Getting out of neutral

In ministry leadership... a lot of times it's easy to get stuck. You do the same thing day in and day out. It's clock work, people can basically bet on what the program's going to look like. Although I've just started back with the youth group, I've come to realization that we need to shake things up a bit. Yes, my students are amazing... yes, they know their Bibles better than many adults... yes, they're growing in being servants... but I know they have more in them. There's one thing I want that God has placed a burden in my heart for these students... and that's for them to be PASSIONATE.

I want them to crave God's Word, I want them to eat it up and meditate upon it and have it living in and through them. I want them to live boldly in the sea of luke warm carnal Christians who claim to know Christ but in their hearts they are far from them. I want them to shine brightly among their friends who are Muslims and Hindu and show them Jesus. I want them to esteem others, even their enemies, above themselves. Basically... I want them to be disciples... and not disciples of Kelli or Calvary Chapel Jinja... but true disciples of Christ. Where no matter where they go they are able to know the truth and share it with others and stand firm on their own.

My vision for youth ministry is to disciple the 17 million youth in Uganda... but really what needs to happen is my students to go and make disciples and then those disciples to make more disciples... Our youth group consists of 30ish students a week... Jesus rocked the world with 12 disciples. I'm praying our 30 students will take Uganda by storm and truly show them Jesus!

Some of the ways we're planning on achieving this goal are:

- Implementing sort of mini-ministries to get them involved in serving (i.e. greeters, pre-service game organizers, set up crew, invite team, etc...)
- Challenging them to outline a chapter of the Bible a day (main theme, people, events, how to apply it)
- Taking an outreach offering to give then ownership of how we get out into the community
- Question time once a month
- More small group times
- Student-led devotional before service

Please keep us in prayer, that we persevere with this goal. That we stand firm against what the enemy will try to throw at us to de-rail this desire, and that those of us leading would set the example and practice what we preach.