The Greg Stier Youth ministry Podcast

0:01:51.2 GS: Yeah. And one of your son’s a TikTok star, right?

0:01:57.9 KS: Yeah. Well, he… Interesting quick story, he actually has a couple 100,000 followers, but he actually wrote me the other day.

0:02:03.2 GS: Wow.

0:02:03.3 KS: He wrote me the other day, he is studying in the Bible Institute of New York and he said, “Dad, you know what? I just permanently deleted my TikTok account because it wasn’t… It wasn’t helping me in my walk with Jesus.” And so…

0:02:18.0 GS: Yeah, ’cause they were following him because of his awesome hair, right? Pretty much.

0:02:20.7 KS: Yeah, basically. Most of his followers were like 13 to 16 year old girls and some college girls, the demographic was really skewed and his content was good, but he also realized it just wasn’t… It wasn’t pointing him in the right direction. And so he permanently deleted it. When I told another kid that the other day they said, “He had 200,000 followers and he deleted his TikTok?” I’m like, “Yeah.”

0:02:45.2 GS: You’re talking about putting Isaac on the altar. There you go.

0:02:48.0 KS: Yeah. I suppose. Yeah, exactly. And actually that bio, I hate to say that bio is old, we have a fourth child. We adopted our 18 year old daughter last year. And so we have our fourth child, Lyric, who… I just want shout out to Lyric. So yeah.

0:03:02.3 GS: That’s right. Shout out to Lyric. You bet.

0:03:03.8 KS: Yeah.

0:03:03.8 GS: That’s awesome. Well, listen, excited about this conversation, you and I are friends, man, over the last several years, God has just bound our hearts together. But for those not familiar with Word of Life, share with us, what is Word of Life? What does it do? And what do you do with Word of Life?

0:03:25.0 KS: Sure. World of Life is a youth ministry that has existed for about 80 years. Started with evangelism on the streets in New York City with our founder, Jack Wyrtzen. He was a precursor to Billy Graham, he filled Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium back in the ’40s and then started a youth ministry in Upstate, New York with our first youth camp, Word of Life Island. This year, we’re celebrating 75 years of youth camping, starting in Word of Life Island. And then that eventually just spread around the world. We have youth camps and youth ministries focused on evangelism and discipleship of the young people now in 80 countries, every inhabitable continent on the world… In the world. And God used that ministry to change my life when I was 13 years old and so that’s… God ended up bringing me back and I never left, that’s why I’m dedicated to what God’s doing through this ministry.

0:04:20.3 GS: That’s crazy. You think about that 1600 missionaries and I’ve met a ton of them in 80 countries and they’re, man, just on fire. Let me ask you this. Why is youth ministry a focus of Word of Life? Because I think a lot of the average youth leader out there may not realize, they may equate Word of Life for the camp, but they may not necessarily equate it with youth ministry. Why is youth ministry central to the ministry of Word of Life?

0:04:49.8 KS: Well, first of all, youth ministry in general, because the vast majority of those who trust Christ all around the world today are under the age of 25. And so we want to focus on this generation. They’re the ones that are more open to hear and to respond to the gospel and then to be leaders. And so that’s why we focus on that all around the world. When we talk about serving local churches with their youth ministries, helping coach them and train them up, that really started back in the ’60s because our camp ministry was so strong. We had all these pastors and everyone that were bringing teenagers to our camp and they would have this mountaintop experience at camp, which was amazing. I’m a huge believer in camp, the walls, the berries that come down, decisions that students make, I’m a result of that. But then the pastors were saying to us, Kris… Not Kris, Jack back that time, “Kris, Jack, what do we do for the other 51 weeks of the year?” And so that’s when we started many, many years ago, trying to equip and inspire local churches and they’re… Especially volunteer youth leaders. Most of the churches we work with are small to medium sized churches. And helping them the other 51 weeks of the year. In fact, that’s the name now of our youth ministry. Our teen ministry is called 51 for that very reason.

0:06:09.8 GS: Yeah. And you guys have a curriculum, comprehensive curriculum, that’s theologically rock-solid by the way, I just wanna say that. ‘Cause a lot of stuff out there today is just like skipping a rock on a lake, it’s just hitting the surface. You guys, I mean really break it down for these students in a way teens can understand, you have daily quiet times that kids can have for the year that are phenomenal, interactive, biblical solid. And where would youth leaders find all of that?

0:06:40.1 KS: Yeah, the best place to go for just kind of a global understanding of what Word of Life is all about if you just go to W-O-L Word of Life, wol.org, then on the up you can scroll down and you’ll see kind of the Bible Institute part, the camps part, ’cause we have 16 Bible institutes around the world. Camps… You’ll see our international ministries section, the 80 countries. And then you’ll see what’s called local church ministries or youth ministries, which is where churches and youth leaders can go to get equipped. We do have fantastic curriculum. Like you mentioned rock-solid theologically, we have a scope and sequence of about six years, taking junior high through high school, taking them through every major doctrine in the Bible, but also fantastic topical series, character studies, Bible… Working through different books of the Bible. And then obviously like you said, the quiet times, that’s what made a difference in my life. When I went to camp was the first time at Word of Life, I understood the importance of being in the word of God every day as a teenager. And so we’re, that’s super important. So yeah.

0:07:44.3 GS: Yeah. And it’s so contrary to where youth ministry is. I just gotta double down on this. One of my pet peeves, when I was a youth leader, was just the sheer shallowness of the content. I had to go through and bolster biblically and theologically. I think there’s a mindset and this is not in our script, but I think there’s a mindset in youth ministry that kids can only take so much, you need to just really, don’t go too deep. And what I think what’s happened, is we’re boring teenagers to death. They’re taking advanced calculus, they’re taking honors level courses and then they come to youth group and they’re hearing basic stories with a little practical point and never really growing deep. I think it’s time to really dig in.

0:08:27.0 KS: Absolutely.

0:08:27.6 GS: And that’s really what Word of Life curriculum does. So thank you guys for your quality material and camps. I mean, again, people… I love camps, as long as you have something, after the mountain high, what are you gonna do? Have that plan, you got quiet times, you got curriculum, got all sorts of stuff. So let’s talk a little bit about kind of the first time we met. It was in, I think DC at the youth’s ministry executive council, and we did a little separate meeting that we called, “The gospel advancing,” a round table where we invited national ministry leaders like you in to kinda hear about what we were doing and just tell us about that first meeting and that first encounter.

0:09:09.5 KS: Oh yeah. I’ll never forget. It was… I didn’t know what to expect. And I showed up, it was my first time at one of these meetings and frankly I had been praying for about six months because I’d been… I had to responsibly borrow international ministries, but about six months earlier, I had been handed the reins of our youth ministries department in the United States as well. And we were just kind of flat in our youth ministry philosophy and just impact, and I’d been praying, I felt like something was missing. And so, I was praying for about six months, “God, what are we missing to really get growing and be relevant again?” And I ended up at this meeting sitting next to you, and that was the first… Then you started speaking about your book Gospel Life and shared about the seven values of Gospel Advancing Ministry. And I remember seeing the chili pepper and getting a little handout in the seven values. And you started to walk through those things and I’m telling you, it was like a lightning bolt from the sky, Like, “Oh, oh,” the sun shining down and God was, it was almost as if He was audibly saying to me, “Kris, this is the answer to what you have been praying about for six months, this is what you’re missing.” And what was that? It was the idea, well, first of all, every teen everywhere hearing the gospel from a friend, that’s the first time that I’d heard that.

0:10:39.2 KS: And then these seven values that talked about what do we build youth ministry on? What is that framework and the philosophy of helping, equipping and inspiring teenagers to reach their own generation? And why that was so important to me was because at Word of Life, our founder, Jack Wyrtzen back in the ’40s, he used to say, it’s the responsibility of every generation to reach their generation for Christ. And we have that splatter all over our walls everywhere. And we got t-shirts with Jack’s face on it and all kinds of stuff that say that. But what I realized that we had kind of walked away from unknowingly is that our generation, my generation gen-Xers or whatever, and the older guys we’d become very good at us reaching the next generation. I mean, we preach the gospel, we do mass evangelism, we do it in camps, we do all that kind of stuff, but we had lost sight somehow of equipping this generation to reach their generation. And that’s what we used to always be about, that’s what our founder was about.

0:11:48.5 KS: It was about personal evangelism, it was about equipping teenagers to reach their friends. And so when I was sitting in that meeting, it’s like, “This is who we are, but somehow we’ve walked away from it a little bit and we need to get back.” And so that’s when we just completely shifted our philosophy and we adopted those seven values. And so now today, all that curriculum and the quiet times in everything that we’re doing is all based on those seven values and the idea of equipping and training teenagers to reach their friends for Christ.

0:12:22.4 GS: Well, and it… I remember kind of the after effect. I didn’t realize at the moment how deeply you were being impacted, but by these truths, which we, like I said, we didn’t develop them, we discovered them, when the research project…

0:12:35.5 KS: Well, I was crying. So maybe that’s why you didn’t… Maybe you didn’t realize that.

0:12:39.6 GS: I just thought maybe this is just a super emotional guy, I don’t know. But the after effect, like soon after you invited me to come in and train your global leaders, and we did that and I remember, one of your global leaders coming up to me and through a translator saying, “You’ve taken what is in our heart and put a language to it.”

0:13:00.6 KS: Yeah.

0:13:00.7 GS: And I’ll tell you, what’s exciting for me, is to see an organization, that’s gone from gospelised to institutionalized to go back to gospelised. I know, there’s still work to do, and you guys are working on it, this and the other. But a lot of organizations, they stay institutionalized. And you and Don, the president, I mean, all of you guys have doubled down on shifting the culture. And I think, man, you have made massive progress for a ministry that’s in 80 countries with 1600 missionaries, that is all over the world in becoming a true… Not only becoming a Gospel Advancing Ministry, but helping to lead the way for other organizations and ministries. So on our end, it’s been awesome, awesome to watch. And as we kinda talk about the global impact, what are some of the global impact you’ve seen from these gospel advancing truths? I mean, I know, from Ukraine to Egypt.

0:14:03.0 KS: Yeah.

0:14:03.9 GS: Stories that you’ve recently told me, about how gospel advancing is really advancing around the world.

0:14:09.3 KS: Yeah. I mean, I was just interacting today, on WhatsApp with our leader in Rwanda, you know David, you know him and Steven Bahago in Nigeria. I’ve got our guys in South Africa, then across Europe, I had dinner last night, with one of our leaders from Spain who… We… When I was there with them for camp this summer, we were talking all about Life in 6 Words and they were actually taking students out on the weekends, once they’re training churches and taking students right out into the streets of Spain, using the Life in 6 Words app. And…

0:14:46.8 GS: Okay. So let me…

0:14:48.3 KS: Right.

0:14:48.3 GS: Just put a pause on that. That explains…

0:14:50.5 KS: Yeah.

0:14:51.3 GS: Why, when I look at the Life in 6 Words app, some of Europe is dead, but Spain.

0:14:57.4 KS: Yeah.

0:14:58.0 GS: Is lit up.

0:15:00.0 KS: Yeah. They got it.

0:15:00.8 GS: It’s because of your friends.

0:15:00.9 KS: So… We wanna see that happen all over Europe.

0:15:02.3 GS: It’s awesome.

0:15:02.9 KS: I’m gonna be in France, in later this fall, and we’re gonna be talking a lot about that. And we’ve got guys that are getting it and that’s exciting, but yeah. I mean, they’re taking students… We’re training students in the churches with youth leaders, and then, we’re just helping them mobilize to take them out into the streets of their community. We’re seeing that happen there in the Ukraine. We had the Life in 6 Words printed in Russian and we’re… We actually… We’re doing youth leader training and student training the Saturday before the very first bombs fell in a church there outside of Kyiv and now, we’re still doing it, with all the food distribution and all that kind of stuff, we’re… Goodness. And then, not even to mention, what we’re about to partner to do here on September 17th, with the Dare 2 Share live in the national day of Hispanic evangelism all across Latin America. Yeah. I mean… There’s just… Our entire ministry around the world. Egypt, I was just in Egypt and had the privilege of training 160 youth leaders and walking them through the seven values as a basis of youth ministry, all of our curriculum, that’s now in Arabic, taking the Life in 6 Words app in Arabic and showing it to them as well. Just so much is going on. It’s fantastic.

0:16:22.9 GS: Yeah, it’s so exciting for us because we’re… Dare 2 Share. I mean, we have 30 ish people here in Nevada, Colorado, we don’t have field staff and I feel like, we don’t need field staff, ’cause we’re friends with Word of Life.

0:16:35.8 KS: Amen. Let’s go.

0:16:36.0 GS: And you guys are taking the ground and advancing the kingdom of God and advancing the gospel of Jesus Christ. So super, super excited about that. And again, just as a lesson to youth leaders, I mean, if God can use Kris Stout as a catalyst, to shift a culture globally, from institutionalized to gospel advancing, God can use you, youth leader, to shift your entire church culture. You get these middle schoolers on fire for Christ, sharing the gospel, it convicts grandma and grandpa, mom and dad, entire… Your entire church culture. And I believe, your church set on fire can affect an association or even a denomination, to…

0:17:19.3 KS: That’s right.

0:17:19.3 GS: The power of the Holy Spirit. It’s not Kris, it’s the power of the Holy Spirit in and through Kris. It’s not you.

0:17:25.0 KS: Amen.

0:17:25.3 GS: It’s the power of the Holy Spirit, in and through you. So Kris, this is just super, super exciting. Tell us a little bit about… Now, we’ve partnered as well with Word of Life Bible Institute in Schroon Lake as well as in Tampa, when it comes to advance on the training and tools. But tell us a little bit about the Bible Institute.

0:17:45.8 KS: Yeah, the Bible Institute. We’re one of the last remaining… If not the last remaining pure Bible Institute, in the United States. Years ago, there were all sorts of them. And a lot of them, they’re still doing great work, but they’ve kind of morphed more into four year schools or Bible colleges or whatever. That… And which is great. But our Bible Institute is a one year fully accredited study of the word of God, where you are… A student is going at least two times through the entire Bible, in a nine month period. Plus they have a eight week period of ministry in one of our summer camps putting everything to practice. But throughout the whole year, there’s study, life and ministries. So study is the high academic value of learning the word of God, foundational time in the word of God. Secondly, is life, know life on life discipleship, all of our students and in the dorms, outside the dorms, but then, also ministry. And that is we wanna get every 18, 19, 20 year old, sometimes older involved directly in evangelism and discipleship. And so, that’s what we do.

0:18:49.8 KS: And I think, that… I mean, I could imagine every student, I know it’s not possible, but imagine every student went and spent one year at the Bible Institute or at a Bible Institute like that before going on to university, whatever the university, whatever you’re gonna study, and I think, that you just have a fantastic solid foundation to make an even greater impact in your world, wherever God’s calling you. So that’s what we’re doing. I went there when I was 18 years old. And even though I grew up in a Christian home, Christian school, great church, my year at the Bible Institute transformed my life. So…

0:19:30.6 GS: Yeah. And I know my own daughter, she’s really thinking about going to Word of Life, after that I…

0:19:34.5 KS: We’re waiting for her, I hope she comes. Yeah, exactly.

0:19:37.0 GS: Yeah, I hope she does, too. I think she would absolutely love it. And so youth leaders might really get to know Word of Life by [0:19:43.1] ____… Phenomenal, phenomenal and love going out…

0:19:47.0 KS: And we have a great teacher of evangelism and Greg Stier up in Schroon Lake, teaches our personal evangelism. And we got Jon Burdette and Jason Lamb, Gary Shergide coming to our week of personal evangelism. And so that’d be fantastic.

0:20:02.0 GS: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. We put all of our evangelism training into a 10 session course. So it was exciting to know that we had that much to teach actually, I was like, “Yeah, we have enough.” Alright. Well, let’s talk a little bit. We’re gonna bring in our leader, our youth leader, who actually is a former youth leader, but always a youth leader at heart, Jon Burdette. Jon’s the founder and president of Jon Burdette Ministries, and serves as a speaker and trainer for Dare 2 Share, his passion, training leaders and leading leaders to advance the gospel globally. He’s got a special place in his heart, not just for teens, but training the whole church on how to share the gospel and creating a culture of evangelism. Prior to answering the call as a missionary, Jon served 17 years as a youth pastor, that’s where we originally met. Lead pastor, church planter, Jon, welcome to the podcast.

0:20:54.5 Jon Burdette: Hi. Thanks, Greg. It’s great to be here with you and Kris. And I remember the first time I was praying about not leaving youth ministry, but God was dealing with me about going into like, as a senior pastor, and you said, “You’ll still be a youth pastor just with more authority.” And that’s… Trust me, brother…

0:21:11.1 GS: That’s right… More authority and a bigger budget…

0:21:13.7 JB: And a bigger budget, except it was a church budget, so not so much…

[laughter]

0:21:17.0 GS: Yeah. Well, not so much, not so much. So as you kinda listened Jon, and this is gonna be kind of a three-way conversation, but especially between you and Kris, what are some of the things that you picked up from that, or you have questions about, or comments on, as Kris shared?

0:21:34.8 JB: Yeah. Well, first I’d just love to say, love Dare 2 Share, obviously love Kris Stout and Word of Life, Word of Life is one of those ministries I’ve heard a lot about, as a youth pastor, sorry to say, I never really got in deep with it until through Dare 2 Share. So I think first of all, it’s the power of partnerships and seeing that kingdom work happening together. It’s great for reaching the lost, obviously, and mobilizing believers, but it’s great for church leaders to see that cohesion happening as well. And then just to see the impact through that relationship. And what’s been intriguing for me, because, I love to travel not nearly… And have not traveled nearly as much as Kris Stout. But it’s intriguing to me about how much you get to travel around the world and get to do that, I love that. But what blows me away mostly, and you kind of said it Greg, so I’ll echo it, is a lot of times we talk to youth leaders, and they get… They hear about the seven values. And it’s sort of a similar story that you hear just what Kris said, I’ve been praying about something, I’ve been hungry, I’ve been craving something. And they hear about it. And they know that maybe this is it, but they’re afraid to take that leap.

0:22:42.6 JB: And when you think about alignment and shifting a culture, I just think, looked at Kris Stout and Word of Life, because you’re talking about one church, which is I know it’s a big deal, don’t get me wrong, versus a global ministry. And because of that, how God has used the work through Kris and this partnership and just the DNA of Gospel Advancing Ministry. I’ve even personally had the opportunity to train some leaders online in the Bible Institute in Hungary, train some European missionaries through Word of Life a couple of years ago as well, and Gospel Advancing Ministry and just to see that kind of… That impact take place. So one question I actually had, is you talked about when you first heard the values, how exciting it was, and the answer to prayer to you, Kris, when you caught that vision, and started sharing that with some of your leaders, share a little bit about the reception some of them had. I mean, it could be good and bad, and ugly, but I know when I start sharing this stuff, it’s almost like it’s exciting to me to see again, to see how others get excited. And so I just love to kind of hear what that was like for you.

0:23:53.7 KS: Yeah, so when… Not long after I was in DC with Greg. I actually was in just, real quick I was in Italy speaking for camp and that’s when I read Gospel Life. And as I’m reading through it I’m just… My heart’s burning, I’m crying, I’m underlying, highlighting all sorts of stuff. And then as soon as I got back I called together our regional directors from across the United States. And I said, “Guys, we got to talk about this.” I said, “I’ve been praying about… We’ve been praying about what we’re missing and I believe this is it.” And so a lot of our regional guys were older gentlemen that had been in the ministry for quite a while. And it was really interesting, because, here I am, I’m kind of bringing this to the table and saying, I think that we’ve gotten away from our original mission. And we’ve missed that word… We’ve worked discipleship a little bit, and we’re forgetting that we have to be first and foremost, equipping teenagers to share their faith, and that’s gonna drive their discipleship journey. And as I’m sharing this with them, these older guys are crying, they start crying, and they look at me, and it was just the most affirming thing they said…

0:25:08.5 KS: This is getting… This is what we’re missing. This is getting back to who we used to be. I remember… And they started telling stories about how we used to do this and how we kind of drifted in it… And then the rest is history, which is awesome.

0:25:24.2 JB: Right, yeah. That’s awesome. And I kind of had a feeling that was gonna be that, even the crying, but it was that kind of reception of just…

0:25:33.4 KS: Yeah.

0:25:35.0 JB: Being reignited with that flame and that’s so awesome. I love to, and I just kind of throw this out there for those listening too and watching that… You kind of touched on it being a… Like what we would say a discipleship accelerator. A lot of times we’re talking to youth leaders and pastors, a lot of times there’s this tendency, and I think this happens in the mission drift that happens a lot of the time. And it starts with just trying to separate evangelism and discipleship, which Jesus never did. [chuckle] He never tried to do that.

0:26:06.4 KS: No.

0:26:07.1 JB: We sometimes try to do that and that’s an issue. And we see how evangelism’s actually, and Jesus modeled this. It was the… One of the greatest discipleship accelerators. And when… That’s what really did it for me as a youth leader, I mean, I was always an evangelistic leader, always shared the gospel always… But really mobilizing it was through Dare 2 Share, the Gospel Advancing values are really begin to mobilize them and see the impact, how they would grow so much. Like we like to say, the more they go, the more they grow, they begin to pray more passion… We want them to pray passionately and study the word, but we want them to do that and then be ready to share the gospel. But a lot of times get them sharing first, they let the Holy Spirit work through them and they experience that obedience, and then they begin to pray passionately. Then they begin to study diligently in God’s word. And that’s really, you also have awesome resources there with the Word of Life curriculum for them to dig deeper.

0:27:00.1 JB: And they begin to mature more rapidly, oftentimes more so than believers that have been Christians for 30, 40, 50 years. Because they’ve never really stepped out in that kind of obedience. And so I just love the activation that we see through the implementation of these values, but also how you activated it through all throughout Word of Life, man. And it’s just been major and massive kingdom impacts. Awesome.

0:27:25.9 KS: Yeah. It’s been… I think that that’s kind of what we had done is… And I think there’s a tendency sometimes in the Christian world, at least maybe in the last 10, 20 years of discipleship had become for a while a lot of information.

0:27:43.9 JB: Yeah.

0:27:44.1 KS: A lot of, like we talked about Gospel Centered, which is good, but Gospel Centered as Greg we’ve talked… Could just be a bunch of people sitting around the table talking about the gospel to each other. But we don’t wanna just be Gospel Centered, we want our teenagers to be Gospel Advancing. And I think we got stuck on that Gospel Centered part and had kind of left behind the Gospel Advancing part. But you gotta have both and the one, actually, the advancing drives the centeredness and vice versa. And so… Yeah.

0:28:16.9 JB: Yeah. That’s fantastic. Where do you think… Maybe…

0:28:16.9 GS: This is great. I love… Go for it.

0:28:21.9 JB: No, go ahead. Alright. Well, I got… I’m the preacher, so I can always keep talking.

0:28:24.4 GS: No no you’re the guest.

0:28:25.4 JB: I was just gonna say, what was one of the…

0:28:28.1 GS: What are you saying? Are you saying I’m not a preacher? I’m a preacher baby. Come on. You wanna have a preach off, let’s go.

[overlapping conversation]

0:28:33.6 JB: You cut me off. You cut me off.

0:28:34.1 GS: We three preachers.

[laughter]

0:28:36.1 GS: True. True.

0:28:36.6 JB: This means three preachers, this podcast will actually never end. There you go. No, I’m just kidding. I’m just gonna say, what’s one of the… What has been one of the biggest challenges, because we’ve talked to youth leaders a lot about this too, but on, I mean on this scale, this level, what’s been one of the biggest challenges in seeing that permeation that’s… It’s happening, I know it’s happening. We’ve talked about it already. I’m seeing it too. And I work with international leaders that are Word of Life leaders that it’s… There’s just taken root and spreading like wildfire. But what’s kind of been one of the biggest challenges in getting that moving?

0:29:10.6 KS: Well, and I wanna make sure you know, our guys around the world, they love the gospel, our men and women, they care about the gospel.

0:29:16.1 JB: Sure.

0:29:17.4 KS: And we have been training teenagers to share their faith, but just not with the focus.

0:29:21.1 JB: Sure. Yes.

0:29:21.6 KS: And so I think the biggest challenge, in any organization, when it’s wide and broad, it’s seeing that permeate all the way through and then, but also understanding that it takes time. That even in a youth group, when you start to apply this in your youth group, it’s still gonna take a couple years, two to three years for it really to take off and for you to see the fruit. But you can’t… You can’t give up, you have to keep pushing forward and then eventually you’re gonna see a huge harvest and you’re gonna see the whole shift in your youth ministry. So…

0:29:54.6 JB: Amen. That’s awesome.

0:29:56.6 GS: That’s great. Can I speak now, Jon, on my own podcast, do you care if I say something?

[laughter]

0:30:02.9 JB: Yeah. Well, let me take, let’s do the offering and then we’ll do the… I’m just kidding.

[laughter]

0:30:07.9 GS: We’ll do the offering and then we’ll do that?

[laughter]

0:30:09.9 JB: Yeah. Yes.

0:30:11.4 GS: If you guys can’t tell that are listening, Jon and I are good friends, so is, Kris and I. And I just love the… I love… Just on a side note I love the gospel deepening of relationships.

0:30:23.4 KS: Amen.

0:30:23.4 GS: When you’re on mission together, advancing the gospel together, you became… We become spiritual frat buddies, you know? We’re just in this together, fraternity of faith. So as we wrap up just, I want youth leaders that are listening or pastors, Jon, how would somebody get ahold of you because you do youth training, you do youth events, but you also train churches, church wide in these seven values…

0:30:47.9 JB: Yeah.

0:30:49.1 GS: And how to share the gospel. How would the youth leaders or pastors connect with you?

0:30:54.6 JB: Yeah. Absolutely. I have a website it’s just simply Jonburdette.com, J-O-N-B-U-R-D-E-T-T-E.com. As a youth pastor wanting to see this spread throughout the church. I had the opportunity to do that as a lead pastor and God did amazing things that would take a whole ‘nother podcast to share that. But now God’s kind of given me the call to always make a case for youth ministry of course, but to accelerate that even, to see this spread throughout the entire church, because I got to see what that’s like as a lead pastor and I want others to experience that as well. So they can get on the website. They can also just send an email as well at team@jonburdette.com as well and to get in touch with us. Also we’re on Facebook. You can like us there and reach out to us. So we would love to come alongside, offer coaching, training, preaching, events and those kind of things. But our heart is always to see the seven values, which are biblical to breathe that acts like excitement and atmosphere throughout the entire church where it’s not just an institution, it’s a movement. And to see that move forward.

0:32:04.9 GS: Yeah. So I just, I fully endorse Jon Burdette and his ministry and really encourage you guys to take a look at bringing him in. Kris, again, how would… We know about WOL.org, wordoflife.org. How would, youth leaders follow you or pastors follow you online? What’s your TikTok [chuckle] or your Instagram?

0:32:27.1 KS: Yeah, yeah. I don’t have a TikTok. In fact I’ve kind of… I’ve deleted my Twitter account twice, you know? So you can, you could find me on… Facebook will… Is kind of a worldwide thing. And so if you want to see what I’m doing is K-R-I-S-S-T-O-U-T, Kris Stout, same thing with my Instagram is at @krisstout. Yeah.

0:32:50.9 GS: Great. Hey, you guys, this has been phenomenal and super excited about what God’s doing through Word of Life and Jon Burdette Ministries and God is up to something big. Remember youth leaders to find them online and remember that a thriving youth ministry, as we’ve heard today is a gospel advancing one. So advance the gospel. Thanks.