a place to belong

I'm trying to process through a million different thoughts at once. They're thoughts I'm picking up from the multitude of books I'm reading (chief among them: Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry, unChristian, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, and They Like Jesus but Not the Church... yeah, I'm reading a lot), from many people I've been talking to, from classes at Wheaton still reverberating through my mind, from the students I have in my youth group who are hurting so much and from a deep lack of change I see often in traditional youth ministries.

What's the answer to that hurt - to that lack of change? Simply, it's Jesus.

But what's the form of Jesus? What is the medium by which Jesus is communicated to the world? What's the medium by which change and healing and salvation is distributed throughout this broken world?

How are my students going to live better lives? And let's be realistic. Telling them that they can have Jesus "in their hearts" only goes so far when we do nothing to combat the severe poverty they face, the social, emotional and sometimes even physical abuse from school, the demeaning attitudes of peers, a non-existent family life, adults who set poor examples and don't give a rip, a media which teaches them they're only as good as the clothes they wear and the music the listen to (and the average teenager is plugged into this media for 8 1/2 hours a day!), a rampant sex culture, and ridiculously easy access to drugs and alcohol.

What am I doing standing in front of these students for 20 minutes a week and preaching to them?

Evangelical Christians have become so infatuated with the nature of "born-again" that we're completely forgotten what it means to "live-again." We've relegated church down to something we simply go to, and neglected creating something of which to be a part of.

And that's why, when we have our outreach night this Wednesday and go bowling for two hours at Lincoln Lanes, I'm not going to "present the gospel." I'm not going to give a quippy, trendy talk on how to accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior.

Instead, I'm going to invite the students who are there to join a movement - to become part of something. Something which is bigger than themselves, and something which costs nothing to join. It's called HYPE, and it's a group of youth who care about one another. It's a group of students who set their hope on Christ's sacrifice, and who have set his example of sacrificial love up as the ultimate aim of life on earth. It's a group of students who know that salvation comes only through Him, but also that salvation means so much more than hope for tomorrow. It means hope for today.

I never want HYPE to become a "born-again" factory. I want HYPE to be a place to belong; a group of students who love and encourage and build up, and who center their relationships around the living and present Jesus Christ.

And like those outside the Church in Acts 2, I'm convinced that everyone will be filled with awe, and that the Lord will be adding to our number daily those who are being saved.