Susan was booking a flight to Albany to see her family. But she was concerned she wouldn’t be allowed to bring her dog with her to New York, so she decided to call customer service. She looked up the customer service number and called the support desk, and a polite young man answered.
“Hi there, I was wondering if I’m allowed to bring my dog on a flight I’m taking tomorrow?” Susan asked.
“Sure,” the young man replied, “as long as you provide your own kennel. Make sure you bring a large kennel! Your dog needs to be able to stand up, sit down, turn around, and roll over.”
After hearing this, Susan was upset. She replied to the young man in an anger, “I’ll never be able to teach him all of that by tomorrow!”
Are you overthinking?
Susan’s overthinking of her situation was humorous. But when we as youth leaders start overthinking our ministries, it’s not usually so funny. We set goals and implement new strategies only to be stuck in a spider web of work that lacks clear direction. It’s natural to want to continue to adjusting everything until something works.
You may think to yourself: If I just work harder, I’ll get the ministry results I want. But the answer is even simpler: Focus on the Gospel.
The key to a Gospel Advancing ministry is this:
Create disciples who make disciples and advance the Gospel themselves.
Don’t obsess about numbers.
Read any church planting or ministry growth strategy book, and you’ll soon find long lists of everything you need to do to grow. Free food, modern music, video games, shorter sermons, mailing campaigns, chic building design, and funny videos are all likely to appear. While those ideas can help bring students into the doors of your ministry, they don’t drive disciple multiplication—Jesus does.
The Church has been around for nearly two millennia, and it’s not because Christians throw the best potlucks (though some Christians do have killer potlucks). The Church grew from an outlying Jewish sect into a global movement because the power of the Gospel is greater than the power of the world. Focus every part of your ministry on Jesus. After all, it’s His Gospel message that will penetrate a person’s soul and transform them from death to life.
Use Scripture to illuminate Christ.
Paul emphasized the importance of viewing Scripture through a Gospel-focused lens.
You have been taught the holy Scriptures from childhood, and they have given you the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus. 2 Timothy 3:15
He wanted Timothy to see the value of knowing Scripture and how it helps us to grow in our understanding of Christ. Scripture illuminates Christ and His work for humanity.
Always point back to the cross.
A discipleship multiplication strategy is not primarily concerned with growing a church numerically—it’s meant to transform a church spiritually. This is what the philosophy of Gospel Advancement is all about. Let your multiplication strategy be an result of your desire for more people to encounter Jesus.
You can do this by preaching the Gospel faithfully every single week. When you write your lesson, always look for a way to use the finer points of your message to point to the cross. Teach your students how to share the Gospel with their friends.
A simple way to direct a message toward Christ is to look for a thread that leads to the Gospel in whichever Scripture you’re in.
Take the story of David and Goliath, for example. You could discuss how little David was the only one able to face the giant Philistine in battle. How? Because David, despite the rejection of men, despite looking unassuming, had the power of God living in him. David was on a mission to glorify God’s name, and no one—no matter how giant—was going to stop him. What a powerful illustration of how Christ, the most unlikely hero of all time, would one day stand in front of the much bigger giant of sin, and defeat it for the sake of all humanity.
Keep it practical.
The Gospel message strikes at the core of everyone who is willing to listen. Even if a storm knocked your church building down tomorrow, the practical message of the Gospel would still reel students in. Because the Gospel connects with people deeper than any game or entertainment ever could.
Put practical, real-life examples of how the Gospel is impacting your life and the lives of others in your messages and ministry events. Keep Gospel stories on the forefront of your students’ minds by scheduling time each week for students and leaders to share how they’ve prayed for, cared for, and had Gospel conversations with people in their lives. This will help them to see how the simple message of the Gospel has the power to radically transform their friends.
Video games, music, and free food can bring them in the building, but only the Gospel will transform them. If there’s only one thing you can aim to do well, it should be to lovingly share the Gospel with your students every time you see them. There’s no need to teach your students how to stand up, sit down, turn around, and roll over, all in one day—just focus on the Gospel.
To learn more about how to advance the Gospel in and through your youth group, check out Dare 2 Share’s Energize Youth Ministry Conference, April 23–25 in Denver, Colorado. You’ll leave energized!
