What Are You Building There?

This post is part of the Youth Connection, a bimonthly article we send as a follow-up to trainings. You can use these posts in your youth ministry. At the end of the article are questions for you to reflect on or for your youth leadership team to discuss.

Anywhere that you and I live or go in the world; we can usually always see someone building something. We may even hear these words spoken by some­one walking by, “Hello….what are you building there?”.

There is something exciting about seeing something being built. Anticipation is always in the air whether we are watching some­thing being built where previously there was nothing or if we seeing something old torn down and something new being built.

I have been a part of several new buildings in the last few years. Our local church that we attend just moved into a new building this past Easter (it was an old building that was totally remodeled into a very contemporary looking church). Person­ally, we were blessed to be able to take part in building the home we live in. And GYMN as a ministry is looking to renovate an old building to give us more office space in order to serve you even better.

There are some things I have learned about building that we may find very helpful in our work of youth minis­try…specifically our work of building disciples for Christ. Having a model or plan is essential. It would be quite crazy to try to build something without a plan or a model. To just begin building and then hoping it turns out ok would be a waste of time, resources and energy. Those involved would be very frus­trated as you would begin building only to tear down sections and redo them as you feel your way through the process. In GYMN we talk about [different stages] of growth in youth. The beginning stages are of the young person being a non-interested unbeliever. Then we serve God as He grows them in Christ and develops them into a mature believer. Let me ask you a very pointed question, “Do you have a plan for your youth?” Not merely a vague hope or wish that you cannot clearly define. Let me ask the question this way, “Can you list the characteristics that you hope to see evident and working in your youth?”

Jesus addressed the issue of buildings and discipleship in Luke 14:25-29, “Now large crowds were going along with Him; and He turned and said to them, If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and broth­ers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost? Other­wise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to fin­ish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him.”

As youth leaders we are building something. We are building some­thing eternal, hopefully. I have met many youth leaders, my­self included, who have spent a lot of their time in the past being busy with activities and programs for the youth. (If we were honest the work may have been for ourselves to feel good about “our” accomplishments of being busy or building a numerically high youth groups…that did not last). So before you raise another “ham­mer” or pick up another “brick” to build a youth group, stop and consider the question. “What are we building here?” Why are we doing these activities? What is the purpose of our weekly meeting? What is the purpose of the camps we do? These are all great questions, but the core and critically important question we could ask is, “What are the characteristics of a youth who is a mature follower of Christ?” What do we hope our youth will become spiritually through our ministries? This is the key for the work we do. It all be­gins with clearly and specifically defining the end goal we should all be striving for.

Now we may be tempted to say, “We want every youth to be a follower of Jesus”. Great, but what specific things would we want to see in their life. A church in the USA organized Scriptures teachings into some­thing they call “30 Core Competencies”. What this means is that they listed 30 core or critical things that a follower of Christ would be competent at or have become or is in the process of becoming. This is the defini­tion of a disciple. Their list answers the question for them of, “A disciple of Christ will…?” To give you an idea and a starting point, they broke their list of 30 into 3 categories of 10 each (I could give you the list, but I think it is impor­tant for you as leaders to create your list together.) I will give you their three categories and if you choose to use them that is ok.

The categories they used were Core Beliefs, Core Practices and Core Virtues (or values).
Here are some examples to get you started (You do not have to follow these three categories. Feel free to be creative and use what is in the hearts and minds of your leaders). Beliefs would include things like: Authority of the Bible, Salvation is found by?, Etc… Core Practices would include areas like: Bible Study, Prayer, Worship, Spiritual Gifts, etc.. (not just knowing but doing!) Last, Core Virtues or Values may include: Gentleness, Joy, Love, Self-control, etc… As you take time to create a model or pro­file of a youth who is a disciple of Christ, do not include a simple list of “bad words” or “dress codes”, etc…. these may be good to know, but they come out of heart issues that need to be taught and understood. This is not to be a list of to do and do not. That would be the list that the Pharisees created.

A local church in my area had great plans for their new very visible building on a main road in town. They put up signs about the new church coming. Construction began…and it seemed to go slowly, but progress was being made. But today, this building stands as not only an eye sore to those who go by, but a bad testimony to those who look on at it. Due to internal church issues and bad leadership planning this church never completed what they started. These people are now people of ridicule from oth­ers. Just as Jesus mentioned that could happen.

I know that you do not want to receive ridicule, but you want to build something for God. You want to build more than a building that will need constant maintenance and repair and will probably one day fall down or be torn down by a future generation. You and I want to build something that is eternal. Not only do we want to build something that is eternal, but something that will multiply spiritually over time. You do not want to build into something, but someone—a living breathing person that matters deeply to God. May we build into people the discipleship characteristics that would reflect the very heart, hands and head of God Himself. He is busy building a place for you and I as well and He will one day say to us well done my good and faithful ser­vant…enter in the joy!

Chris Davis

Reflection and Action Items:

1. What can you and/or your leadership team do to truly develop a pattern to follow for creating disciples? How are you going to create this list of characteristics? Qualities? Attributes? Etc….Consider taking a full-day retreat to work together in de­fining these lists and to back them up with all of the scriptures as well.

2. What other tools could you seek to find the core characteristics of a disciple?

3. Having the characteristics in a list is actually the easiest part. Now you all need to ask:

a. How do we integrate these into our teachings, our activities and programs?
b. How do we measure our effectiveness at this? What times of evaluation can you look back over this list and see how the group or specific individuals are progressing?

4. How are these characteristics being incorporated into your development of the youth leadership team? This group is to be a model for the other youth to follow.

5. How can these qualities of a disciple be taught to:

a. The whole youth group?
b. Within smaller group Bible studies?
c. In one-to-one discipleship times?
d. In active doing types of ministry?:

6. Since Discipleship = Knowledge and Experience, have you remembered to include both knowledge and experience learn­ing into all of the above?