Most teens’ schedules are packed to overflowing with school, sports, clubs, work—maybe even the occasional family activity. It’s hard get them to consistently show up for youth group, much less participate in a service project or weekend retreat. So how can these overcommitted teens possibly carve out time in their lives to “go do” evangelism?
‘Go and make disciples’
Well, there’s a secret to finding time for evangelism. And the secret is found in Matthew 28:19:
‘Therefore go and make disciples of all nations…’
While Hudson Taylor, William Carey, and the missionary giants of yore emphasized the word go, to recruit for foreign missions, the actual, literal meaning in the original Greek, is not go. It’s as you’re going, make disciples. It doesn’t carry the mission-field connotation of drop everything and go to a faraway land and make disciples.
Instead, the Greek go carries the connotation of starting where you’re at, in the midst of your day-to-day life, and making disciples—“in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The modern equivalent for your teens might look something like this: make disciples within your circle of friends, on your sports team, at your school, at your workplace, on your Instagram account, and then on an overseas missions trip.
As you’re going vs. stop what you’re doing evangelism
Finding time for evangelism doesn’t have to be about stopping what you’re doing to take part in a big outreach campaign or specially planned activity. Those things are good, but they can’t happen continuously.
Consequently, we should also train teens to look for day-to-day opportunities to share the Gospel as they’re going about their everyday lives. It’s about training them to turn their conversations with their friends who need Jesus toward spiritual things, so that as they’re going through their daily life—to their track meet or drama practice, over lunch or on social media—they’re bringing God up.
Your job is to motivate and equip them to talk about spiritual things and be able to explain the Gospel simply and naturally, so that it becomes a part of who they are day-in and day-out. Making disciples isn’t just some occasional special assignment for students; it’s an ongoing assignment—THE Cause—God has given to every single one of His followers. The whole book of Acts is a recounting of how the early church lived out this process of making disciples in the context of its culture.
“But did you make disciples?”
Jesus words in Matthew 28:19 are clear:
‘Therefore go and make disciples…’
In your youth ministry, are you focused on training your teens to obey this command? Let me give you a real-life illustration that might help the importance of this assignment sink in. Let’s imagine that when my son was younger I’d told him: “Make your bed. And remember, I’ll be coming back to see if you did it.” And then later, when I came back, I asked him: “Did you make your bed?” He might say: “Well, no, Daddy, but I painted you a picture.” A picture is nice, but I’d still be asking him: “But did you make your bed?” “Well, no, but I cleaned up my toys.” And again, I’d say: “That’s great, but did you make your bed?”
Jesus’s last words were: “Make disciples…” And He told us He’d be coming back. I believe He’ll be asking us—you, me, and the teens under our spiritual care: “Did you make disciples?”
So let’s be sure we’ve trained and equipped our teens for as you’re going evangelism, so they can answer that question with a resounding “yes”!
