
Reach, Call, Engage, Teach, Equip, these verbs describe what the student ministry at Lakeland Baptist Church seeks to accomplish in leading students to discover their purpose in Christ.  Darrell Halk, student pastor at Lakeland Baptist Church, says that his greatest hope for the students he encounters is that they would know Christ, grow in their faith, and learn to take this knowledge, live it out and share it with others.

One of the programs intended to help reach students with the life changing message of Jesus Christ is Youth Sunday School which meets at 9:00am in the main youth room.  Every Sunday Morning on average one hundred students and teachers meet together to dig into God’s Word and discover more about God’s character.  After an opening assembly, students are sent to smaller Sunday School classes that are divided by grade level so that students can fellowship and learn with students at their same level of maturity in an intimate setting.  Student Life Bible Study Curriculum has been chosen to ensure that when a student who begins in Sunday School at Lakeland in 7^th Grade has covered all the doctrines of the Christian faith and every book of the Bible by the time they graduate high school. 

Revolution, is our Sunday Night Student Worship service where students are called to live a life that magnifies and honors God.  Revolution, held every Sunday night at 6pm in Lakeland Baptist Church’s Family Life Center, incorporates student-led worship and exegetical (verse by verse) preaching through books of the Bible.  Currently the students are involved in a six month study of the book of First John where most of the teaching is done by Student Pastor Darrell Halk and Youth Ministry Intern Thomas Pinckard.  Revolution is a refreshing time to see students changed by God’s Word, lifting songs of adoration to God and praying for one another with earnest expectation of God’s answer.

Fellowship is an important part of every youth ministry.  The earnest hope of the student ministry team at Lakeland is that students find friendship, excitement, accountability and prayer within the Lakeland Student Ministry.  Every Sunday Night following Revolution, students are invited to participate in Sunday Night After Church.  Sunday Night After Church is a time for students to fellowship together while participating in activities such as: bowling, capture the flag, $1.50 movies, dodgeball, basketball, trips to GameWorks, Scavenger Hunts, etc.  Another aspect of Lakeland’s attempt to engage students in fellowship is found in the early morning hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  At 7am, a small group of students gather for Awake, which is a prayer time for youth.  This is a time to pray for their friends, their church, their families, their school and their nation.  True fellowship happens when students gather to pray.

Salt and Light Discipleship is one of the primary weekly programs that is geared to teach students the Word of God so they can continue to grow in their spiritual walk.  Salt and Light meets every Wednesday night at 7pm in the main youth room.  Every semester new classes are offered that students can choose from according to their age, gender and topical preference.  Topics that have been offered currently or in the past at Salt and Light are: Dating, Way of the Mater Evangelism training, Believing God, Purity, Purpose Driven Life, Arminianism versus Calvinism, Christian Book Studies, etc.  As a part of Salt and Light each class takes one Wednesday night out of every month and participates in a local service project.  This ensures that the students are not only learning but putting their faith into practice.  Lakeland Student Ministry has partnered with The Nelson’s Children Center- Denton, Advocacy Pregnancy Center, and Christian Community Action for these Wednesday service projects.

An important part of the Christian faith is to share God’s love with people by meeting the needs that you see around you in your community.  Lakeland Student Ministry seeks to equip students to do ministry by helping them find opportunities to minister to people around them.  In edition to the Wednesday night service projects, Lakeland students have been involved in: home renovation projects across the US and in DFW, distributing clothes and food to the homeless, making thank you bags for local restaurant workers, Lewisville’s Spring Cleanup 2008, Neighborhood Bible Studies and Christian Community Action’s Kids Eat Free program.

In seeking to reach people for Christ, call students to a life of worship, engage students in true fellowship, teach them God’s Word and equip them to serve their community it seems Lakeland Student Ministry has a great plan in place.  If you would like more info on Lakeland Student ministry you can contact Student Pastor Darrell Halk at (972) 436- 4561 or email him at dhalk@lakelandbaptist.org.

 

Calvinism: Idea that is changing our world?

Time magazine has just labeled Calvinism as one of the top ten ideas that is changing the context of our world.  I too have noticed that so many ministers are going back to this doctrine that was embraced by so many of the early reformers like John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, Martin Luther, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine and more recent leaders such as Al Moehler, John Piper. Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler and Francis Schaeffer.

Thought it was interesting that Time picked up on this shift happening in Christendom.  Check it out!!
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1884779_1884782_1884760,00.html?imw=Y

I guess since Thomas suggested that we put our blog links on the latest installment of “The Broadcast” ,our youth newsletter for Lakeland Student Ministry,that I should update this every once in a while to make it worth your visit to the site.

If there is one thing I think I have learned most in my time at Lakeland thus far it is the importance of leading a student ministry that is not just about equipping students with knowledge but giving them opportunities to take that knowledge and use it in life and service to others and our Lord.  How can we expect students to actively live out what they are being taught if they are in a student ministry that makes mission work and service a once a year affair? Youth group should be more than food fights and devotionals.

In teaching through the book of James last year in Revolution, I became convicted that we are called to be a youth group of doers not just those who hear the Word and let it go in and out with out affecting our lifestyle.  That is why we have begun making service part of our Wednesday Night Discipleship program with each class going to assist local missions organizations once every four weeks.  We are also participating in a local missions project May 1-2, 2009 which will be an event where we partner with almost 10-15 organizations in Dallas to assist them in serving the homeless, less fortunate and the battered and hurting in our area.  We also plan to help make and deliver dinner to the Austin Street Shelter in Dallas on August 9th. There are so many other things from adopting a house to restore in Cockrell Hill to our year mission trip that I believe will have a profound impact on our students.

We hope that this consistent focus on living out what they are being taught will build within these students a lifestyle of service and sharing the love of Christ wherever they go.

Faith Required…

I just finished reading a book by Francis Chan entitled Crazy Love .  I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to live out Christianity in the crazy radical way that God has called us to pursue Christ.  So much of what he said really resonated with my heart but one reflective question he asked has been spinning through my mind for the last few days.  I thought it would be awesome to share that quote with you today.

“What are you currently doing in your life right now that requires faith in God?”

A life lived for Christ, is a life lived based on faith.

Thankful for our local body

On this day where we are reminded to remember all the reasons we are thankful, I began to reflect on a comment made by Brock Morgan, in one of my seminars at the National Youth Workers Convention.  Brock said,” If we closed the doors of our church would our community weep or would they care at all?”.  What struck me today is how many people in our community today that aren’t members of Lakeland Baptist Church, when reflecting on what they were thankful for, thought of our church?  How many sat down at their table and felt an overwhelming thankfulness for the way we are reaching to our community? If we closed the doors of Lakeland Baptist Church would anyone care? My hope is many would thank God for Lakeland, but it also challenges me to make sure we are loving Lewisville/ Flower Mound with the love of Christ.  My hope is that in every new month that comes that we will look for new and compassionate ways to reach people with the love of Christ.  My hope is that our motive would not be to gain anything but that people may gain Christ and experience His love.

All that being said, I am extremely thankful for LBC.  I have never felt so loved and supported as I do by the people of Lakeland.  The people of Lakeland are like family to me and have helped Tiffany and I walk through times of joy and times of pain.  We feel so blessed that God has brought us to serve this group of His people called Lakeland Baptist. Thank God for all of you!!

I’m Back!!!!

Here I am again, entering the world of blogging to help release thoughts, ideas and concepts that seems to go unreleased if not expressed here.  I hope to spend more time sharing ideas on religion, sports,reading, culture, food etc over the next few months.

For my return to blogging post, I want to tell you about one of the most amazing family style restaurants in all of the United States.  Tonight, Thomas, Doug and I went to eat at Monell’sin Nashville, Tennessee.  This was my second visit to Monell’s in the last year and once again I was not disappointed but came back to my room feeling like a glutton.

Monell’s is a family style restaurant that serves home cooking style food in quantities unfit for any human to consume, but you consume it all because it tastes so amazing.  Tonight we consumed: 4 main courses (pulled pork, meatloaf, fried chicken, fried catfish), about 14 side dishes, homemade biscuits and cornbread, and topping it off was homemade banana pudding. This is a restaurant that you do not want to ignore if you plan a trip to Nashville.

To top off his amazing night we ended up sharing a table with Vanderbilt University QB Larry Smith Jr and his family.  He was an awesome guy and has great potential to succeed at the college level when it comes his time to lead the offense.  He is a red-shirt freshman from Prattville High School where he was named the state of Alabama’s Mr. Football and lead them to a state 6A title.

Great Food, Great Night

Attn: Youth Pastors

Hope this post finds all of you well. To all those serving in youth ministry, I wanted to see if you would be willing to answer a survey for me.  Since 2004, I have been researching burnout in youth ministry and working on putting together that research into book form. Now that I am done with seminary, I really want to dig into this project.  I wanted to see if you would help me with this research?  Below is the survey, let me know if any of the questions are unclear.  Thank you in advance for your insight into this subject. You can reply here or send to the email listed below.  

• Burnout Survey 
• Name: 
• Church/Organization: Position:  

1.       What do you believe are the common causes of burnout in youth ministry?           
2. What do you believe are some warning signs that you are burnt out or may be on the cusp of experiencing burnout? 
3.   Do you feel burnout is a major issue that is plaguing youth ministers? If yes why do you feel it happens so often?   
4. What are some unfair expectations that you believe are placed on youth workers and how does that affect performance and job satisfaction?  How do expectations lead to burnout?   
5. What are the dangers of comparing your ministry to the ministry of others and how can that affect us personally?  
6.   In your ministry what event/ events have shaken your faith and made you doubt your calling or feel insufficient to lead? 
7.  Share stories of how fellow staff members (senior pastor, education minister etc) encouraged you or discouraged you in your ministry? What impact did this have on your ministry
8.    Share a personal story of when you experienced burnout in ministry.  What caused it? What were your thoughts during that time? What helped you get out of the pit of burnout and be refreshed? 
9.  How important are mentors, family, co-laborers and friends in staying fresh in youth ministry? Why?
10.  What advice would you give youth workers who are beginning to feel hints of burnout?  What are the keys to staying fresh? 
11. What value does your call to ministry have in staying fresh and avoiding burnout? 
12. For someone who is burnout what advice would you give them about how to reconnect with God and allow Him to refresh them?  
13.  Even though ministry takes so much out of you at times, what keeps you going? What makes you desire to keep pouring your life into students? 
14. If this research were to be used in a published book would you be willing for us to use your answers and quote you by name?

Leadership

Allow me to just be transparent for a second, and just say sometimes being a leader is so hard.  With all my heart I want to please God, but sometimes in pleasing God I have to displease people.  That is hard for me, because I have such a desire to please people, to be respected by them and to have them on board with where I am leading.  This is another time in which I feel God is stretching me.  There are great decisions that face me in the coming weeks, vision to be cast and steps of faith to be taken.

God give me the courage to follow you, even when the choices that need to be made may not be popular.  God help me to hear you clearly, let this be your youth ministry and not my own.

Practical Applications for Ministers

Yes, yes, it is finally new post time.  I found this list of practical applications for ministers from a chapel service led by Dr. Jimmy Draper Jr. at SWBTS.  I think this was from my first semester there, but I am not sure.  I thought these might be helpful for other ministers out there.

1) Don’t neglect your personal relationship with God

2) Make time for your family

3) Everyone needs encouragement- be kind

4) Never make decisions when you are depressed or discouraged

5) doubt never means yes

6) be open and honest- be transparent

7) answer all phone calls, mail and email

8.) don’t let anger be a pattern of your behavior

9) Few people make mistakes on purpose

10) Let your preaching be from the Bible

11) There is no excuse for being unprepared to preach

12) Don’t flirt with temptation ( Ephesians 4:27: 2 Corinthians 4:2)

13) Cooperate with your fellow believers

14) Be a good steward of your position, influence and all your experiences

15) Pour your life into a few people

16) Cherish and protect friendships

17) Give credit to others

18) Keep cpnfidences

19) Lead by example

20) No premadonnas in God’s service- you have to earn the right to be the leader

21) You’re not always right so admit it

One Thing

 

I have begun reading a book called ” One Thing” by Sam Storms and already it is renewing my spirit and my focus.  There is one quote that I thought I would share with you today regarding our purpose on this Earth.  Storm says, ” You weren’t created for boredom or burnout or bondage to sexual lust or greed or ambition but for the incomparable pleasure and matchless joy  that knowing Jesus alone can bring.  Only then in Him, will you encounter the life-changing, thirst-quenching, soul-satisfying delight that God, for His glory, created you to experience.”

Remember in all we do, His glory should be the focus and the issue.