Someone recently emailed me with some good questions about my youth group’s vision to go Deep and Wide. Thought I’d share them with you here, along with my responses.

1. What difference has the deep and wide program made to your youth ministry on the ground compared to any program you used before?

Going “deep and wide” is not a program. Taking kids “deep and wide” is our mission statement, purpose statement, core values, strategy, and our philosophy all in one simple vision for teenagers. It directs and determines our programs, the content we teach, the relationships
we build, and every other aspect of our ministry, but it is not a program.

2. What are the positive (and negative) you could share with me about it?

There’s really nothing negative about it. It follows Jesus’ commission to “go into all the world” (go wide) and “teach them to obey everything I have commanded” (grow deep). It’s also the great commandment to “love the Lord your God” (grow deep) and “love your neighbor as yourself” (go wide). Everything is wrapped up in those two inseparable aspects of Christianity: worship, fellowship, discipleship, evangelism, missions, everything.

If you want to read more about it, Greg Stier (of Dare 2 Share Ministries) wrote a thesis on it that goes into more detail.

3. One concern I have about the material is [your] use of the word “push” which could potentially have negative connotations in terms of “pushing” young people to make a commitment. Maybe this is a difference in our theologies but there have been several ministries…over the years (of which I was involved in one as a young person) that have “pushed” young people and for many this has had long term negative fallout. I agree that we ought to be hastily encouraging young people to have relationship with Jesus and to share it, but I am keen for that relationship to be long term. Do you have any thoughts?

I understand your hesitation with the word “push” and I agree with what you’re saying. Too many churches are very passive when it comes to encouraging teens in their faith. We think that if we talk with them once a week at church for an hour about it, then that’s sufficient to help them grow. But in comparison to everything else in their life — academics, athletics, band, family, relationships, whatever — they are definitely pushed. There are expectations and boundaries for each of those things that are much more rigorous than what we expect of teens spiritually. Mormons, for example, expect their kids to go to seminary for classes every day early in the morning before school and the Mormon drop-out rate is almost 0! We barely expect that they show up at youth group.

So, when I use the word “push” I mean we need to raise the standards and expectations of spiritual growth in kids lives. According to my theology, we are all naturally sinful and rebel against the things of God. Pursuing Him does not come natural for any of us. That’s why it requires some gentle, sometimes forceful, pushing. In my experience, never has a kid rebelled against that. In fact, they always rise to the challenge and start seeing Christianity as something more than just a wussy thing on Sunday mornings.

The kids who are spiritually apathetic need to be challenged the most. Jesus said, “teaching them to OBEY everything I have commanded.” Sometimes we have to challenge kids to just try what Jesus commands in an area of their life, and as they see that it really works, that this
is real and not just old Bible stuff, they start to become more interested. As they continue to obey and follow the Lord and see Him at work in their lives, then they move to becoming more excited about their faith and then passionate. That doesn’t mean teens (and even myself) don’t fluctuate spiritually, just that we are striving to obey the Lord in every area of our life.

Ultimately, you’ll have to be sensitive to how much you “push” a kid. It’s different for every teenager. Some need a lot of accountability, challenges, and follow-up. Some only need to be “pushed” once.

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The poor guy below wrote me a while back asking a pretty simple question, but I ended up going on a rant. Sorry! lol I would love to hear input from all you guys in the comments below.

My pastor asked me to look around at some other youth ministries and see what they set and use to evaluate their ministries. He suggested that I set up some “Key Result Areas” to use for our ministry here. I realize that some of this is dependent on personal context, but I would be interested to hear if any others, including you, have done work with KRAs. What are the KRAs of youth ministry that exist in almost any context?

I haven’t formally done anything like this before, but I do meet with the youth pastors in my community every Tuesday morning and talk. We did an informal discussion once about the percentage of students who are connected to our church in some way versus the percentage of students who are actually involved in the ministry. My ministry is at about 50-60% involvement, which I thought was horrible until the other guys said they were closer to 25-35% involvement. Now I don’t feel so bad.

But that’s the problem — we should never use other ministries for the standard of evaluating our own ministry. It’s not “how they’re doing” versus “how we’re doing.” And I know you’re not asking in a competitive sense, but for all practical purposes, that’s exactly where the focus goes. There’s nothing wrong with taking your community’s demographics into consideration as part of your strategy, but don’t use the success or failure of other ministries as a basis for evaluation. The danger is, if you happen to be on the top of the totem pole, you start to feel the same way I did: content. As long as there are still unsaved people in this world, I should never be content with my ministry’s “performance.”

Instead, I use scripture for the basis of our evaluation. 1 Timothy 2:3-4 says, “…God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” And the Great Commission in Matthew 28, of course, along with 1 Peter and Hebrews challenging believers to grow into full maturity, not stuck on spiritual milk. God wants 1,000,000% growth, not numbers who are involved versus not involved, as if that could somehow determine spirituality.

What I care about most, and I’m sure you do, too, is that I’ll hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” My ministry will never meet up to His standards, I know. As long as there are lost people in my community and believers who need to grow deeper in the Word, I’ll never feel like my ministry is “doing okay” or “meeting expectations.” It’s all about Him and what scripture indicates a ministry should do and what it should look like. So I’d encourage you to start there. Besides, no life-change or spiritual growth happens apart from the Holy Spirit’s prompting and conviction anyway. Whatever the Key Area Results are for my community, the Holy Spirit can (and wants to!) radically change that. Sometimes I think we approach ministry from a business perspective instead of a spiritual perspective.

What do you think? I’d love to dialog about this a bit because I’ve never really thought through a KRA before, so I’d love to hear your thoughts.

NOTE: Obviously I know that careful ministry evaluations are important and very necessary — this post is not questioning that. Rather, it’s challenging the yard stick we sometimes use to measure our ministries and the conclusions we draw from it.

I don’t do alter calls or invitations to come forward or anything, but I do make sure that I point every youth group lesson back to the gospel for several reasons.

1. It’s the foundation of everything else in scripture. In fact, we wouldn’t even have scripture in the first place if it wasn’t for the gospel. It’s the core, the hub, the center of everything we teach. Everything is dependent on the gospel. No matter what subject, issue, or passage you’re teaching, it all ties back to the gospel message. Don’t believe me? Watch Craig Groeschel of LifeChurch.tv do it with almost every message he preaches.

2. I’m not naive enough to think that all my youth group kids have made a decision to trust Christ. Actually, often the very opposite is often true. The church kids are the ones who are the most immune to the gospel. They mentally check out thinking, “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ve heard this part before.” That’s why it’s important to always tie every lesson back to the gospel! I’ve found that some teens listen to my lesson just to try to figure out how I’m going to make the connection at the end. When I get there I explain the gospel in a way that’s relevant to the lesson we just discussed. In this way it doesn’t become redundant for them, but instead they get the gospel from a new angle every week.

3. The more my kids hear the Gospel, the more clear it is for them, the easier it is for them to share it with someone else, and the more confident they feel when doing so. When I do one-on-one discipleship with teen guys, one of the questions I always ask is, “If you had 30 seconds to share the gospel with someone right before they died, what would you say?” It’s surprising to me how many good, solid church kids have a perspective of soteriology that is totally confused. They often miss key elements such as sin, or the fact that Jesus was God. They know all the elements in their head, but they’ve never been asked to put all the pieces together. That’s why it’s so helpful for them to hear the gospel every week from me because it makes it more clear each time they hear it. Coincidentally, that helps them share it more clearly with others, which in turn boosts their confidence. Of course, that means I must first have a firm grasp on the gospel myself. Do you? Can you clearly answer my question?

4. Scripture expects that both me and my youth group kids share the gospel with others regularly. There are some things scripture expects from us whether we’re gifted in that area or not. For example, some people have the gift of serving, but every believer is still expected to serve others. Some people have the gift of giving, but every believer is expected to tithe. Some people have the gift of evangelism, but every believer is expected to share Christ with the lost people around them in one capacity or another. When we keep the gospel in front of our teens at youth group, it moves it to the forefront of their theological grid, and thus they are more apt to follow the Lord’s command in obedience to share Him with others.

Ultimately, it helps both the youth group teens and myself go deep and wide at the same time.

What kind of role does the gospel play in your youth ministry?

The media is has really latched on to the Online Missions Trip over the past two weeks and given it more publicity than I ever imagined. In fact, last week I did 2-4 radio interviews per day, plus several magazine and written interviews. What started as a 2-week outreach campaign for my own youth group has really spread into something huge. Over 3,000 teenagers representing almost every continent will be actively sharing their faith using social media from February 1-14, 2009. Crazy! Sounds like the Lord is doing something here.

I’m continually adding resources to OnlineMissionsTrip.com, the most recent being a link to a free book download called, “Welcome to the Family,” by Youth for Christ. It’s 6 chapters long and would work perfectly for helping a new believer start the life-long journey of discipleship. It probably works best in a one-on-one format, but it could also be used in a small group setting. Thanks to Jonathan McKee for making this book freely available at TheSource4YM.com!

Download “Welcome to the Family” book

There are several other good options for new believer follow-up at OnlineMissionsTrip.com.

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Join us at 2:00 PM EST this afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk! Jason Lamb of Dare 2 Share Ministries will lead our discussion about Deep & Wide Ministry. Info on the LIVE YM Talk page.

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Brian Ford wrote a three-week lesson series for youth groups to use as pre-trip training for the Online Missions Trip. The “missions trip to Facebook” kicks off February 1 and runs through to February 14, so if you start the pre-trip training this Sunday, that would give you exactly three weeks before the missions trip launches.

Thankfully, Brian Ford made these lessons freely available to whoever can use them. Even if your group isn’t participating in the Online Missions Trip in three weeks, these lessons are still excellent for challenging your kids to look outside themselves and the people in their church to the lost world out there that desperately needs to hear the “good news” of the Gospel.

These lessons are available both in Word and PDF format. Your choice.

Download “Sharing Christ through Social Media” PDF

Download “Sharing Christ through Social Media” DOC

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This afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk we are definitely looking forward to a great conversation with Dale Tadlock, a youth ministry veteran for over 20 years. He will lead us in a discussion about achieving longevity in youth ministry (even when it’s tough!). Info on the LIVE YM Talk page.

Last Sunday night I kicked off my youth group’s pre-trip training for the Online Missions Trip by talking about, “What is the Great Commission and how does it relate to me?” Greg Stier has a good outline for the talk in his book, “You’re Next: Leader’s Guide,” which I heavily borrowed from and tweaked for my own group. With his permission, I’m sharing my revised copy of his lesson with you guys.

It works as a perfect introduction to the Online Missions Trip. Or, even if you’re not participating in the Online Missions Trip, feel free to tweak it for a good discussion about the Great Commission, evangelism, and sharing Christ with unbelievers.

How to use it
The format of this lesson is structured for my high school large-group meeting. Due to our size, I start by telling kids to sit in groups of 3 or 4 around the room and designate one person to be the group leader. Each group leader gets a copy of the “Small Group Discussions” sheet and is expected to lead the discussion in their small group. The format then switches back and forth between me teaching for a couple minutes and them talking in their groups. If your group is small enough, you may just want to have the discussions as an entire group.

The music video I used
In this lesson I used the music video “Savin’ Me” by Nickelback. It’s a powerful message by a group of unbelievers saying, “Heaven’s gates won’t open up for me… say it if it’s worth saving me.” Although I’m not sure how legal it is, I downloaded an HD version of the music video here since iTunes won’t let put their copy on a DVD. Download at your own risk.

Download “What is the Great Commission?” youth Bible lesson

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There is no LIVE YM Talk on December 26 or January 2, but we are definitely looking forward to a great conversation on January 9. Dale Tadlock, a youth ministry veteran for over 20 years, will lead us in a discussion about achieving longevity in youth ministry. Info on the LIVE YM Talk page.

For many churches and youth groups, the typical approach to evangelism is to host a big event that will be attractive to unbelievers who are invited by their Christian friends. A little over a year ago I wrote a blog post about my problem with outreach events like this. Back then I didn’t really have any answers for my frustrations, but now I do. I’ve officially decided to ditch outreach events altogether for a couple of reasons.

1. They end up being “Christian entertainment.”

Regardless of how much I push an outreach lock-in, publicize it, and encourage kids to bring their unsaved friends, it’s rare that students actually do so. Out of 20 kids, maybe 1 or 2 of them are unchurched. The rest are all youth group kids or Christian kids from other youth groups.

2. Low conversion rate.

If there actually are any pre-saved teens there, the percentage of those who give their lives to Christ seems to be pretty low. Maybe because it feels intimidating, maybe because there’s no interaction or avenue for asking questions, or maybe because they have no relationship with the person who is presenting the gospel.

3. Teens’ evangelism becomes dependent on an adult leader.

Most importantly, I feel like I’m doing a disservice to my teens by unintentionally teaching them to outsource their evangelism efforts to someone on a stage. What happens when they grow into adults and still feel that evangelism is the church’s job?

A better approach

Instead, I’m forming what I call “outreach campaigns.” An outreach campaign is when teens are trained and held accountable to share their faith with their friends on an on-going basis. If teens start doing this at a young age, they’ll have the confidence to continue it for the rest of their lives. Otherwise, they might always rely on the church to get their unbelieving friends onto Christian turff where someone else will talk to them about Christ instead.

If teens develop the confidence and experience of sharing Christ with their friends outside the church, the conversion rate will be much higher than events. For the unbeliever, the feeling of being outnumbered and intimidated by a Christian group disappears, ongoing interaction and questions is natural, and a relationship with the trusted friend is obviously already established.

For several months now I’ve been working hard to put together such an outreach campaign, not only for my own group, but for anyone else who wants to participate in it with us. Stay tuned tomorrow for how you can join my youth group on a FREE missions trip!

(A couple weeks ago in our LIVE YM Talk we discussed the question, “Are youth events still working?” Some of what I mentioned here I talked about in more depth during that conversation. Listen to it here.)

I don’t blog advertisements…
Anyone who’s been around Life in Student Ministry for a little while knows that I almost never write product reviews. Although I’m contacted almost every week by different companies asking me to write about their product or services, I very rarely do so because 1) I don’t want this to turn into a youth ministry marketing blog, and 2) the time you spend reading/skimming these posts is too valuable to waste on “glorified advertisements.” However, whenever I do mention a product or service, it’s only because I’ve actually used it myself and found it to be a resource that’s highly worth recommending for your ministry.

…but this is good!
Dare 2 Share’s Go Wide kit and The G.O.S.P.E.L. Journey are two such tools that I’ve been dying to share with you. Both the Jr. High and the Sr. High students in my ministry have gone through these studies with amazing results: their understanding of the gospel is crystal clear and they are now articulating it just as clearly with their unsaved and unchurched friends. I’ve never seen Jr. High glued to teaching and instruction as they were during Greg’s DVD sessions. And some of the most deep and meaningful conversations we’ve ever had with high school students took place following the G.O.S.P.E.L. Journey videos.

Go Wide Evangelism Training Kit
Greg takes a couple DVD sessions to teach the Go Wide strategy, that is, to spread the message of salvation to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:19-20). He’s not only motivational, he gives practical training on how to actually share Christ with an old friend or a new acquaintance: Pray, Peruse, Persuade. The discussion guide then helps kids place faces and names to the strategy in their own lives.

The G.O.S.P.E.L. Journey
The G.O.S.P.E.L. Journey is an attempt to be a “reality show” where they put together an atheist, an agnostic, a Wiccan, a city girl, an Episcopalian, a Presbyterian and a minister’s kid to create some thought-provoking discussions on God, religion and faith. Although the concept is great, it wasn’t as much of a typical reality show as it was Greg teaching God’s plan of salvation through the entire Bible and getting feedback from those with opposing viewpoints. The idea still worked for my group anyway. The best part is that Greg covers the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, throughout the series, giving students a clear understanding of the central theme that ties all of scripture together.

The only downside to The G.O.S.P.E.L. Journey is that the video sessions tend to be about 40 minutes long, which makes it tough to fit in decent discussions if you only have an hour and a half meeting with games and a time of worship. So, my youth group meetings slowly morphed from our typical 30 minutes of Bible study to 70 minutes of Bible study and the kids loved it! In fact, we’re going to stick with the 70 minute teaching times from now on at the high school large-group meetings. (Although, there’s more behind the shift than just this DVD series.)

How we used it
We took about 4 weeks to go through the Go Wide kit and then seven or eight weeks to go through the G.O.S.P.E.L. Journey. The two work great hand-in-hand. Go Wide covers a strategy for personal evangelism and the G.O.S.P.E.L. Journey follows-up nicely with other viewpoints of Christianity. It helps students know how to respond to the questions they’ll encounter or maybe questions they’re currently wrestling with. The discussion guide includes two different outlines for each DVD teaching session: one that focuses on training students who are already believers, and one that focuses on discussing salvation with pre-saved teenagers, making it a great outreach tool.

To find out more about these two products, check out these links for promo videos, downloadable leader guides, and more:
Go Wide: info | purchase $74.00
G.O.S.P.E.L. Journey: info | purchase $169.00

…is that they’re rarely an outreach. I plan something fun, exciting, promote it as an evangelistic event and encourage students to bring their pre-Christian and non-churched friends for an opportunity to get to know us and hear the gospel, but when the event actually takes place, how many non-youth group kids are actually present? Zero or one. Yeah ok, some may argue that “even if only one soul is won for Christ, then it’s worth it” and I don’t disagree with that, but the point is, out of 100-some students who attend, why don’t we see at least 50 pre-saved and non-churched kids being invited? When an outreach event idea is proposed, I often ask the students, “Is this something you’d feel comfortable inviting your pre-saved friends to?” Even when I get a resounding “YES!” the actual results seem to indicate otherwise.

Why don’t our church kids invite their pre-Christian friends to come to these events? Is it a communication problem? Is it a vision issue? Is it a heart issue? Is it a value system? Or is it completely the wrong approach to evangelism? Maybe I’m making it too easy for them?

Somehow my approach to evangelism in our ministry needs to change. My natural inclination is to bypass my church kids altogether and just go straight to where the pre-saved kids are, but neither do I want to dismiss my church kids from the process of evangelism. My role is not to do it for them, but somehow to teach them and do it with them.

I know my ministry is not the only one that struggles with this. What insights can you all provide? How has evangelism been effective for your groups? What can you all recommend for me and others in my situation?