Latest / Student Ministry Conversations / 274 | Anchored Faith: Faith That Lasts | SMC Podcast
Transcript
- speaker-0: Hey and welcome back to the podcast. We are in the month of October. Holy cow. ⁓ and we are excited to be back. And we're which, with being in the month of October, we're moving into our new series. And the idea for the month of October is the idea of anchored faith. And how basically when things shake up, which teenagers are dealing with mightily right now between school sports and academics and ⁓ all the other things going on in their lives. Not to mention we're getting into the holiday season and all these things. The idea is when things shake, Christ holds us together. ⁓ and so that's the mindset. The ⁓ the goal for this week or this month really is to hopefully teach students how to avoid uncertainty. ⁓ it is like really, really helpful for leaders to form students whose faith is deep enough to remain rooted when uncertainty and inevit ⁓ when uncertainty inevitably comes. And so with that we're starting off the month with week one, and that is the idea of we want to build a faith that lasts. ⁓ and it's I David, I find it really funny because ⁓ we do a ⁓ my family every morning before school, we have like a a di like a devotional book for teenage boys. And so we sit down as a family and read a devotional every morning before the kids go to school. And today was about faith, ironically. ⁓ but it it brought up the mindset of just like, you know, what does faith look like? Why is it important to have faith? What like what is what is the purpose of faith and how do we allow it to like be something that's beneficial not only to us, but it can hold us through things. And so I feel like that devotional, like, literally is dead on what we're talking about today. but The idea is kind of just that we all know the moment. We all know this idea of camp. We know retreats, we know conference, we know the incredible night of worship. ⁓ maybe you could maybe you can remember where you preached a a lesson one night and you're just like, Man, this is clicking. You can tell it's connecting. Students are listening, nobody's whispering, nobody's throwing anything, which is magical. Which I mean, in all re in all reality, by youth ministry standards, that already feels like revival. ⁓ I mean, when when people aren't throwing anything and they're actually listening. Yeah. Interfog. But Yeah, but then it doesn't stop there, dude. 'Cause like then worship starts and they're praying and they're crying and they're encouraging each other and praying for each other. And as a youth pastor, you're thinking, like, man speaker-1: Lights come down. We ⁓ all getting raptured. speaker-0: This is it. Like this this is the moment. This is what we've been praying for. And those moments are beautiful and we shouldn't be cynical about them, but like God uses these moments for good. But there's another question that we have to ask. We do church camp. We do mission trip. We do conferences. What happens six months later? What happens six weeks later? What happens when there's no worship band that sounds like the one as good as the camp bought or brought in? What happens? I mean outside of outside of our church camp, if you wanna I'll just What happens when the student isn't surrounded by their Christian friends all the time? What happens when prayer feels boring? speaker-1: But It's all does. speaker-0: What happens when scripture feels difficult? When they experience disappointment? What happens when they leave our ministry? ⁓ because the goal of student ministry can't just be producing students who have powerful experiences of Jesus. Like we've talked about that before. We have to move out of the idea of events or and move into the idea of like this of this resting spot to where like this is home for them. Like they spiritually they're finding where they need to be. And it's not just an event, it's not just a moment, it's a lifestyle or a lifetime. And so ⁓ we want students who want to learn and who do learn how to walk with Jesus. ⁓ two of the or th those are different things. So this this event, this church camp or this high energy, high spiritually responsive activity, ⁓ produces a reaction. Like they they re they respond to the spirit and that's a great thing. I don't think we need to downplay that. But the other half of it, the other one develops roots. And that's where we need to be focusing. And so when Jesus tells us the parable of parable of the soils in Mark 4, he describes seeds that initially spring up quickly and that's camp. That's mission trip. That's conference. Where they're like, ⁓ I can't wait to go back to camp so we can do that again. It's like, why don't we do that tomorrow? Like, ⁓ why don't we have that motivation and that desire to like encounter God in such a mighty way on a week to week basis? It looks alive. There's growth, there's excitement in all of those things. That's what draws students into them. They get they have no d outside distractions. They're a hundred percent focused in on being around people that are like minded and worshiping Jesus. And that's a really, really cool thing. But Jesus says, look, it has no roots. So like when difficulty came it didn't last. And that's a sobering picture for student ministry because something can look spiritually impressive without it being spiritually deep at all. So maybe the question that we need to start asking, and maybe David, you have something on this, is how strongly did students respond? And maybe it's isn't excuse me, I'm sorry, read wrong. maybe one of the questions we need to start asking isn't how did students respond? Maybe it's what are we doing to help their faith take root? Where are we doing the practical aspects of where they can actually take it and apply it to their life so they can actually see it? Monday through Friday, on the weekends, everywhere else, not just Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings and Sunday nights. speaker-1: Yeah, so kinda long-winded answer. Well, all of mine are, but anyway. ⁓ I am currently in the process of of writing a book, which is terrifyingly dumb of me to do, but I'm gonna do it anyway because like God is putting on my heart, so I'm doing it. anyway, to set it up. So it it's a book about the life and death of Judas, which is kind of humorous because it's not really about Judas, it's about us and how we respond. But the thing that I have found so I spent a year essentially ⁓ researching and and trying to read as much information and understand kind of the the timeline of Judas and his early days and there's really not just a ton out there ⁓ to start with mostly because people just don't even want to talk about Judas. He's the villain, he's cast away, that's it. but the thing I thought about, like one of the the questions in the process of of kind of formulating this this book was how does somebody eat at the table with Jesus, spend time with him, see the miracles, hear his teaching Teaching, feel the love of Jesus and turn around and do what he did for such a small payout. You know, and the thing that I keep thinking about is like part of the reason why I think so many of us today struggle in our relationship with Jesus and in our walk and our faith is that Being next to the vine is not being rooted. Like if you think about it as a plant, ⁓ and I and I spoke at a conference, ⁓ actually the same conference Brent spoke at ⁓ back in August and the the theme essentially or the conference was called Rooted and I was I was tasked to talk about this book. And I really wanted to kind of tie it to the theme of rooted. And so I was like, okay, how how does this work that applies to some of the other conversations that are happening? Because there were several breakouts. ⁓ and I kept thinking about Judas being so close to Jesus and yet completely falling short of you know, totally missing the mark, you know. And so it's like, how does this happen? How does somebody spend so much time and I and and God gave me this plant metaphor, which is hilarious as well, because I know nothing about plants. ⁓ I literally had to ask my wife about this to understand. But anyway, so there's a a a process called propagating. Most of y'all probably know what that is. But for people who are like me and didn't know this, ⁓ you have a plant. So imagine you have this plant and ⁓ my wife likes the the ones that are very viny and just kind of sprawl out ⁓ with leaves. There's no flowers or anything. It's just that. and so after a while you can take a piece of that plant and plant it or essentially put it in a jar of water and what will happen is over time it will sprout roots and once it sprouts enough roots you then move it from the jar into a small vase with some soil and then the roots actually start to take take shape and then it starts to form a new plant. So from the literal big plant, you take a leaf, let it start to grow roots, and then you put it in a new new a new pot and then it takes off and it's now its own big thing. You can keep propagating, keep propagating. Next thing you know you have all these plants. So it The interesting thing in all of that is like If I took that little that little plant ⁓ that we took off the off the big plant and I didn't give it any water, no soil, nothing, and I just sat it next to the plant, would it take root? Truth be told, it wouldn't take root. You have to have you have to have water, you have to have sun, and you have to have a little bit of nutrient-rich soil before it could ever really survive. So for this plant to not only stay alive, But to actually thrive, it has to take root in soil, in water, and in sun. And if we think about the Christian life in that way, maybe the soil is the word of God, maybe, maybe the sun is prayer, maybe, maybe the the soil or the soil is worship. I mean you can plug in anything you want, but just simply being next to the vine isn't gonna get the job done. And I think for us as students, we think if we're showing up to church, if we're having conversations, if we're, you know, stuff like that, then or let's be totally honest, if I hang out with the good Christian kid who seems like their life is totally together, something's going to rub off on me. And I'm going to I'm gonna it it's all gonna just come together. But if we're not putting the time and the effort and the work into it, we can't survive. We actually have to take root. To not only survive but to eventually start to thrive and then be able to reproduce from that point. And so spiritually, our students, I think the ones that are struggling the most are the ones that aren't really trying. Just showing up isn't enough. And we we say all the time that it is the more I think about it, the more I'm like, that can't be enough. It's a great start. Sure. It doesn't take away the effort, but if we stop at just showing up and we don't actually start applying the things that we're hearing and and put some effort into, you know, and intentionally work our our faith, we're gonna walk out those doors. Eventually it's going to stop being fun. Sure. Event and here's what's really happens. We talk about this on the podcast. So many people leave church because youth is fun and it's it's designed for them. Yeah. They are intentionally and radically pursued by our team to make sure that they have a a rich and developing faith and then they become an adult and nobody else is and or I wouldn't say nobody, but you don't get as much intentionality as you did as a kid in in youth ministry and stuff like that. So now all of a sudden it's totally on you. And if you weren't active at that time, so many people walk away because they're just like, ⁓ church doesn't feel like it's for me anymore. speaker-0: Yeah. Well, well in different in all honesty, we're doing a disservice to the youth students because like we're not preparing them for a church that is way different than what we are presenting as church. Yeah. And so like but going back to your analogy for the plant, like I mean Jesus said it clear, I am the vine and you are the branches. Apart from me, you do not exist. Like like you're done. And so like you have to be connected. You can't be next to the vine. Like I don't I don't receive the benefits of being a part of the vine if I'm just standing there. And so I think that's I think that's super super important because in all reality being next to the vine is this idea of like, ooh, that's a pretty vine. Like I really like that vine. That's a really nice vine. Like you're you're looking at it, you might have an opportunity to gaze and see the beauty of it, maybe even see the need of it, but like you're not attaching yourself to it at all. And so like the thing is, is like Students gravitate towards divine when they're here, regardless of whether they're connected to it or not. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. They remember camp, they remember retreats and mission trips, they remember those meaningful worship nights, but like unless they use the opportunity to become spiritually formated have spiritual formation, like it it ends there. They can remember those nights, but there's no opportunity for that to grow. And so the formation usually happens much slower. And while it might take a couple weeks to develop roots, it takes years for it to grow into a full plant. Okay? And so the idea is when they read like it this formation is happening, these roots are beginning to develop, ⁓ if you're even going to this propagation idea of like the roots are growing. when they read scripture and nobody's checking in on them. The roots are growing when they apologize to someone for s wronging them. The roots are growing when they obey God and their obedience costs them something. It happens when they show up to church and even though they're not particularly excited about it. It happens when they experience disappointment and keep trusting and that's difficult because those things aren't near as exciting to broadcast in their lives. It's not near as exciting to put that on Instagram. Like, hey, today was miserable, but I'm still going to church. Like like I mean you're not gonna see yeah, you're not gonna see that on a student ministry like on a student's Instagram page. Like, today was terrible, but s I'll ch I'll see you at church. Like, it's not gonna happen. ⁓ speaker-1: Actually, you know what? I'm gonna I'm gonna actually share this because I just think it is really going absolutely into that. ⁓ so there's a guy in our Walk group that anyway, he's going through a really hard time. He's got double pneumonia and they found a clot. Anyway, he gave sent us an update this morning and he said, Yesterday was filled ⁓ with not great news. It was discovered that I not only have pneumonia in both lungs, but now there's a clot somewhere and I have fluid filling the lining around my heart. Have been in the hospital since Sunday and now waiting to transfer ⁓ for a lot more testing. ⁓ praise our father, the Holy Spirit has never been more powerful and comforting. And then please keep my wife, children, and grandchildren in prayer. To Jesus, all praise and glory. He is absolutely worthy. And I'm so grateful that I get to. speaker-0: Heck yeah, dude. speaker-1: Service I'm like, that's roots. That's exactly what you're saying. It's like, yeah, so I got terrible news. I feel like crap, but he's still worshiping and praising. Like this is the guy that like incredible human being. Yeah. Absolutely incredible human being. And all of us were just like, wow, like I would love to strive to be that faithful in the midst of some really tough, you feel like crap. And he's literally sitting in a hospital bed telling us how good God is. Like speaker-0: Yeah. Dude, I'm telling you. I'm telling you. Like and and we've had similar in our church as of late too. But those are roots. And one of the dangers of student ministry is actually accidentally training student the students to like associate God's presence primarily with intensity. Like when the spirit hits hard, that's when Jesus is there. Like that's that's terrible. Like we can't do that. Like we have to teach The idea that like God is just as present and just as faithful in ordinary circumstances. Like and the thing is is like we don't though because a lot of times youth is saying, look, if the music is powerful, then God is moving. If I'm emotional, God is near me. Like all these things, like I feel super like strong in my faith when camp happens. Like but we we fail to teach them the idea of like, you know Following Jesus feels ordinary too. Following Jesus sometimes is miserable. Like and not necessarily miserable in the idea of like, Gosh, I hate you, Jesus, but like it's more in the idea of like, Man, life is terrible right now, but I still serve a God who loves me. speaker-1: Yeah, and and sometimes and let's be totally honest, sometimes our circumstances are so rough that we're just like, Jesus, how dare you let me go through this? Yes. And and you know, sometimes and there's probably somebody who's listening going, You can't tell God, yes you can. Yes you can speaker-0: They did it in the chosen at least five times. speaker-1: Right in the so that makes it okay. But I Sorry. No, no, I love it. That here here's the thing. Like we can't say that, but yet if you thought it, Jesus already knows. If you felt it, even even if you didn't form a phrase in your mind, but the the there's a feeling of resentment underneath that you haven't even recognized. Yeah, God knows that too. So y there's nothing you can say, think, feel, or do that Jesus doesn't already know and that he can't handle. and so it's like that's the beauty of grace is that it makes life relying K. Thank you, Matthew, for giving us the words that sometimes we just don't know how to say. speaker-0: Yeah. Fair. Yeah, wouldn't that be a wonderful thing? Like Matt Thiessen replies to this and is like, dude, I love your podcast. Totally saw your reference. speaker-1: Well, I I do get a kickback for every ⁓ for every ⁓ John Corman and Matt Thiessen ⁓ quote. They ⁓ they personally text me and tell me ⁓ how grateful they are and then they give me tickets to their show. It's great. speaker-0: Someone what actually builds room ⁓ speaker-1: I was like, really? ⁓ speaker-0: ⁓ so but with that, like I I love the dynamic of like, you know, we have to teach this ordinary faith idea and this ordinary faith mentality. And like so the question is what develops a durable faith? Hopefully you know this by now and you're practicing this on your own, but like it's nothing revolutionary. There's no magical phrase or magical sentence, there's no magical prayer. Okay, it's scripture. Read it. It's prayer, do it. Like It's being in Christian community. It's worship, service, confession. It's obedience. And this is one of those things that like these practices Christians have returned to for generations. The challenge isn't finding something new, it's helping students understand why these practices matter. We shouldn't tell teenagers, ⁓ read your Bible. Help them learn how. You can't just tell them you need to pray more. Teach them how to pray when they don't know what to say. You can't just tell them that church is important. You have to show them why Christian community is essential. We sometimes complain that students aren't spiritually disciplined while assuming they know how something like spiritual disciplines works. You have to teach them how to practice these things. For instance, right now, and this is me and David were in the same spot last night. Me and my ⁓ me and David both have sons that play hockey and hockey in West Texas, who would have thunk it? ⁓ but street hockey, but it's still hockey. ⁓ we don't we're we're too hot to have ice outside. speaker-1: Although we would love some. Yeah. ⁓ speaker-0: We would take it any day. But with that being said, like this idea, like so David's son's on his second season of hockey and my son literally had his first game last night and then he was he was starting to like learn how to skate and they were like, Hey, we need goalies for this season and he was like, I can do that speaker-1: Nobody does that, by the way. speaker-0: ⁓ okay. You don't know how to play hockey yet, let alone be the most arguably the most important position in on the rink. And like most. Yeah. But with that he was like, I I can do it. I was like, okay. And so like this is that idea of like I could just throw him out on the rink and be like, Alright, go play goalie. speaker-1: All the speaker-0: really frustrated when he didn't know what to do. Or he can sit in practice, he can be taught by other goalies. He can watch videos of how to do training and how to do warm-ups and how to do stretches and how to do ⁓ like the best practice for like falling down ⁓ and covering the puck. All those things like he can take time to learn about those things and then he becomes good at them. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: But it takes that intentional time of practice. So like this going back into what I was saying is like, we can't just tell them, hey, read your Bible more, pray more, and go to church 'cause if we don't tell them or show them or instruct them the importance and how to do it, they're gonna be like, Okay, well I read the Bible. I didn't do it like it didn't do anything. Like so Healthy student ministry doesn't make students depend on the youth ministry, and I cannot preach that from the rooftops enough. If you are the like if your ministry is the reason students have faith, you're doing it wrong. It teaches it well, a healthy youth ministry should teach students how to depend on Christ. Okay. They have to gradually take ownership of their faith because eventually we won't be there to remind them. Okay. So I feel like some of this is really, really s like simplistic, but like me being in my sixteenth year of youth ministry, I will be honest and say probably for the first five to seven years of my ministry this was not a focus. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. speaker-0: Like I had to think and be like, there is some importance in that. It is more than me just telling my kids to read the Bible. I have to show them how to read the Bible. Not only how to read the Bible, I have to teach them how to study the Bible. Mm-hmm. How to take notes. How to apply the notes that they've taken. All of those aspects. Like I can't just give my son the equipment and say, Hey, go play goalie. speaker-1: Yeah, and it and it's the same thing. We've talked about this, but I I think it it bears repeating always. We say all the time that the parents are the primary disciplers and that we do nothing to help them. I was convicted of that over the last really two years and I was like, okay, so what do I do? And so I, you know, every time we have a parent meeting, I do a devotional, and those devotionals are are specifically geared towards resourcing the parents in some way to help instruct their kids at home. Yeah. But then I was like, we meet once a month, and some once Don't get to do that. That's not enough. Yeah, I gotta do something. And so I was like, well, what's something I'm good at? What's something that I'm gonna do anyway? And I started realizing it's like I really love to write. And so we have a Wednesday night. ⁓ we have Wednesday night youth, we have Sunday night youth, and we have Sunday morning youth. That's three opportunities to take the things that the students are already studying, already learning from us, and put that. into a resource into the the hands of the parents and to the students. And so yeah what I do is I'm just basically creating a comprehensive guide throughout the week to take the things that we're learning and just keep having conversations. There's reflection questions, there's weekly challenges, different things like that. And and all I tell the the parents and students is hey here's an awesome resource for you. And and the beautiful thing is This doesn't sound beautiful, but I I think I think there's a beauty in it. If none of my parents take it seriously right now, okay, they don't take it seriously. If my students don't take it seriously, okay. I gotta build that culture. But here's the here's the awesome thing. Five years from now, I might have a parent that goes, I feel like I am drowning and I don't know how to help my kid. And I'm trying to figure out how to disciple them and I just I don't even know where to start. Eventually I'm gonna have a whole library of stuff and go, here you go. Cherry pick what you want. You know what I mean? ⁓ and and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna keep everything clean and organized by topic and and by series before long. It's not gonna be that long before we've got a pretty comprehensive library of stuff that the free resources the parents can get any time they want. And all I'm doing is just taking a little bit more time. I'm already writing sermons, I'm already teaching these things. So how so then from there it's like how can I expand on this to give them further questions to keep the conversations happening at home? That's all I'm doing. While I'm doing it, just go ahead and do that, and I put it out every week. And it helps. It helps the students and it helps the parents. And then if they have questions, then we can all come together. That gives more opportunities for us to teach and show and demonstrate and stuff like that. And so ⁓ and I try to put like a part of the weekly challenge, I try to put like some kind of daily. Rhythm thing. Like, try this. Here's a Bible study method. Here's you know, a couple extra resources and stuff that may apply, may not apply, might help something later down the road. But like this is the stuff we have to be focusing on. Sure. It's not about just open the doors, play a game, play a couple of songs, give a good message, and be like, all right, we did it. Like there's all the other days. You know, we get an hour or two with these students, and then they've got, you know, six other days. sometimes sometimes weeks if they only go a couple of times a month, you know? So how can we maximize the opportunities that we have to help these students ⁓ make their faith real and to really grow deep roots and and how do we partner with the parents to ⁓ accomplish that? speaker-0: Yeah, no, definitely. And I th and I think that's super, super important is like parents are the primary discipler, and we have to take hold of that too. Because like once again, and we've talked about this before, like we see ⁓ a couple hours a week. Like parents are with them every single night, every single day, every single morning. Like, and they have the primary opportunity to build these roots within their families, within their students. And so like Here's here's an important idea about the roots though, is like we have to teach ourselves and we have to teach students and we have to teach the parents of these students that you don't grow roots during a storm. You cannot grow them during a storm. The storm reveals your roots. Okay? So that's why the ordinary seasons matter and we ha we as youth pastors have to be teaching into this to train students, but we also need to be equipping parents to understand the idea that the normal mundane days are when you are cramming this in and making this stick and teaching them the spiritual formation ideas so that they can eventually hopefully grasp it on their own and start doing it as their own practice. It's a huge dynamic that we have to have ⁓ and really, really, really important. And that's why the ordinary season matters. We're helping students develop convictions before those convictions are challenged. We're teaching them scripture before someone challenges what they believe. We're helping them develop Christian community before they experience loneliness. We're teaching them prayer before crisis makes them desperate for it. We're teaching them God's character before circumstances cause them to question it. Colossians two six seven talks all about this. ⁓ and I give me a second, I don't have it pulled up. ⁓ but speaker-1: Here we go. six through seven. It is Therefore as you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. I'm gonna keep going. See see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity ⁓ dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority. Essentially just being alive in Christ. speaker-0: Yes, and so I I apologize for not having the actual verse in our notes. I don't know how that happened. but with that though, like that's the idea, that's preventative discipleship. You're you're proactively pursuing the discipleship of your teenagers. Hopefully you're proactively if you're listening to this as a parent and you have younger kids or you have teenagers, you're proactively doing this at home too. Because we're not trying to scare students about Everything that they might face, we're preparing them to face whatever comes while remaining anchored to Jesus. We're not trying to scare them, we're preparing them to be anchored in their faith. Okay, I think there's a huge dynamic of that. And I I I think a lot of ministries and a lot of churches really, really push that fear factor. That doesn't do anything. It just teaches them, ⁓ crap, I am lost. Like, I am scared. I am terrified. If you're not proactively teaching them how to combat that by being anchored in Jesus, it doesn't do anything. So what does this change about our ministries? This changes the questions we ask. Instead of only how many students came, we start asking, Hey, are students learning to follow Jesus? Instead of only was worship powerful? Was it with the right songs? Ask are students learning to worship outside of this room? That's been that's been one that I'm currently in right now that has been phenomenal because I have a guitar playing freshman that is having worship nights at his house and inviting friends to come worship at his house. And then I get a text probably every week or every other week about asking if they can come borrow the cajon, well the little box drum if you don't know what that is, so they can have a drum at these worship nights that they're doing in his house. Yeah, and they're inviting speaker-1: He was really excited about it too. speaker-0: And they're inviting like twenty or thirty students to come and do it. It's awesome. But like he is on fire, he loves it, and they are spending time worshiping. And like, man, like, are they worshiping outside of this room? Yes. A hundred percent. And that is one that I'm super, super happy that we're in that season. Is like kids are starting to get that idea of like hey, I can't just worship at church. I have to worship everywhere. ⁓ and so But honestly, I mean if I'm honest, there's room for him to grow still. He needs to learn how to worship on his own. He doesn't need a group of people. And so like there's progressions to this. Okay? And so like it's not necessarily bad to have twenty or thirty students show up and worship together. I'm not saying that at all. But I'm saying like if that's where he feels like is the only place he can worship, which I'm not a hundred percent sure on, if conversations lead to that, then I have to be like, okay, hey, that's a great step. But the idea is that you are in a constant state of worship. Not based on who's around you, but based on who you are. And so, like I said, there's steps to this, and it's not just an overnight progression. You have to be okay with that. Like you can teach them step by step by step. And it's super, super important to know, and like this dude is this kid is absolutely crushing it. And I'm super excited for him. But I still have a game plan on where I want him to go. So instead of asking, did they like the message? Ask, can they actually apply scripture themselves? I have another student in my ministry. Literally, like she's captain of like ⁓ so we call it the bells at our high school. It's kind of like a dance team. They work with the cheerleaders, but they're not the cheerleaders. ⁓ and she was supposed to be the captain as a junior this year. She went to their training camp week and toured her ACL. And so she just had surgery to repair her ACL. And so like she is walking again. But she's like, Hey, ⁓ well, one of the things that I showed her and I told her about was the story of Mike Donahy and how he got in a car recrash and how he thought he was gonna go glorify God by being like this professional soccer player and go play soccer in college and all this stuff and then like he broke his back in a car wreck. And then he had to be on his back for a couple of months, so he picked up a guitar. And basically the idea was like, are you trying to dictate God's will for you, or are you allowing God to dictate his will for your life? And I so I said, you know, what is God trying to teach you in this process? And she came back to me. She was like, I find that I'm teaching or I find that I'm having conversations with people about this same scripture. Over and over and over and over and over. And she was like, and I think God's telling me to learn it more than the people that I'm telling it to. And so it was just this mindset of like practically applying scripture. It clicked. She was like, I think God's wanting me to learn this more than the people I'm talking to. And God keeps putting this in my life because He wants me to hold on to it. And so like stuff like that is huge. Insta are students dependent on your ministry. Or are you preparing them to follow Jesus without you? We've said it before and me and David are both firm believers in this. If you are the light and the voice of your ministry, and the ministry cannot run without you, you're doing it wrong. If you don't have students that can step up in your absence, if you don't have leaders that are there caring for the students in your absence or even while you're there, you gotta reorient and reprioritize what your thoughts are. Youth ministry can be a huge place of pride too because you think that nothing goes on without me. Okay, so are students dependent on our ministry? Or maybe ask, are we preparing students to follow Jesus? ⁓ and that's a harder scoreboard. Like if we're asking those questions, it's a healthier one though. Because someday they graduate and our goal shouldn't be sending students into an adulthood that have learned ⁓ or our goal should be a to send students into adulthood with the idea that Jesus isn't just simply a part of my youth group or my church. Jesus is Lord of my life. Every aspect of my life. So how do you build what you can't see? Big question. Some of the most important things you're doing in ministry will not produce immediate results. You've probably heard the expression, because we've said it a bunch of times some plant, some water, some harvest. Okay? You might be the first person that puts this idea into their heads, or you might be the last one where it finally clicks and they're just like, whoa. That's great. But Understand that there are seasons for a reason, seasons for a reason. ⁓ and you gotta you gotta be okay with where you are. Keep teaching scripture, keep teaching students how to pray, keep encouraging Christian community, keep modeling faithfulness, keep helping students develop spiritual practices because roots grow quietly. One day something will shake a disappointment, a transition. A difficult question, a season of fear, a cultural pressure, and the question won't be how exciting their faith once felt. It will be what am I rooted in? speaker-1: You know a funny thing, ⁓ I keep thinking so my son's favorite movie is Goat. He absolutely loves that movie. He loves basketball, he loves sports. If they made a little kid version of hockey, that would become his favorite. But right now it's it's goat. And you know, they if you don't know the story, it's these animals that play basketball essentially, and they have all these different teams. Well the the main character will is from Vineland and their their whole cheer is roots run deep and they say it like when they're you know when they're doing well when they're not doing well roots run deep roots run deep you know what's funny is like Noah's of course he's watched the movie a million times and can quote the whole thing ⁓ and at one point he was like roots run deep roots run deep and he was like shouldn't our faith be that way? And I was like, ooh, expand, buddy. And he was just like, well, it's like if roots run deep, think about what that means. Like, it's important for us to like really Like the deeper our our roots go, the better our faith is gonna be. And at nine years old, he doesn't necessarily have all the language, but he was just like, That should be our faith. Roots run deep. Roots run deep. And he was just like and so then my kid being my kid, ⁓ he was like, Faith runs deep, faith runs deep, and I like, Bro, you were cooking. Like I was so happy for like nine years old, he's figuring this out, you know? And and I think that's a really cool thing. And so I don't know, the more I I Think about kind of the the deepness of our roots, the more I realize is like as we said earlier, storms are gonna happen and things are gonna be hard, and they're gonna get, you know, eventually they're gonna graduate out of our ministry and they're gonna decide who they're gonna be. And if they don't, the world is certainly gonna do it for them. And ⁓ in those moments, if they're not truly rooted, what are they gonna do? So how how do they actually accomplish that, you know? And we've said it already a bunch of times here, but we've gotta start modeling it. And I think sometimes we we If I can encourage you in anything, sometimes we do these rhythms so much that i it becomes routine and e and can we can sometimes go into like sort of a sense of autopilot and we start to wonder are we being effective? Because just as much as the students want those big aha moments we talked about at the beginning of of th this episode, we do too. We we are programmed by our our system, our churches, to have some level of Milestone. And if we if we feel like we don't get that for like a month or two months or three months, we start to feel like we're in this dry season where we're just like, man, are they getting anything? Are they trying? Keep pushing, keep pursuing. Because the truth is, it's in those day those small daily rhythms that don't seem like it's doing anything, that's actually doing more than we can see or even comprehend. It's like working out in a gym. You know, it's like, I don't want to do this, I don't want to work out. Today, I don't feel well. But here's the thing. If I don't get this workout in today, I'm gonna feel worse tomorrow. And if I don't do it tomorrow, I'm gonna feel even worse. And at some point, by the time I finally get back to the gym, I'm gonna be so absolutely gassed and worn out that it's gonna it would have been harder if I would have just maintained, if I would have kept working. And so, and I know I I'm not by any means the kind of person to be talking about working out as a guy who doesn't work out, but I do know that that's important. You know what I mean? So, you know, give your give yourself that spiritual workout. Give yourself that sounds so corny, but anyway, it's it's important. Those small daily grinds, those small daily moments are I I would argue that they're more important than any any faith forming or that's not the right word. Those sort of like massive big mountaintop experiences. Yeah. I I think it's more important because those are a dime a dozen. But the daily grind, that's that's the ninety-nine percent. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. speaker-1: And so we have to be we have to be intentional. We have to keep modeling it, keep trying, keep pursuing it, keep encouraging our students every single day. because again, one day they're gonna graduate and they're gonna need it. speaker-0: Yeah, no, definitely. And I I think that's huge. And we have to understand the fact of like, you know, at the end of the day we can't build a faith that only survives youth group. Like, we have to help students build a faith that follows them everywhere. And that's it. Like we have to push past that idea and we have to model it, we have to teach it, we have to grow it. Like all of those are huge ideas and huge aspects of this conversation. And so very, very much like if you're sitting here and you're listening and you're like, I don't know how to how do I do that, ⁓ like please reach out. We'd love to talk. We'd love to I mean, not saying that me and David have all the answers, but we've done it for th over thirty years collectively. ⁓ and so with that being said, we we do have some experience. Not saying our experience is golden, but we can probably point you in the right direction. ⁓ and then secondly, like pray about it. Pray and ask God, ta pray and ask for wisdom and discernment and like direction. if you're not praying for your ministry regularly, start ⁓ 'cause you should be ⁓ and then the other thing that I like to do and this is where and I haven't done it in a while, I need to do it again. ⁓ I write down every s or print out a roster of all your students and pray over them. A lot of times when I'm praying over a list of students, God will stop me on students and be like, ⁓ this one, this one, this kid right here kind of thing like that. And like you know where to you know which one which direction you're pursuing right off the bat. So like stuff like that is super, super important. But reach out to us if you have any other thoughts or any questions. We'd love to talk. You can shoot us an email, podcast at student ministry conversations.org, or you can reach out to us, probably preferably on our social media at talk student men, because we I check those more. ⁓ but with that being said, like we would love to reach out, give you more resources, help out in any way we can. ⁓ and then secondly, word of mouth is our Our way of doing things. We've done it like that since we started almost six years ago. ⁓ and man, it is such an awesome, awesome an opportunity for me and David to do this weekly. ⁓ this podcast has come a long way. And we like I came to the realization last week, I think, maybe, of the idea that like I was way underestimating our listens. We're we're over like twenty two thousand listens now, which is wild and thank you so much for that. ⁓ it's such a cool opportunity and cool experience. ⁓ and like me and David love it and realistically we do this because not only like this is this is accountability for me and David, this is an opportunity for us to talk about what we love doing. ⁓ and then also it's an opportunity for me and David to catch up week to week ⁓ and just talk ministry, talk life, all the things going on because you need accountability partners and David Pruitt is that guy for me. And so with that being said, ⁓ like make sure, make sure you have something like that. Make sure you have someone that you can talk to, ⁓ because it is super, super important. But as we close, as we've been doing for the last couple months, let's pray. ⁓ and then we just hope that you have a great week ⁓ and you reach out if you have any other questions. Let's pray. God, I thank you for today. I thank you for ⁓ this the student pastors that are listening, I pray for their ministries, I pray for them as leaders, and God, I just pray ⁓ that you would help leaders value deep formation over immediate results. ⁓ sometimes that's not the fun one to go for, sometimes that's not the one that has that immediate gratification. ⁓ but God, we know the importance and we know the need for developing deep roots and for students to develop roots deeply in Christ. And we see the importance, we know the importance, and you Talk about that time and time again in Scripture. And I just pray that as we talk about this for the this week and the next couple weeks, that that becomes ⁓ one of the forefront goals ⁓ for either reminding themselves of what they're doing or starting it for the first time. We just pray for all the ⁓ brothers and sisters in ministry that are listening to this. ⁓ God, give them give them confidence and peace in the fact that you put them where they are. ⁓ give them encouragement to last another season. ⁓ and God, I just pray that you strengthen and challenge their faith. too so they can continue to grow, ⁓ so they can continue to teach as they are in their ministries. ⁓ be with them, remind them that you love them, rem give them peace and patience and kindness, ⁓ so that they can interact with all students who walk through those doors. And God, I pray for the specifically the youth pastor that's dealing with the hard kid. the kid that is is a struggle to deal with on a week to week basis, the kid that is really makes you question your sanity, let alone your job. ⁓ And God, I just pray that you give an extra overwhelming sense of peace when it comes to those conversations. Allow us to see those kids like you see those kids and give us opportunities to love on them even greater than we have before. We pray all these things in your name. Amen.