Tonight Lee Rogers presented in class. He is an A/G Youth Alive Missionary. I am familiar with Youth Alive, as I used
some of their material when I ran the Bible Club back in high school. He was a youth pastor in Carlisle, PA for 7
years, but was a youth pastor for a total of 14 years.
THE MISSION FIELD
He talked
about how students have a mission field: their school. We calculated that students have about 35
hours per week of instruction from school, and if we’re being generous, they
have about 1.5 hours per week of biblical instruction from church. This means that we can’t ignore school. Whatever we talk about in our churches must
be made relevant to school for them.
Lee had an
interesting take on See You At The Pole.
He talked about how this is equal to a student’s water baptism. With the Early Church, this happened in a
public setting where literally everyone saw.
Nowadays, water baptism is in front of Christians, which isn’t nearly as
big of a deal. For students to
participate in this event, it can be humiliating, it is in public, and everyone
sees that you are a Christian. I thought
this was really cool how he made this comparison.
CAMPUS MISSIONARIES
Youth alive is about impacting
middle school and high school campuses with the gospel through the local
church. Adults can talk about the gospel
in very limited ways in school: if they are invited to speak in a Bible club,
or if they are invited to a class (perhaps world religions or something). Even in these settings, using language like,
“We believe this,” is required rather than saying “This is truth.”
Students on the other hand, can
say/do/wear anything they want in relation to the Gospel. This is why Youth Alive exists, for students
to make an impact with the gospel on their campuses.
Youth Alive calls their students
who are actively involved, “Campus Missionaries.” They encourage them to:
Pray
Live
Tell
Serve
Give
I remember
these actions, as I was a campus missionary in high school. I had this cool little card I hung on the
inside of my locker (you could see it whenever I opened it) that said, “Ask me
about Jesus.” I thought it was pretty
neat!
Lee then
talked about campus clubs, saying how this provides opportunities for students
to network and get to know other Christians.
This is where students are meeting together for school ministry. In other words, this is a church inside of a
high school. When Lee made that
connection, I thought it was awesome.
That’s really what church is: a community of believers coming together
to serve God and do ministry. And that’s
what these campus clubs are about. I
feel like I can really get behind something like this, especially since I was
involved in this in high school and have seen success with it.
Youth Alive
also does something called The Seven Project, where they come around and do
school assemblies on bullying, suicide, drugs, scholastic achievement,
etc. Generally they work with churches
and use these venues as opportunities to get people to come out to a church
event too. Lee seemed to think that
these are not as effective as people generally make them out to be. He also talked about Prayer Zone Partners,
where students come together and pray for their school.
Lee talked
about how Bible studies used to be a big push in Youth Alive for a while, but
they tended to “devolve” the vision for the school. Instead of reaching the school, it became a
closed off Bible study. A Bible study
can work well if it is engaging with topics such as, “Is God Real?” and others,
although once again, Lee didn’t seem to think that these were super effective.
MY THOUGHTS
All in all,
I thought having Lee Rogers come in was great.
Once again, I was a campus missionary in high school, and have some
experience with Youth Alive. I think his
passion was contagious and essential. It
got me excited about youth ministry and reaching high school and middle school campuses. I also loved his missionary focus, and how it
is all about reaching people for Jesus, not just satisfying Christians and not evangelizing.
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