Contextual Youth Ministry in a Diverse World

I was recently given a really cool opportunity to write an article for Youth Specialties. For those of you who don't know, Youth Specialties is one of the largest youth ministry organizations in the US and a major publisher of youth ministry resources. The topic I was given to write about was "contextual youth ministry." The final product was an article I entitled Contextual Youth Ministry in a Diverse World. Give it a read, and let me know what you think!

*Shout out to Terry Linhart over at y.m.e.r.g.e. for helping me with the writing/editing/publishing process, and for helping shape my thinking for this article!

Huntin' for a Job...

Well, I'll be home in less than three weeks now--that much I know. What I don't know is what exactly I'll be doing once I get home. I'm planning on hanging out in northern Indiana for a while to spend time with my family and friends. However, odds are I'll be back on the mission field sooner rather than later--hopefully within the next year. So I guess the big question is: what will I do for the next year?

Being a person whose life has revolved around youth ministry for the past several years, my heart is definitely in investing in the lives of young people. Unfortunately, a year (or less) isn't really an ideal amount of time to get plugged into full-time youth work. It's really not fair for any church, and it's especially not fair to the young people. This puts me into kind of a tough spot. I certainly don't want to "waste" a year of my life just hanging out and waiting for God to reveal His next big plans for my life. After such a stretching year this year, the last thing I want to do is spend a year getting comfortable and not really pouring myself into young people, which is clearly God's calling on my life. But I also realize that I can invest in people's lives no matter where I am and no matter what I "do" vocationally.

I've considered even just doing some substitute teaching. Sure, the pay's not great, but it's a chance to hang out with young people every day, and it's obviously an extremely flexible job--I can just work whenever I want to work. Other than that, I suppose I can get some other job in the "secular" world--maybe work as a waiter or something. I think it would actually be kind of cool to be out in the "real world" for a while and really get a chance to be salt and light.

Most of all, I'm just praying now (and you can be praying, too!) that God will open up the right doors for me and make things clear. And who knows...maybe He will use you to show me the right door? I know that most of my readers are friends or other people involved in ministry in some way--or both. If any of you have a great job idea, feel free to let me know! Like I said, I'm not sure a full-time youth ministry gig is the best option for me right now, but I'm not totally ruling that out, either. Besides that, as far as ministry goes, I think I can add value to a church in the areas of worship and/or missions. I have a passion for worship through music and have been leading in that capacity for several years now. And, obviously, missions is my life and passion as well. Other than that, as I said before, I'm more than open to any job ideas you might have in the secular realm as well.

Okay, my shameless plug for myself is finished. Leave me a comment here on the blog or shoot me an email at ackosmo22@aol.com if you have any thoughts/suggestions. But, most of all, just keep praying that God's hand would continue leading and guiding me in every step I take in life, and pray that I would be sensitive to His leading! Thanks so much to all of you who have been praying faithfully!

Teaching in Tanzania

While in Tanzania, Bhuti and I taught several courses in disciplemaking youth ministry to 13 students from all over Tanzania. These youth workers have been studying through J-Life for about 9 months now, with 9 more months of training to go. Every two months, they come together at the Mission to Unreached Areas Church (MUAC) training center in Mlandizi, where they go through two weeks of intensive training in class. Then, they head back to their communities to begin implementing the things they are learning in class. I taught four courses over the two weeks on the following topics: Relational Ministry, The Church as a Medium for Discipling Youth, Spiritual Leadership, and Recruiting Leaders. I'm certainly no professor (although I do have a sweet beard!), but I enjoyed the chance to pass on some of the things that I've learned to others.

Enjoy the pics...

Bhuti and me with our students. In case you can't spot me, I'm the big hairy white guy in the back.

Lecture time!

George, Zaca, and Grace working hard on an assignment.

Loveluck, Zepha, and Frida hittin' the books.

Nema, Biggie, Henry, and Apasaria working hard!

And a few more pictures of me teaching. All of the teaching was translated into Swahili by Zepha.

We had a lot of fun together!

It was such a great opportunity for me to be able to invest in the lives of these guys and gals for a couple weeks. We learned a lot together. Like I said, I really enjoyed the teaching, and in some capacity I feel like teaching might play a role in my future ministry. Only time will tell!

MSM Fall Retreat

Getting ready to head off for the weekend on our Middle School Ministry Fall Retreat. We're trying out a new venue this year, heading over to Prairie Camp's new Retreat Center. I'll be leading worship for the retreat, and former youth pastor and current church planter Jeremy LeVan will be speaking. Looking forward to a great weekend of unplugging from all the distractions around me and diving into deeper relationships with some pretty cool middle schoolers!

Demolition Derby at Hope Ministries

Last night was our first Community Impact event of this school year. The high school Impact Groups teamed up and went over to Hope Ministries in South Bend to do some grunt work at their Family Life Center. We helped clear out an area that will soon be renovated to provide more housing for homeless men. The room was filled with old furniture that needed to be dissembled/destroyed and discarded in dumpsters. For this task, we were given pick-axes and sledge hammers (no joke!), and we had ourselves quite the demolition derby...it was awesome! Check out the pics below:

Note: only one sledge hammer was harmed during the demolition process (my bad), and only three people went home bleeding last night (I'm really hoping my tetanus shot is up to date!!!). Despite those few minor setbacks, it was a GREAT night serving a GREAT organization that does so much for the "least of these" in our community.

All-Star Retreat

Heading off an an overnight retreat tonight with our All-Star Student Leaders for this coming school year. The goal is to cast the vision and dream dreams together with this core group of students and let them take the vision and run with it. I think God is going to show up in a big way this weekend. Can't wait! 

Proud Moments in Youth Ministry

This morning Seth and I officially kicked off the graduation season with the first of many graduation celebrations. This particular celebration, however, was unique in that it was an 8th grade graduation ceremony. Now, I remember my last day of 8th grade, and I remember some kind of an awards ceremony (somewhere I've got a trophy or two to commemorate that day!), but it was nothing like this...this was a students-dressing-up-auditorium-filled-with parents-cameras-flashing-band-playing-people-cheering-diploma-
handing-out-full-fledged graduation ceremony. Basically, it was the real deal. My pessimistic thought for the day was that middle schools have started holding these ceremonies because so many kids (40% was the statistic I heard today) will never graduate high school. For many of them, today is their graduation day--their one and only graduation day.

I digress...

The cool thing about this ceremony were the kids from our youth group whom we were there to celebrate. We were invited by Dylan, the poster child for our student ministry if there ever was one. When I came to St. Mark 3 years ago, Dylan was just entering the 6th grade. We quickly became close friends--in fact, Dylan may have been my very first friend at St. Mark! I have seen Dylan grow and be challenged so much over the past three years. He speaks with wisdom beyond his years, and he's just about the nicest kid you'll ever meet. It was no surprise to me, then, when he walked away from the ceremony today with a handful of trophies for academic excellence and other positive contributions to his school and community.

Samantha "Sam" Decker was the other student of ours involved in the ceremony. Sam has been involved in our student ministry for a couple years now. After being invited to youth group by a friend, she has become one of the core kids in our middle school ministry. The cool thing about her is that she accepted the Lord as the result of our ministry. Not only that, but since becoming a part of our ministry, her mom started coming to church. Her mom also began bringing one of her friends to church, and that woman accepted Christ through the ministry of our church shortly before dying at an early age from cancer. One of the coolest stories you'll ever hear.

But back to Sam...she literally stole the show today. Sam was one of two students in her grade who received all A's this entire school year. She also walked out with another half dozen or so trophies and awards for things such as top orchestra student and outstanding work on the school's TV broadcasting team (by the end of the ceremony they actually gave her a box to carry all of her trophies!). Basically, she dominated!

All in all, it was a proud moment for Seth and me as we watched Dylan and Sam today. God has been doing incredible things in their lives, and it has just been great to play a part in helping them grow. I couldn't be more proud of these two! Way to go, Dylan and Sam!

Seth, Sam, Dylan, and Me.

Things that Stress Students Out...

We had an awesome time at Impact Group last night discussing the worry and stress that we allow to creep into our lives. As an activity, I had each guy and girl in my group of freshman try to list 10 things that stress them out. Here's what they came up with:

• Homework
• Boredom
• Family
• Myself
• Public Speaking
• First Impressions
• School Days
• Long School Days
• Extremely Long School Days
• School
• Tests
• What People Think of Me
• People Being Mad at Me
• What to Wear
• If I'm a Geek, Prep, etc.
• Getting Things Done on Time
• Spending Enough Time with God
• Guys
• Who I'll Marry
• My Future
• Heights
• Future Plans
• Failure
• Getting a Job
• Getting a Haircut
• Grades
• Football
• Getting Up Early
• If and Where I'll Go to College
• Watching the Chicago Bears
• Money
• Exercising
• Doing Devotions
• Getting Enough Sleep
• Catching the Bus
• When I'm Going to Eat

So there you have it...a sneak peek into the minds of 15-year-olds. This is what occupies their thoughts. This is what they worry and stress out about...

User-Generated Content

In an effort to keep up with today's youth culture that thrives off of user-generated content** (the 'web 2.0 generation,' if you will), we are starting a new series tonight called Choose Your Own Adventure. Throughout this series, students are able to vote for different elements of the night including which songs to sing and what topic will be addressed.

The vote is in, and here are the results...

The top 5 issues that the Middle School students chose to address were:

1. Gossip

2. Stress (tie)

2. Lifestyle (tie)

4. Money

5. Parents

Our High School students had these as the top 5 hot-topics they wanted to discuss:

1. Stress

2. Social Justice

3. War (tie)

3. Lifestyle (tie)

5. 3-way tie (Gossip, Parents, Bitterness)

It's always interesting to get feedback from students like this, and as a youth pastor it is helpful to get a feeling for where students are at and what issues are important to them.  Notice that "stress" was very high on the list for both age groups (not too surprising at this time of year, I suppose).  So tonight in both the Middle School gathering and the High School IMPACT GROUPS we begin the series by discussing stress...where it comes from...how we can handle it...and how to avoid it all together.  It should be a great night!  I'm pumped!

**(For a good laugh, this ESPN commercial provides a hilarious parody of this recent 'user-generated content' phenomenon).

Introspection on Israel: Part V

Day 3: Morning Session

My Religion Meets the Master

In the morning session on day 3, South African Mark Tittley, a big voice in the global youth ministry discussion, shared a powerful message with us about Jesus' response to religion. You can listen to this message here. For those who won't take the time to listen, the following are some of the key thoughts I gleaned from him, as well as a few thoughts of my own:

1. Jesus confronts our beliefs.

-Jesus was constantly challenging the beliefs of the people, especially his disciples. Consider the "antitheses" passage in Matt. 5:21-48 in which Jesus continually says, "You have heard that it was said...but I tell you...." Jesus saw through the disciples' faulty belief systems and cut to the heart of the issue. This is still true for us today (if we are willing to listen).

2. Jesus confronts the world around us.

-Jesus' teaching was always in direct opposition to the predominant culture in his day.

3. Jesus confronts the world we live in today.

-This includes the "religious cultures" we find ourselves in.

-We reflect our religious culture and the broader culture in which we live.

-Jesus introduced a "Kingdom of God" that was at odds with both of these cultures.

Mark's concluding message was that we have created a false dichotomy as Evangelical Christians in saying that we choose "relationship" over "religion." Was it not God who created the Jewish religion in the first place? It is not religion and relationship, then, that are diametrically opposed to one another but rather true religion and false religion. True religion has at the very root of it a relationship. False religion has its root in "the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:2).

Sometimes we buy into this false religion...Jesus confronts this even today.

What is Reality?

This past Sunday night, I was blessed with the opportunity to speak to our high school students. Fresh off my trip to Israel, I felt like God had a specific Word for these students about His Kingdom. Contrary to everything I have been taught about homiletics, I didn't take a single note or outline with me that night. I felt like God was writing a message on my heart and that I needed to do everything I could to get my thoughts out of the way so that God could literally speak through me. Pulling a stunt like that would have been a guaranteed "F" in my Effective Teaching in Youth Ministry class in college, but luckily there was no prof. there to grade me (and only one Bethel student who came that night to evaluate our ministry! ha!).

Interestingly enough, I was not nervous going into my message, like I usually am. One thing that I've noticed God has been doing in my life since Israel has been empowering me and giving me courage to be the man that He has called me to be. I really feel like a different person.

So Sunday night I got up in front of the youth, not with my own prepared message, but with a Word from the Lord. God's message for us that night was centered around one question: WHAT IS REALITY? I suppose I'm not surprised that this was what God had for us...I mean, isn't that what Jesus was all about? He spoke about His Kingdom more than any other topic. He warned the people that the Kingdom was at hand. He called them to something bigger than themselves, to something more real than the lives they were so caught up in.

This is what God has been laying on my heart, and this is what I passionately want to impart on my students--that there is something better than the lives we are living. That when we live our lives for ourselves, when we get caught up in our fleshly desires, when our eyes are focused on ourselves, we fall drastically short of the lives God has called us to live. This kind of life is terribly unfulfilling! Yet I believe God has placed inside each one of us a "Big Dream," a vision of who we can be in God's Kingdom and how we can use the passions He has placed inside of us to literally bring the Kingdom of God to earth. It's never too early to begin catching a vision of that "Big Dream" and to begin to take intentional steps toward that dream. One thing is for sure, though--we won't come closer to joining in God's Kingdom by living self-seeking lives or cutting corners in the area of our core character. We live in a culture that says "Do whatever you can to get ahead, to get an edge." The reality is, however, that there are no shortcuts to the Kingdom of God. Living in the Kingdom is an everyday commitment and sacrifice. 

I believe God wants to raise up a new generation of leaders, but His invitation is to come and die in this life, and enter into a more real way of living...life in the Kingdom. I believe we can experience this life NOW!

Are you willing to come and die?

Are you ready for a touch of reality?

God is calling us to battle...are you ready?