The Goal of Youth Ministry - Our Goal for Our Youth
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The Goal of Youth Ministry - Our Goal for Our Youth
(c)2007 by Joshua Krohse
This sermon and this evening’s sermon will be about ministering to youth. So, clearly, if you are a young person, a parent, or a youth worker, this sermon is for you. But, this sermon is not only for young people, parents, and youth workers—it is for everyone here who loves the Lord.
Here is why: young people fall into two categories, Christians and non-Christians.
Some young people are Christians. They have turned from sin to follow Jesus Christ.
Now before I go on, I want to clarify an important point. I want to put clearly in your mind what a church is. Has everyone heard the nursery rhyme: “Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people”? That rhyme is a dangerous thing to tell our children. Why? Because it says that the building is the church. We taught our kids a similar rhyme that goes like this: “Here is a building, here is a steeple, open the doors—the church is God’s people!”
The church is not a building, the church is not a business, the church is not a corporation. The church is the people who make up the body of Christ meeting together to worship the Lord together through preaching and music, to observe His ordinances, to encourage one another, and to serve together in carrying out the Great Commission. Therefore, the Christians regularly gathering here are the church that meets in this building.
If you are a Christian who worships here regularly, you are a part of this church, and you have a responsibility to every other person who makes up Christ’s body gathered in this place. In I Corinthians 12 we read,
The body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
So then, every Christian who gathers with us is indispensable to us all. If you are a Christian, you need every Christian teenager and child here and every teenager and child needs you. No part of God’s body is dispensable, and every part of God’s body is important. Therefore, even if you have no children and cannot stand teenagers, this message is for you. Your personal likes and dislikes don’t negate the fact that God has called you to love and care for all the members of Christ’s body in this place.
What about non-Christian young people? Every human being comes into the world unsaved. All our precious children and even newborns are unsaved non-Christians. You, Christian, are called to bring the Good News about Jesus to those who have not yet heard and to those who have not yet believed. Yes, you could go to foreign lands and be a missionary. Yes, you can and should witness in your workplace. But isn’t it obvious that God has placed among us a number of unsaved people who He clearly desires us to love and witness to? God has placed these young non-Christians in our midst so that His body, and that means you, might have the privilege of sharing Christ with them.
So then, this message is for you, Christian, because you have a responsibility to encourage and build-up young Christians and because you have a responsibility to present the gospel to those who have not believed.
Now that you know that I am talking to you, on with the sermon. The topic of this morning’s sermon is the goal of youth ministry. If I were to survey you all with the question, “What is the goal of youth ministry,” the answers might include the following:
- The goal of youth ministry is to teach young people about God in an entertaining way, or maybe to entertain young people while also teaching them about God.
- The goal of youth ministry is to provide a safer group of friends and safer activities for young people than what they would otherwise engage in.
- The goal of youth ministry is to teach young people about the Bible.
- The goal of youth ministry is to show kids that following God is fun and exciting so that they won’t get bored and leave the church.
- The goal of youth ministry is to bring unchurched young people into the church, convert them to Christianity, and help them assimilate into the congregation.
- And so on.
As Christians, our ultimate goal for our young people should be that whether they eat or drink, or whatever they do, that they would do all to the glory of God. Or, to state it another way, our goal for our children is that they intentionally glorify God and enjoy Him now and forever.
We want them to intentionally glorify God. Ultimately, everyone brings glory to God, but many will do so unintentionally. Many will bring glory to God ultimately as He judges them righteously and crushes them in the winepress of His wrath, as we sang about a couple weeks ago in the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”. That is not what we want for our young people. Our goal for our young people is that they will gladly choose to honor, praise, love, serve, obey, and magnify God.
And as part this intentional glorification of God, we want our young people to treasure God in Christ, to marvel at His goodness and beauty, to enjoy His grace and His many blessings, both in this life and in the life to come.
Our goal, in the long run, is that they come to the place spiritually where they will intentionally glorify God and enjoy Him now and forever. So, it’s a process. They start out as little unbelievers, proud, selfish, and hostile toward God, and over the course of their young lives, we desire that they come to the point where they willingly and joyfully submit to God’s authority.
What are the crucial elements for intentionally glorifying and enjoying God? What key ingredients are necessary for the God-hater to become a God-glorifier? I have broken the goal for our young people down into four key components. The young person must come to know, to believe, to love, and to live.
Know
What must a young person know? Our goal for our young people is that they know about God. God is inexhaustible. You and I will never know all there is to know about God. At the very least, though, we want all our young people to know the following.
It is our goal that our young people know that God is holy. When they think about God, they should not think of “the man upstairs” or a heavenly Santa Claus. They should picture in their minds as best they can what Isaiah saw:
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”
And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.
We want them to understand that God is not like them. That He does not make mistakes. That He is always completely good. That He is all-powerful and all-knowing. That He is perfect and that He requires perfection. Our God is holy.
Our goal for our children is that they know God is just. He made everything. He made the rules. He demands perfect obedience, and He has every right to demand it. He is completely fair and always punishes sin. Deuteronomy 10:17 says, “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.”
We want our children to understand that God, who is holy and just will one day, in his righteous judgment, unleash His terrible wrath on those who stand against Him. Romans 2:8 “but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.” Colossians 3:6, I Thessalonians 1:10, and a host of other passages warn us that God’s wrath is on its way. Our goal for our children is that they understand that those disobey God earn God’s wrath and that His wrath is coming.
Our goal for our children is also that they know about themselves.
We want them to come to understand that they are not invincible (as many teenage boys seem to think they are), but far from it, they are fragile and fleeting. The prophet Isaiah describes us like this in chapter 40, “All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades.” James says, “You do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”
Our goal for our young people is that they understand that life is fragile and short. Oh Lord, teach them to number their days so that they may get a heart of wisdom.
The next thing we want our children to come to understand is directly contrary to what the rest of the world teaches. Our culture says we are basically good. Our desire for our children is that they would see themselves accurately as God describes them. According to Psalm 51:5 each of our children is sinful from the moment of conception. Because of Adam’s sin, all mankind is under a curse. We all start out sinful, and left to ourselves we would all pursue sin wholeheartedly until it destroyed us.
We want our young people to know that, as Paul says in Romans 3:10-12: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
We want our children to understand that they can never be good enough to earn their way into heaven. Isaiah 64:6 says, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” And Romans 3:20 tells us that by works of the law no human being will be justified in God’s sight.
Our goal for our children is that they come to the point where they know that their fate is wholly in the hands of God, whom they have repeatedly offended, whom they cannot bribe, whom they cannot appease. Our goal is that our young people know that when they face God in the final judgment, if they have nothing to offer but their own failed attempts at righteousness, they are completely and utterly doomed.
And, we want them to know the rest of the story. We want our children to know of God’s love, mercy, and grace. Our goal is that our young people know that God loved the world in this way: He gave His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
We want our children to know that Jesus Christ, God in flesh appearing, lived a perfect life, died on the cross for the sins of helpless rebels like us, and rose from the grave on the third day, conquering sin and death.
We want our children to know that God demands that they turn from their sin and follow Christ Jesus as their master, that they die to their own wishes and desires and live instead for God. We want our children to know that they can be saved by trusting Christ to apply His payment for sin and His righteousness to their accounts.
Our goal for our children is that they know the whole gospel, the good news that God offers to rescue from His wrath those who reject sin and trust His Son to rescue them.
And our goal for our young people is that they know that God is incredibly valuable, that they start to see His inestimable worth. We want them know why the Psalmists wrote, “The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup” and “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”
Believe
Not only do we want our young people to know facts, but we want them to believe them. Specifically, our goal for our children is that they believe:
That God is who He says He is. They should not only know what the Bible says about God, but believe it.
We do not only want our children to know what sin is and admit that they are sinful. We want them to believe that their sin deserves and is leading to death and hell. We want them to be so convinced of the seriousness of their situation that they are afraid for their souls.
Our goal for our young people is that they believe that idolatry is futile, that worshipping idols is foolish. “Of course,” you say. Maybe you agree with me because you think I am saying that they should not bow down to statues of Buddha. They shouldn’t, but that’s not really what I am saying. I mean that our goal is that our children believe that nothing is more important than God. We desire that they believe that good health is worthless without God, that success is failure without God, that possessions can often distract us from God and should be used or enjoyed only when they glorify God. We desire that our children recognize that all their talents and abilities are on loan from God, and that if they start to feel proud of their own accomplishments or if they live selfishly, they have become their own idols.
Our goal for our children is that they understand that idolatry ultimately destroys the idolater.
We want our children to believe that they have no hope except Christ. Our goal for our young people is that they believe that Christ, through His death and resurrection, His righteousness and sacrificial atonement, is able to save them.
Our goal is that they believe that Christ is worth laying down everything and dying to themselves. We desire that they will all believe the good news and turn from their sins to Christ.
Love
We desire that our children will not only know the truth about God and believe it, but that they will love the Lord their God with all their heart and with all their soul and with all their mind and with all their strength.’
We want them to seek to know God better. To that end, our goal is that they spend serious time reading God’s Word, where He most clearly describes Himself. We want them to spend time talking with and listening to Him in prayer. We want them to want more of God.
We desire that our young people will be so in love with God that they will want everyone else to know Him, too. When you love someone, you want others to love him or her, too. When our young people love Jesus, we want their love to bubble over as they seek point others to Him. Oh, that our children would love God so much that they would be willing to give everything in order to make God’s glory known in all the earth!
Our goal for out young people is that they enjoy God. We want them to taste and see that the Lord is good. We want them to find fulfillment and joy in His presence.
We also want our children to love their neighbors as themselves. If they love God, they will love their neighbor. I John 4:20 says, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” We want our children to love God so much that they love the people God loves.
Live
So then, our goal is that our children know the truth about God and themselves, that they believe these truths and trust Christ for salvation, and that they love the Lord and love other people.
The fourth component on our goal for our children is that they live out their faith. We desire young people who live transformed lives based on the truth of the gospel and their love for God.
That means that we want our young people to define their lives by the Word of God. How will they treat one another? They will study God’s Word to find out. How should they manage their money and possessions? They will study God’s Word to find out. How will they handle disagreements and arguments? They will study God’s Word to find out. How will they worship their God? They will study God’s Word to find out. How will they prioritize their lives? They will study God’s Word to find out. And when they do, they’ll find that God has answered those questions and all other essential questions in His Word. And when they find the answers, our desire is that they will trust God and obey.
We want our young people to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We must pray that God will work powerfully through them to demolish the work of Satan and to bring the gospel to a lost and dying world.
Our goal is that our young people be conformed to the image of Christ. That means that we want them to lay down control of their lives for the Father’s glory. We want them to think of how they can serve God and one another before they think about serving themselves. We want them living out Jesus’ prayer, “Father, not my will but yours be done.”
Our goal for our young people is radically different than that of the world around us. We are not really interested in their self-esteem; we are interested in their God-esteem. Do they esteem God highly? Do they find their reason for being in Him.
We are not really interested in how wealthy they become. We want them to manage God’s money well, but we understand that sometimes God calls His children to do without financial security in order to further His kingdom.
We are not overly concerned with our child’s popularity. Of course it hurts when he or she is disliked or mistreated, but we want our child to turn to God for love, acceptance, and joy. We desire that our young people would learn to love even their enemies.
Our ultimate goal for our children is not dependant on their getting a good education, being thought of as attractive, having business sense, or being good at sports or music. As God’s people, our ultimate goal for the young people in our midst is that they intentionally glorify God and enjoy Him now and forever.
Though our goal is that our young people know the truth, believe the gospel, love God, and live in a manner worthy of their calling, we are only able to be instrumental in certain parts of the working out of that goal. We can certainly help with the knowledge part of it. Tonight, we are going to talk about teaching young people and how as a church we are to go about it, so I’ll save that part for later.
As far as believing, loving, and living go, we have no control over our young people’s ability to do these things. It is the Holy Spirit who brings new life and causes the sinner’s heart of stone to become able to believe the good news about Jesus. It is the Holy Spirit within the believer that causes the believer to love the Lord. And it is the Holy Spirit who enables the young Christian to live in conformity to Christ. We can encourage our children to believe, love, and live, and we can model faith in God, love of God and neighbor, and Christ-like living, but we cannot do the work of the Holy Spirit.
How to keep your children from intentionally glorifying and enjoying God.
Sometimes it is helpful to think about things from the opposite perspective. For instance, if our goal was to keep our children from knowing the truth, believing the gospel, loving God, and living like Christ, how would we go about it.
If we had the evil goal of preventing our young people from intentionally glorifying and enjoying God, what would we do? I think we would do the following:
- We would neglect to teach them so that they would not know the truth about God or themselves. We would make sure that children were not being taught at home, and that if they were being taught by the rest of the church, we would want that teaching to be short, light, and disconnected from the rest of their lives.
- We would not believe the truth about God, ourselves, and the gospel, or if we did believe it, we would make sure that we didn’t talk about our faith with the young people in our midst. That way, they would not know what it means to believe.
- We would fail to love and enjoy God so that our children would not would have a hard time understanding that God is precious and desirable. They would see that we did not appear to find God valuable, and they would conclude that He must not be.
- If we really wanted to keep our young people from loving and enjoying God, we would need to give them other things to love and value. We could encourage them to focus their hearts on happiness, fun, comfort, financial success, sports and musical achievement, academic excellence, or anything other than God. And, we could model it for them by seeking meaning and fulfillment in these things ourselves.
- As a church, we could allow the young people to isolate themselves from everyone else, forcing them for the most part to learn from and follow one another.
- And, if we wanted to keep the children in the church from loving and enjoying God, we adults could live like the rest of the world. We would talk about righteousness, but when it came down to making tough decisions, we would act just like everyone else. We would have the same or similar rates of divorce, abortion, premarital sex. We would ignore God’s teaching about purity, sacrifice, conflict resolution, and all the rest. We would be hypocrites. That way our young people would have no example to follow as they followed Christ.
Tonight we will talk about the responsibility of the church in teaching our young people. This morning, I want to encourage you to do the opposite of what we just imagined. It is the responsibility of each believer here to model intentionally glorifying God and enjoying Him. A young person in our midst should be able to look at the life of any believer here today and say, “Oh, so that’s what a Christian is supposed to look like! There’s a person who knows about God, believes the gospel, loves the Lord with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength, and lives a life that proves he has been changed into a new creation!”
So, you, know the truth about God and yourself. Know the gospel and be able and willing to teach it. Know your Bible. Study so that if a young person asks, “What does God say about this?”, you can say, “Bring me your Bible, and I will show you.” Know your theology. Seek to understand whatever you can about God and His work in the world.
You, believe that Jesus is your only hope of salvation. Trust Him for salvation. Believe that He is worth infinitely more than all the world can offer, so that when they hear you talk, the young people in our midst will say, “She must really believe!”
You, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from God the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
If you find it difficult to love God and enjoy Him, make time to spend time with Him in prayer and Bible study. Ask Him to convince you of His goodness and His beauty. Spend time thinking about His Word. Marvel at the intricacy and splendor of His creation. God rewards those who earnestly seek Him. If you seek Him, He will reward you with Himself.
Love the Lord. Celebrate Him! Talk about His mighty deeds and steadfast love! And, as the love of God overflows in your life, love your neighbor as yourself.
And finally, live what you know and believe! Pursue holiness! Flee temptation. Desire purity. Repent continually—always be turning from sin to God.
Desire to see the fruit of the Holy Spirit in your life. Pray that God would develop in you love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Seek to practice these virtues.
Put away your selfish pride and humble yourself. Be a servant. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Stop living for yourself and offer yourself completely to the Lord to do with whatever He wants.
Share the good news about Jesus Christ. Make an effort to talk about the gospel whenever you have the opportunity.
Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
If you are a believer who gathers with this body of believers, you are a part of this church. Your ultimate goal for the young people in our midst should be that they intentionally glorify God and enjoy Him both now and forever. You may be called to specifically teach young people, or you may not. Either way, you have an obligation to model knowing the truth, believing the gospel, loving the Lord, and living a transformed, Christ-like life.
Let us pray that this church, made up of individual Christians, will collectively and individually glorify and enjoy our God and display to the coming generations the beauty and magnificence of God in Christ Jesus!
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