Archive - Youth Unlimited RSS Feed

When Should You Give Up on a Student?

January 8, 2011 in Faith, Ministry, Prayer, Youth, Youth Unlimited with 1 Comment

I’ve been in youth ministry for about 8 years now.. and I’ve worked with a LOT of teens over those years.  About 2 years ago I found myself at a crux in my ministry.. I had been pouring a LOT of time and energy into students, and while it seemed like some of them were getting it, there were some that just wouldn’t go any further.  I sat down with my director, and told him that I felt like I had hit a wall.. and that if the ministry in this area was going to fo any further, either the person doing it had to change, or we had to change how it was being done.

The reason I felt this way was simply because I was tired of pouring literally hundreds of hours into particular students, and them just not going any further, be it growing in their relationship with Christ, or they weren’t having a relationship with Christ at all.  I asked many pastors “when do you just give up”.. many of them understood my questions.. it wasn’t that I was done with the kids, I was just tired of not seeing growth, and was ready to give up on particular students.  Everyone told me the same thing.. you should never give up on a student, but, you can change your relationship with them.. but never stop praying for them.

As a result of this, about 1.5 years ago, I changed a relationship with a student.  It was very hard to do.. I had spent 2 years pouring into this student, spending literally every moment that he wasn’t in school with him.. either him hanging out at my office, or at my house with my family.. he would come to the city with me if I was going shopping, or we would just go hang out and walk around together.

Then it happened.. I remember sitting down with him one day and telling him that he was at a point in his highschool career where he had to choose.. “do I give in to all the stereotypes that people are giving him (he was one of the only black kids in the school, and was a group home kid to boot.. so naturally everyone wrote him off as a “bad kid”) .. or he could rise above those stereotypes, and become the person God wanted him to be.  Sadly, he chose to give into all the bad things people were saying about him, and he hit drugs, drinking and every other stereotype that was giving to him.. and he hit them hard.

This was when our relationship changed.. I wanted to try and help him, but he didn’t want help.  So I let him go.. I let him do what he wanted, live the life he thought he needed to live.  It was easily one of the hardest things I’ve had to do.. All the while I prayed for this guy.. daily.. Every now and then I would send him a text, or a quick message on Facebook.. something simple.. “thinking about you” or something like that.

Last night was like any other night.  I was sitting on my computer, and decided to drop a quick message to this student.. pretty simple again.. just “hey, how’s it going.. haven’t talked to you in a long time”…. 2 minutes later, he logged onto facebook chat, and sent me a message.. it was our first contact in over a year.. he simply said “are you home for the next while” I said “yea, I’m just hanging out with my son”.. he then said the thing I was hoping for for the past year… “can I come over, I really need to talk to you about some stuff”.. naturally I invited him over.. and we spent the next 1.5 hours talking about his past year and how he realized that he really messed up his life.. he was tired of all the drugs and what they had done to him, and that his parents are kicking him out.  He wanted to talk to me because he knew that the only way he was going to stay clean was if he surrounded himself with the people who were good influences on him back when his life was clean.. people who would hold him accountable.

Did he decide to follow Jesus.. no, but its all a step in the right direction, I’m so happy that I didn’t give up on him totally, and throw him out.  I think I knew God still had a plan for him, and I wanted to be a part of that.

So let this be a encouragement for you.  Sometimes, students suck.. and they suck the life out of you.. they drain you for everything you have, and then they drop you.. but don’t be discouraged, keep praying for them.. if you don’t, who will?

Separate Jesus from the People of the Church?

October 20, 2010 in Culture, Faith, God, Ministry, People, Twitter, Youth, Youth Unlimited with 1 Comment

I sent a tweet yesterday morning that really seemed to cause a stink on twitter and facebook.  For those who didn’t read it, it was: “We must separate the Jesus of the Gospel from the people of the church, because the people will always let you down, Jesus never will” some people completely agreed with me, while others didn’t agree, so I’m going to try to explain it in this blog post (as I told them I would) which would then hopefully cause them to understand where/what I was coming from.

First of all, I cannot take credit for this quote, my friend and chaplain to our staff Bob Scrivens said this yesterday at our staff meeting.  Bob is an amazing man.  He’s easily in his 70′s maybe even more.. and is a retired counsellor/pastor/amazing man.  He carries a lot of wisdom, and believes 100% in what we do at Youth Unlimited, so much so that he tries to mention our ministry in nearly every conversation he has.

So where did this idea come from?  Are we talking about taking Jesus out of our minstry? Out of the church? Are we trying to be “seeker sensitive” (how’s that for an early 2000′s buzz word) are we trying to be politically correct? The answer is a resounding NO to every one of these points.

At Youth Unlimited with work with about 85% non-christian/non-churched kids.  These are the kids of Judges 2:10 (After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel.) Our job at YU is to share the gospel with teens, allowing them the option to accept or reject Jesus.  So then, if our goal is to help them to learn about Jesus, why remove him from the church?

We work with kids who have little to no interaction with the church.  For most of them, the only interaction they have had is what they see on TV.  They see things in the news about the church and the bad things it’s done.  They see stories of slander, rape, pedofilia and many other things.  When I talk to students, they always say “why would I want to be a Christian, I see all the crap that they do in the world.  The reason they say this is because, you never see the good things that Christians do in the news.

The reality is, if Christians were what I saw in the news, I would never want to be one either.  So this is why we say “we need to separate the Jesus of the Gospel from the people of the church.” When I talk to a student about God, my goal is to guide them to becoming a Christian, so when they bring up the bad christians, I point them to Jesus.  I tell them that they shouldn’t throw Jesus out the window because of some bad eggs that they’ve heard of or had experience with in the past.  I tell them they aren’t here to follow Christians, they are here to follow Jesus.

Now to address a few thoughts people had on twitter and facebook:

The main things the nay sayers said were things like “can we separate the head from the body”, “the people who gives us the bad rap aren’t really part of church”, “lets change the definition of church”

These can all be addressed in a simple manner.  The kids I work with don’t go to church, and would likely never step into a church (it’s a sad reality, but I came to term with it 4 years ago) so if we change the definition of church, it’s not going to matter one bit.  Young people equate church (the building) with christians (and the church.. of the bible) they don’t separate the 2, because they don’t know that there is a difference.

As a result of that, we need to utilize what we can, and be all things to all people.  If the church is a bad thing to a student, I’m not going to talk about the church, I’m going to talk about Jesus and point them to Him, hopefully some day we can get to a point where I can talk to them about the hurts they were caused by the church, and maybe try to heal that.

I hope that makes sense to people.  I tried to explain it as best I can.. feel free to discuss it more and we’ll see if we can get more info in on this one.

What I’ve Learned from The Sea Shepherd

July 28, 2010 in Culture, Faith, God, Ministry, Prayer, Worship, Youth Unlimited with 1 Comment

You may or may not be aware of a tv series called “Whale Wars”. If you don’t know what the show is about, you can click that link, but I will also give you a brief synopsis of the show.

Basically it’s a bunch of animal rights activists.. called the Sea Shepherd who sail the Arctic Ocean attempting to stop the illegal hunting of whales by the Japanese.

Just to give you a quick video which gives an example of the tactics..

The leader of the crew is a man named Paul Watson, who honestly, I can’t say I really like from what I’ve been told.  My father (who use to work for the RCMP) has arrested Paul in the past and told me what kind of guy he really is.

I watch this show every week, its just one of those shows that keeps you captivated.  I’m not at ALL saying I agree with what they are doing, but I’m also not saying I think it’s wrong.. I’m 100% on the fence.

Tonights episode was very intense.  The Ady Gil (a multimillion dollar boat) was sunk, and some people nearly died.

Tonight I was deeply convicted in my faith, because of some things that happened in this show. After the Addy Gil was destroyed, the crew was rescued by another ship in the fleet, and right away they talked about how they were going to board the Japanese ship.

All the crew was told about the severe concequences involved in boarding this ship.  5 years in a Japanese prison, which no one wants to do, even the potential of death, depending on how the crew reacts to someone boarding their ship.

Each of the members of the crew, sat on the boat, nearly in tears talking about how they have no problem boarding this ship, spending time in jail, or even dying, if it meant that they could save just one whale.

When I saw this, I was saddened inside.  I thought “if I had the passion about God, and saving the lives of PEOPLE that these guys have about saving whales, how much more effective would I be.”

It has given me some real thinking to do about my personal faith and what am I willing to do for my cause?

What about you? Do you watch this show? Does is ever convict you in your faith?

Please Continue to Pray for Our Ministry

July 8, 2010 in Ministry, Missions, Posted from Posterous, Youth, Youth Unlimited with 1 Comment

I’ve shared with many of you that we are in the process of trying to raise funds to create a Youth Centre in our community.  This is where we truly believe God is leading us, and we are standing on that.  We need to raise around $20,000 to make it happen, and we are trying to do this through grants, but so far we have been turned down by 2 foundations that we thought were going to be a “shoe in”.  I met with our federal MP Daryl Kramp this past week and, being a native of the Centre Hastings area he is very excited about the goal and is working on finding some funds for us as well.  Please pray that things happen soon.  Our original goal date was September, but it looks like we will be pushing that back right now.. not sure when, but maybe January to be safe?

If you would like to donate to this project, please click the Donate button on the right side of this page.
Thanks for your prayers.

Posted via email from chriswtburke’s posterous

Page 2 of 2«12