The Greg Stier Youth ministry Podcast

0:01:26.2 GS: It’ll be great. Well, we’re excited. And I remember our conversations about evangelism and relational evangelism, evangelism training, because Pray For All is super passionate about every person in the world being prayed for by name. Talk a little bit about Pray For All and America Prays, the vision and passion behind that.

0:01:51.4 DA: Yeah. So Pray For All is an initiative of World Prays and America Prays, and in that initiative, we wanna pray for every person in the world by name and share Jesus with them, and it takes the whole body of Christ to do that. Imagine, I used to work for the census where every person counts. This is the spiritual side of the census, and we don’t count people, but we say, “Hey, every believer needs to be engaged. Go find five people that are close to you, but that are far from God, and pray for them by name. Every single day, take five minutes a day, pray for them by name, and then relate to them. Start not just praying for them, but listening to them and eating with them, serving them, and sharing the gospel with them.”

0:02:31.8 DA: So the the purpose is, yes, you’re gonna engage in prayer, ask God to give you opportunities to share Jesus with them. But the end of it all is that those five people hear from Jesus from a friend. So that’s what we do, and that’s why we partner with Dare to Share so much, because you guys are the experts on evangelism and you’re teaching us a thing or two about how to get there. Not just prayer, which is our forte. We teach people to be intimate with Jesus and to pray for others, but to take that step and go share Jesus with them.

0:03:02.7 GS: Yeah. I love it. And I’m trying to think, before we dive into relational evangelism, how we all first met. And I think, and you can correct me, but it was really in Austin at the Pray For All or Austin Prays event where we first connected. Is that right?

0:03:24.7 DA: That’s right. Yeah, I think we invited you as a guest speaker, and Brian had met you, I think you had spoken at the same events and he heard you speak and he said, “Hey, let’s bring him in.” And for me, you were one of the guest speakers. And then I heard you speak on evangelism and your burden for young people, and I thought, “Oh my goodness, we’ve got to get his vision into our vision and then deploy it to the world.” So yeah, we met in Austin, that was kind of the pilot program for America, for Pray For All. Back in those days it was Pray Beyond, and then we changed the name to Pray for All. And then that initiative went global, and now we’re in different continents doing the same thing that we did in Austin, just engaging people…

0:04:04.7 GS: That’s awesome.

0:04:05.2 DA: In prayer, service and evangelism.

0:04:07.6 GS: I love it because you bring prayer. It seems there’s the prayer people and then there’s evangelism people. And you keep those separate. It’s like keeping Nitrogen and glycerin separate. You bring those together, first prayer, obviously, then evangelism, it becomes explosive in all the right ways.

0:04:28.8 DA: Absolutely.

0:04:29.6 GS: Yeah, that’s the essence of…

0:04:32.4 DA: There’s no way that you can be intimate with God and not get in his burden for the people. There’s no way. If you’re praying and you’re seeking God and God’s speaking to you and shaping you, he’s gonna give you the burden of his heart, which is to save people. And so we, like you, you always said, “Put those two together and it’s explosive.” And so we just kind of guide people in that, “Okay, well let’s pray. Yes, we are intimate with God, but remember the people that don’t know God yet and bring them into the fold of God.” And when that happens, when they start praying for other people, there’s this burden that comes on them like, “Wait a minute, I wonder what he’s feeling, I wonder what he’s doing. How can I give him a meal or serve him?”

0:05:12.1 DA: And then, I think the hardest step though, prayer and service are easy, because you can pray in private and service, you can serve them and just do as much as you can do and be thanked for it. But evangelism sometimes requires that step of faith of, “I’m gonna look stupid. I don’t know enough. What if they don’t like me after all,” that relationship dynamic that evangelism takes a little bit of time. And so that’s why we’ve love to just learn from you, from Dare To Share, how to equip people. ‘Cause people will do it, they have the burden for it, but many times the block is, “I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how to tell my loved ones that I’m praying for them and that they need Jesus.”

0:05:57.2 GS: Love it. And I think it’s pretty cool because I know Brian’s working on a book about what this means, to pray for all and to reach the world and pray for everyone to share Christ. And I believe we got a chapter in there on basically how to share the gospel and how do you bring that up in a natural way, because a lot of times it really is a difficult challenge. Let’s talk a little bit about the BLESS strategy. This is the strategy that’s used across the world by Pray For All to help, I would say, the average Christian adult, how do we begin to reach people with the gospel and how do we do that in our own neighborhoods? And this applies specifically because the number one listener of this podcast is the average Christian adult. I mean, there are youth leaders that live in neighborhoods. Just tell us, unpack the BLESS strategy. Just quickly, what is it?

0:07:00.8 DA: Yes. So it’s not a new idea. We did not invent it or anything. It’s been going around in circles for many decades. But we really learned it from Dave Ferguson from Exponential and NewThing, and he was one of the speakers at the same conference that you were in. And he talks about how, in the past, he wanted to share the gospel and tried not have a relationship with people and just out in the open for the first time they met, “Hey you need Jesus. You’re going to hell, and let me tell you about him.” And that didn’t work. And then he decided, “No, I can’t do that. So I’ll do the relational thing and just live out my faith,” but nobody was getting saved. And so he said, “There has to be a happy medium.”

0:07:38.2 DA: And so he began studying the scriptures and all that, and he came up with an acronym. And the acronym is BLESS, which is super easy to remember. B stands for Begin with prayer. Pray for the people that are far from God, that are in your life that you can reach, pray for them daily. And then don’t just do that, but begin listening to them. Find out what their needs are, find out what their passion is, what their dreams are, what their fears are. And once you begin doing that, you begin listening to God about them, you begin listening to them about their needs and fears and all that. Then God begins to give you a burden to do other things. So the E in BLESS stands for Eat with them. And so not everybody’s a great cook, like Greg, but some people can invite people to coffee or takeout.

0:08:26.9 GS: No, no, no no, let me make it clear. I’m a horrible cook. Your son is a phenomenal cook. Oh my goodness.

0:08:35.0 DA: He’s an amazing cook.

0:08:37.5 GS: Remember when he cooked for us that night? And I’m like, “Oh my goodness.”

0:08:38.1 DA: Yeah, he’s great.

0:08:41.3 GS: “Would you travel with me and be my own personal chef?” Oh my goodness. Anyways.

0:08:44.8 DA: He’s amazing. That’s why the E part of BLESS for our family is so easy ’cause we just say, “Hey Colin, would you make some gourmet burger and we can have these people over?” And it’s so easy. But anyways, we go from Begin with prayer to Listening to Eat with them. Share a meal with them ’cause there’s something about food that breaks barriers. You can sit at a desk with someone and they’re not gonna share intimate stuff with you, but you sit at a table and then all those walls come down and you begin having just a more intimate relationship with someone. The first S in BLESS stands for Serve them. Once you pray for them and you listen to them, really listen to them, and you eat with them, and again listen to them, you begin learning what their needs are.

0:09:31.1 DA: Are there physical needs that they have? Are there emotional needs, mental needs, spiritual needs? And you begin addressing those needs with what you have. It doesn’t mean that you are gonna give them, pay the mortgage for the rest of their lives, but it might be that you help with a meal because they’re at work and their needs, their kids need somebody to cook for them. So you bring them a meal, you do something for them, you drive them to school, something little that you can do. You begin addressing those needs, and as you do all those things, these people are starting to see that they’re not a project to you. That they’re actually your friends and the BLESS pathway is not, again, project-based, like, “I’m gonna do all these things so that you listen to me.”It’s really genuine interest in a person. You pray for them, you listen to them, you eat with them, you serve them because you love them.

0:10:22.0 DA: And then the last S in BLESS stands for Share Jesus with them, and others say share your story but we make it really clear that it’s share Jesus with them. What has Jesus done in your life? What do you know about the gospel that you can share with that person? And it doesn’t mean that these steps take place one after the other, because if they’re ready to hear from Jesus after you’ve begun praying for them or even before you pray for them, you better share Jesus. Sometimes you serve them then that opens the door for you to listen to them. But it’s a good acronym for relational evangelism, that with every person that you wanna share the gospel with, you should be serving, you should be listening to them and opening your home or your heart and sharing a meal with them. So basically that’s what we promote worldwide when it comes to relational evangelism.

0:11:14.8 GS: Yeah, and I really love that. I’m actually doing that in my neighborhood and it’s a really good way, ’cause I’m the guy. I wanna get to it quick and it’s slowed me down a little bit in a good way with neighbors, to begin to really work on getting them out to eat. I’m getting to know them and I’m dropping the gospel in and out of conversations all the time. But yeah, and I think for youth leaders that are watching this, you wanna model evangelism, relational evangelism to your students. This is a great way to model specifically with your neighbors or if you’re a part-time youth leader, your coworkers, to invite them out to eat, to be a part of those conversations, to love them, to serve them. It’s a different… We use the, across, prayer-care-share, but it really is prayer-care-share. You pray for them…

0:12:00.9 DA: It’s the same.

0:12:06.2 GS: You care for them. Part of that is you’re eating food. And it’s interesting ’cause if you look at Jesus and his model of ministry, he’s always eating and he’s eating with sinners. He’s eating with the people he is trying to reach, not just the religious. I mean, he eats with everybody, but he’s fellowshipping. There is something about eating food together that brings those walls down. So I think it’s a great strategy. I encourage youth leaders, if you’re thinking, “”Man, how do I model this in front of my students? I’m not an evangelist, so how do I do that?” The BLESS strategy is a really effective strategy. I do think it’s unique, and you and I have had conversations about this. You have a background, and I don’t know what your… What is your doctorate in your master’s?

0:12:49.5 DA: It’s in education.

0:12:51.9 GS: Okay. So, that’s one of the reasons we connected right away, ’cause you’re like, “I love the Dare to Share because it hits all the pedagogical, like audio, visual, kinesthetic. Gets kids involved.” Talk a little bit about that because I know we really connected on that. It actually was super affirming to me, because I think we didn’t come toward evangelism training from a clinical point of view. We just tested and applied until it worked out. But you have more of that kind of, not just practical, but also a theoretical point of view. Talk a little bit about that and how the Dare to Share evangelism training connects, when it comes to checking those teaching boxes.

0:13:41.6 DA: Yeah. I loved it from the get-go. When you just shared your vision, I began just devouring all the Dare to Share resources. Every curriculum series, I downloaded it to my computer. Not everyone, but I just studied every part of it and I thought… Well, what I first told you was, “This is not just for youth. Dare to Share should be promoted to every single generation because it is so good.” And as we go into all these nations with Pray For All, we equip them. That’s our job. We don’t do the specifics with them. We just equip them and say, “Hey, here’s tools for prayer. Here’s tools for service. Here’s tools for evangelism.” But the number one thing that we heard was, “This sounds great, but how do we do it?”

0:14:23.8 DA: You can tell me… I mean, eating is easy, right? Just make a meal or invite them out. Listening, I mean, even listening, we have to teach that. But the evangelism part is something that we tell everybody we should do, but nobody really… Well, I shouldn’t say nobody, but we don’t have that teaching widely available in a way that’s easy and is easily digested and practiced. And I think that’s what Dare to Share does, is that the training manuals that I read are so practical and yet so packed with Christology, so packed with theology, but then anybody can do it. There’s no intimidation factor. It’s not a big old book that you have to learn Greek and Hebrew and memorize all of the stuff and steps. You just internalize it and it becomes so easy to do.

0:15:12.4 DA: And I think it’s because your target is teens. You want teens to learn the gospel. You want teens to internalize it and then share with others so that for an adult, that becomes easier. And I think, at Pray For All and World Prays, we always say, our target is an 18 year old. Anything that we produce, any graphics, any training, we wanna keep it there because that’s where most people are at. If we can grab the attention of an 18 year old, make him passionate about prayer, service and evangelism, then the adults are in too. So that’s what caught my eye about Dare to Share, that it was fun, it was exciting, but it was so biblical. And so, I mean you don’t veer. There’s no games at Dare to Share.

0:16:00.6 DA: Of course, there’s games in everything we do, but you’re not playing, and that’s what I liked about it. Because there’s other things that I’ve read that are like, it’s a little, not something that I would present, not something that will sustain them, that is actually feeding them. It’s just a little strategy here and there. And then when they get asked questions that are difficult, they’ll be like, “I don’t know what to say.” And Dare to Share addresses those things and talks first to the person and say, “Hey, don’t just memorize this. Internalize it, get to know Jesus.” And then you challenge them to share Jesus with them. It’s not like okay, you relate to people and then grab your pastor and he’s gonna share the gospel. No, that’s your responsibility and I love that about Dare to Share.

0:16:47.6 GS: Yeah, and empowers these teens. And we use a take-off to touchdown analogy of an aeroplane. How do you fill up on the right motivation? How do you get passengers on board? Prayer-care-share or BLESS. You get them on board, you get them engaged. How do you take off? How do you begin that conversation there? Ask, admire, admit. What’s your flight plan, the gospel? And then how do you land that plane? And how do you do it? How do you give them an opportunity to put their faith in Christ? And I love that. Just make it simple enough for a teenager to understand and the adults will understand in the process. It’s so true. When I was a pastor for 10 years, all the Dare to Share training started as a sermon series at the church I pastored.

0:17:34.7 DA: Yeah. It makes sense.

0:17:35.9 GS: And we tested on the adults actually, and then begin to implement it. So it’s a little… And I’ve talked to you about this, I’ve talked to Brian about this. The BLESS strategy works for anybody. But one of the challenges adults have that teens don’t have generally speaking, is adults, Christian adults sometimes don’t build relationships with non-Christians. Teenagers, the great thing about teenagers is they build relationships. If you talk to a Christian teenager, there’s just your average teenager. Not necessarily homeschooled, maybe with Christian friends that all they have is Christian friends or a Christian school.

0:18:18.3 GS: But the average Christian teen, if you talk to them about building relationship with unreached people, they look at you like you’re weird. Like, “That’s all I do. That’s what my TikTok is. That’s what my Instagram is.” And the opportunity to be able to just… They already have the bridge built with a lot of these kids. They just need the courage to cross it with the gospel, and making sure they’re loving their friends, and caring for them. But it is a little bit… Would you agree, it’s a little bit unique with teenagers, because that’s what they do?

0:18:54.5 DA: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. That’s what we can learn. We can take a page from their lives and really spend some time with people. That’s why teenagers are so effective at evangelism, like you mentioned, because they already have that relationship. They already actually do care. It’s not just they’re just talking to people, but they actually do care for people, spend time with them. And for adults, it’s almost like a novel thing. Like what? I get to… I have to do all these things, be in relationship with them? Because we’ve taught them for many years, like be separate, be holy. Stay away from these things. And there’s a fine line there. You’re like, don’t cross that line, because if you talk to them, you’re gonna become like them. And it’s so not true. I think it’s a lie of the enemy to keep us worlds apart, so that people don’t come to Jesus.

0:19:47.7 GS: Amen. You know what’s interesting too, as I think about the BLESS strategy, specifically for a teenager in a public school setting, I think of one youth leader that introduced me to a teenager at a church in South Dakota where they had implemented what they called the Lunch Cafeteria Table Challenge. That once a week, they would sit at a different cafeteria table in the lunchroom and build a relationship with somebody else. And talking to this girl that’s considered herself a missionary because, for once a week throughout the school year, she sat at a different table and built those relations. Ate with people, begin to pray for them, find out about their lives, and it led to many gospel conversations. So it’s a great, great template to think about.

0:20:39.9 GS: I wanna just ask you one other question before we bring our youth leader in. As you think about youth ministries around the world, not just in the United States, but around the world, what role do you think relational evangelism should play and can play? And is it strong around the world, or is that an area of need that these youth leaders and these students need training, equipping and mobilization around the world when it comes to evangelism?

0:21:18.4 DA: It’s, I believe, one of the weakest parts, period. The youth ministry is one of the weakest in the world because we have this idea that we’re babysitting kids until they can make their own decisions and become adults. Once they, I don’t even know, turn 18 or go to college, then we begin focusing on them. But I see it around the world, either there’s youth ministries that are focused just on, “Okay, well let’s grow these kids.” But we know, from statistics, from studies out there, that even the kids that are in youth group, that even the kids that are in Christian homes, once they hit college, many of them leave. And I love what you said at first, and forgive me if I make a mistake, you said the best way to, what is it, to help kids grow is to what, make them to go, or something like that.

0:22:10.9 GS: Get them to go. Yeah.

0:22:11.0 DA: Get them to go, right? Get them to go.

0:22:12.9 GS: Yeah.

0:22:13.3 DA: And I think that worldwide, what we see is that they’re not engaging the youth. They’re going to church, they’re going to youth group, but they don’t see teens as this dormant force in the church. They can actually begin doing. And I’m an advocate for kids and teens to begin living out and sharing the gospel just like you. So yes, I believe that training in evangelism is key if this force of teens and kids are gonna wake up to the fact that they can be on mission. Once they’re born again, whether you’re four, I was born again when I was four, and I can tell you, I think I’ve had this discussion with you, that at 4 years old, I was so on fire for God that if anybody had taken the time to train me on just a few things, I could have done so much. And it took me going to Bible school for me to learn some of these things. But I was ready and I was at 4 years old, 6 years old. Whatever I knew, I used to pray over people, to talk to them about Jesus.

0:23:20.9 GS: That’s awesome.

0:23:21.1 DA: But I think that training is important, like intentional training, like we do Bible memorization, like we do whatever it is else that we do for teens. Training on evangelism is so key because they have the relationships to reach the other kids that don’t know Jesus.

0:23:37.4 GS: Oh yeah. And it’s strategic. They come to Christ quicker, spread the gospel faster, teenagers and children, and we need to focus on that. What struck me, Mercy, is when you talked about, it sounds like youth ministry in general is not taken seriously in every church around the world, ’cause it’s babysitting. And boy, when you focus on teens and you empower them and equip them, you’re telling them, I believe you can change the world now. Not later, now.

0:24:06.9 DA: That’s right.

0:24:07.5 GS: And what that does in the soul of a teenager is it elevates their sense of self-worth, like I have a place in the body of Christ and I’m so necessary. This has been great. I’m gonna introduce our youth leader. This is Nate Gillen. Nate is a husband, dad, youth leader, networker. Nate and his wife Kristi have been advancing the gospel in their personal lives and ministry for more than 12 years. He’s been blessed to lead the youth at Grace Baptist in Joplin, Missouri since 2019. Before that, they led youth groups in a rural northeast Iowa area. And the gospel advancing value has been foundational DNA to every program that the Gillens have had. This is a guy who’s very fun, but very serious about the mission. And maybe it’s his military background, but he’s got a serious vision for our teenagers. So, Nate, welcome. And I want you and you to have that conversation with Mercy, thoughts, ideas, questions about what she’s been talking about.

0:25:09.7 Nate Gillen: Yeah. I wanna first thank you guys for just letting me be on here. Listening to your heart, Mercy, I connected right away with seeing the need for relational equity to be built for youth. I think you have a world view of it. As a youth pastor in United States, it’s a little Americanized, I think. We’ve built it to be a system or this is what we do every week. I love the BLESS analogy. I’m gonna steal that. I’m gonna totally use that now. We do the prayer-care-share…

0:25:45.5 DA: Please do, Nate.

0:25:46.6 NG: We do the prayer-care-share, but it breaks it down for the youth a little bit different, and if you can share some things differently. I have a question for you though. Is there a big gap, do you think, between what you’re seeing worldwide and how youth are being led and reached through that compared to how we’re doing in the United States?

0:26:08.8 DA: Yeah, definitely. There’s a big gap. There’s a lot of similar similarities. Like I said, youth ministry is not taken seriously even around the world. But in terms of what we’re talking about, the gap in evangelism, there definitely is over… In America, it seems we don’t challenge the kids enough. We don’t believe that they… Because in the world, I mean, I live in Guatemala. This is a third world country, and you’ll see kids… I’m not saying this is right, but you’ll see kids, 8, 9, 10 years old working, on the streets and it breaks my heart. But there’s this attitude like if you’re able-bodied, you’re doing something for the family, you’re helping your family. Teens are working, or I heard of a teen that is going to school full-time and he’s an entrepreneur and he has two businesses, not because he wants to, but because he has to, because resources are low here.

0:27:08.3 DA: And so teens here are expected, and around the world, they’re expected to help out, where in America, maybe they are in the home, but there’s not that expectation, like you have to work hard, you have to do this, because you’re just a kid. Just go to school. And I think some of that is great, but some of it is keeping our kids below their potential. I think Greg talked about it. If we put great expectations on kids, I think that they would step up to them. I think that’s the gap that I see in America, that is the kids… And I don’t know, most kids will stay there because they don’t know anything any different. Whereas in other countries, they have to step up because they have to. It’s not that their parents are making them, but because they have to find ways to provide for their families, and so that transfers into the church.

0:28:02.1 DA: You see a lot of teenagers here. We speak at a lot of different churches here and around the world, and you see them on serving teams, and they’re key parts. We went to this church in San Marcos, Guatemala, and I was amazed at all the young people that were serving. And when I say serving, they were actually the leaders of these teams, media and sound and all these things. And I’m talking to a 16 year old and I’m actually following their cues. Over here, they’re learning, but over there, they’re… Here in other countries, they’re leading teams because they step up to expectations because they’re much more, in a way, mature in a way that they’ve had to grow up because of the need here. That’s the gap that I see.

0:28:56.1 NG: Yeah, that’s what we’re trying to leverage here in Joplin. A lot of my youth, they’re not churched. We pick them up on a bus, we bring them in. For them, they’re the first of their family to really go back with necessity to reach them. We’re taking that same mentality of, “Hey, you are important and we’re gonna send you back, equip you, inspire you to relationally evangelize your family.” And I think in Joplin alone, in just this region, it’s relatively lower income. So we’re taking that heart of what you have there to just see young people wanna lead and we’re selling out on it to really hope this next generation takes over. And I think some of the things we saw or we’ve seen here in the last couple of weeks, which is Asbury and the revival and the young people stepping up, they’re hungry, and I think they see their peers.

0:29:57.7 NG: I know we’re talking about the second value of gospel advancing, but the number one is letting intercessory prayer fuel the whole movement. And our thing is trying to get our student’s hearts broken for their peers and their families through prayer. And I think that’s where we can unite here in the States with around the world. And Greg, you guys have been doing a great job at Dare to Share with that, and Mercy, sounds your guys’ ministry’s just all about it. I really am excited to see how we take what you’ve learned and what we share with our own students about what’s happening in the world, not to just have them realise it’s happening in Joplin, but it’s all over.

0:30:40.8 NG: And I think our students realise the need for them to step up. Their desire is great. When you can get a student to have a heartbroken for their peers or their families, that’s usually home run in youth ministry. And I’ve led a couple of different churches and I’ve only hit a couple home runs. I’m gonna be honest. Otherwise, we’re getting singles and doubles and triples, and those all score wins for the kingdom, but when we have a couple students that step up and run with it, man, we love to see that and we allow our students to follow that pure well. One other question I got for you, for both of you guys is how do you guys feel the future of youth ministry, either in the States or really the world, can be encouraged and pushed forward through what we’re seeing in this new generation coming out?

0:31:41.4 DA: Greg, you want me to take that one first?

0:31:43.7 GS: Sure.

0:31:45.7 DA: You guys move in the youth circles way more than I do. But for me, I think the challenge for us in our ministry is to awaken the pastors to the importance of teens. We talk about training the teens, but sometimes, in our world, is talking to the pastor about not necessarily him being the doer of everything, the centre, or the sun around the universe of the church, but to turn his eyes to the teens and invest in them. That’s where, to me, teens can do a lot, youth pastors can do a lot, but imagine if they have the full support of the church. I think we’ve seen this Research by Barna, where, in the expenses of a church, how much money is actually spent on adults? How much money is actually spent on teens and kids? And it’s astounding, the fact that we are spending so little money on the teens and the kids, and so much expectation is placed on youth ministers, “Hey, you need to do this, you need to do that.”

0:33:08.4 DA: And I’m not saying that money fixes everything, but it does show, to me, it does show the priority. It does show the faith that they would have in kids and in youth and their ministers. And so for me, I see that the future of youth ministry is being given to the pastors. Like for generations, God has been saying, will you invest in the new generation? Will you deploy them? But when they don’t, God does this, which is what’s happening at campuses. This should be happening in churches. This should, being released from churches, but it’s not. It went straight to the young people. And I think churches have a choice, pastors have a choice. Will you equip, will you invest? If you don’t, I will find other people that will, and I will actually move sovereignly and they will teach you a thing or two about the next move of…

0:34:07.3 GS: I love that. That is great, and good questions, Nate. Good comments, Mercy. Great answer. I would say the same thing. Pastors was on my mind, is that we need to make a case to pastors about the power of the gospel and the potential of young people. And as that message goes out, then they begin to prioritize them. And the other thing you said, Mercy, that really caught me is, the typical church, a teen is there to learn, whereas that other church you went at, they were there to lead. And what’s interesting is they’re gonna learn a lot more when they’re put in a position to lead, and coming from a high poverty kind of fatherless background, I could testify, when I went into this youth ministry led by hillbilly preacher nicknamed Yankee, he empowered us.

0:35:00.0 GS: Right away, “Welcome to the family,” gave us a bible, gave us a stack of gospel tracks, said, “Well, you’re gonna learn this, you’re gonna learn this and I’m gonna put you in charge of stuff.” And that, for a kid that didn’t feel purpose or significance or identity or belonging, all of a sudden I had all of that. I don’t know the psychosocial impact of all that. All I know is God used all that stuff to rescue me from my high poverty background. I’m not just talking about financially, but emotionally and just all that stuff. So, so important to be able to empower these students, and relational evangelism does that so, so well. We do have the updated globalized version of the gospelised book that’s out now, in English, soon to be in Spanish.

0:35:46.9 DA: Awesome.

0:35:49.9 GS: And the audio version of it in English is out right now too. So it’s free download for youth leaders that are listening, and stay tuned for the Spanish edition coming soon. It’s exciting. So, Mercy, how would youth leaders find out more about Pray For All? Is there like a specific website or URL you could send them to?

0:36:12.2 DA: Yeah, you can go to prayforall.com, and we also have an app in English and Spanish, and that’s Pray for All on the App Store or the Play Store, but prayforall.com is where you can find everything about…

0:36:25.4 GS: Yeah, go to prayforall.com. Check them out. The other cool thing is Life in 6 Words, the app that we have now in 17 Languages and growing, students can literally… This is an epiphany I had with Brian on our last call. They literally can put in the names of every teenager they know on the app and begin to have reminders every day to pray for them. So a simple way for students to use their Life in 6 Words app to put in every name of every teenager they know, or maybe every teen at their school, they’re really gonna be courageous and start praying for them. Why not?

0:37:01.2 DA: That’s why we don’t use our app with teens. You know that our strategy is the Dare to Share strategy. When it comes to teens, we don’t even mention our app. The app that’s in our strategy is yours because it’s exactly what they need, and I wish we had some of the capabilities that yours has for adults as well, but it’s a fantastic app. We recommended it around the world.

0:37:24.4 GS: Well, Thank you so much, and Mercy, we’re glad to be partners with Pray for All, and we so believe in the mission. Let’s get everybody prayed for and shared with and loved on until every person has every last chance to hear the gospel from a friend. So Nate, thank you so much for your excellent questions and insights. Mercy, thank you so much for being a part of the podcast. And make sure you go to prayforall.com. Find out more about Pray for All. Youth leaders watching, man, take advantage of our website, raid the refrigerator. We got tons of free stuff for you. And remember that a thriving youth ministry is a gospel advancing one. Thanks for tuning in.