Getting Out Of The Box To Reach Our Youth

Getting Out Of The Box To Reach Our Youth”

Sometimes we have to do things different to get things done right. We may even have to get out of our comfort zones to achieve the success that we may be seeking. Sometimes I think we have God all boxed in, thinking God can only move in these more conventional ways. I think we are going to have to think outside of the box if we are going to reach our youth of today.
Several years ago the Holy Spirit dealt with me about that I needed to pastor our youth. At the time our children’s ministry and our youth ministry were doing good, but I had to admit my focus was on the adults of our church. Malachi chapter 4 talks about a time when the heart of the fathers will be turned to the children and the heart of the children will be turned to the fathers. The Holy Spirit began to change my heart. My focus and vision began to include our youth in a greater way.
During this time I began to learn what it meant to get out of the box. The first thing I felt challenged to do was to get my associate to take my place and minister to the adults on Wednesday nights where I could spend more time with our youth. For a season I actually took over the youth ministry and ministered to them. This was needed because I was able to get the mind of Christ on some changes that were needed to take place with our youth ministry. If I hadn’t taken this step, I don’t think we could have gone to the next level of reaching our youth. One thing I learned from our youth is that they define love by our time spent with them and our willingness to spend our money on them. Actually, before we had done very little of either one.
My next challenge was to spend money to bring kids outside of the church into the church. I had to get out of the box for sure on this one, because this would break all traditional molds. We bought video games, foos ball tables, and a pool table. My thought was if we can get kids to come to church for the games, then we can share the love of Christ with them. It worked so well that we had to build another building for our youth. It worked because we got out of the box.