Tyree Sterling watched his own youth ministry completely transform after he and his students attended Lead THE Cause. This year, he’s joining us again at LTC as a speaker for the event in Austin, TX, and we’re pumped about it!
Tyree is a super engaging speaker with great stories and an awesome passion for Jesus. Whether you’re a teenager or a youth leader, you can count on learning a ton from him. Here’s a quick look into Tyree’s thoughts on Lead THE Cause:
1. How does the LTC experience help kids truly own their faith?
“There’s a model that says if you keep telling your students to share their faith, they will. But LTC actually provides the training, equipping, role playing scenarios, etc. for students to know how to do it. I see it operating in four phases at LTC:
- PRAYER: Getting students involved in intercessory prayer (praying to God about people before they talk to people about God) for their family, friends, teammates and classmates.
- CARE: Learning how to care through listening mixed with outreach experiences is a powerful combination.
- SHARE: Learning how to articulate the gospel through their own personality is a beautiful thing to witness. They take the faith of their parents and make it their own.
- DARE: After being trained and equipped, students are then unleashed into their communities back home with a blueprint for the next year of ministry that has been designed by their youth pastor and tweaked by their youth group during LTC.”
2. What changed in your youth group when you started focusing on the gospel?
“Our students didn’t know how to articulate the gospel, how to bring it up, or how to transition into a gospel conversation. Learning how to navigate a gospel conversation from take off to touch down was the game changer!
We took the momentum from LTC and included the plan we developed as a group to reach our city. Six months after LTC we had 68 new faces enter our youth ministry—32 put their trust in Christ and fifteen students stick to our youth ministry. I would tell my students that these numbers matter because each number has a name, each name has a pain, and each pain can be reframed.”
3. What’s your favorite part of speaking at LTC?
“As a youth pastor, I would communicate a biblical truth to my students but at times, they didn’t seem to get it UNTIL someone else said it. I don’t understand why it took someone else, I’m just thankful they ‘got it!’ Now I’m glad that I get to play a similar role to help other youth pastor’s students ‘get it’ and see every student in their community hear the gospel from a friend! Whoop Whoop!”
