FBC Boerne Youth
Messages from First Baptist Church Boerne's Youth Ministry, visit us at https://www.fbcboerne.org/youth/
FBC Boerne Youth
Parent Night // Youth Vision
We explore the pressing challenges facing today’s youth ministry, focusing on the pitfalls of cultural Christianity and the need for gospel transformation. By partnering with parents and equipping students, we aim to foster true discipleship and a lasting impact on their communities.
• Discussing the role of parents as primary disciple-makers
• The significance of a spiritual development roadmap
• Addressing cultural pressures and secularism in faith
• The importance of transitioning from behavior modification to gospel transformation
• Living fully surrendered to Jesus vs. compartmentalized faith
• Living for the eulogy, not the resume
• Outlining five essential outcomes: truth, habits, community, evangelism, and service
Check us out online!
Website: https://www.fbcboerne.org/youth/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fbcbyouth/
All right, guys. Sorry, we're getting everybody moved over there. It's a little bit of herding cats. It's lots of fun, man. Thank y'all so much for joining us tonight.
Speaker 1:I know that there is a lot going on. I know there's basketball games. I know many of you normally serve at this hour, but it is not lost on me the sacrifices and the things that you guys have done to be able to be here and be a part of this tonight, and really I promise to make this valuable and worth your time. And you might have seen, if you've been around our church lately, that our church has really doubled down really this year, these past years of investing in families, and so this is not just another event to keep you busy, to fill your calendar. This is another step and we as a church believe very strongly in the family unit and personally, in student ministry. I believe very firmly that for anything that we do here to stick, we need to be equipping and partnering with you guys as parents, because we get one to two hours a week and, while those can be some sweet relationships, those can be some great times of counseling and encouragement. At the end of the day, you guys are the primary disciple makers. You are with your students so much, and we are in some uncharted waters with what it looks like to parent a child in the 21st century, and so we want to do everything we can to partner with you, and you've probably seen some glimpses of that If you were here a few Sundays back in the fall. You have seen the roadmap.
Speaker 1:So this roadmap has been something that our NextGen team has done, and this is basically a pathway from infant to senior year of what does it look like when it comes to spiritual development, different stages, right. So when you're in really fourth to sixth grade, there's this big longing and search for identity right, that's where your student is at. To sixth grade, there's this big longing and search for identity. Right, that's where your student is at. So how do we, as parents, engage with that right? And then you get to senior year, where it's this launch moment. How do you launch? Well, and so this is a tool that we've released to partner with you guys as parents. You see, legacy, right. If you've been around, you've heard about legacy. That is far from just a building project. That is one really important step in reaching the families of our community. You know that is a tool, buildings are a tool. They're great.
Speaker 1:But there's been many things behind the scenes and up front that we're doing to try and partner with you guys, and so, as a part of all of that, we sat back and said, hey, as a student ministry, how do we continue that? We've got that from the church-wide perspective. We're creating these spaces, we're creating these programmings. We're doing that as a next-gen perspective of hey, from birth to senior year, how do we help you raise a disciple? And then now, how, as a student ministry, do we do that? And that's this vision.
Speaker 1:And this vision is important because, like I said earlier, we're in some really uncharted waters. You know, like, the digital age is upon us fully and I think we're just now starting to come to terms with, like, what that means. I mean, I'm 26 and I remember getting smartphones like the end of middle school, beginning of high school, and it has just taken off since then and it's insane to see how that's affecting our kids, how that's affecting us even as parents and how we parent, and so, like, how do we come to grips with this? And then the other thing is just, culturally, we're in the middle of this secular movement, right when we might not be facing opposition to our faith, like you're not going to be drug out into the street and thrown in prison to have your own little personal faith but more and more, if we try to bring that faith into any public sphere, it's not really that popular, it's being pushed back against. And you might say, well, what does secularism have to do with Bernie? Well, I think that what we're seeing is that mindset has even infiltrated the church and it's kind of shown up as this cultural, compartmentalized Christianity. And I truly believe that's one of our biggest challenges we face as a student ministry in Bernie, texas.
Speaker 1:We're blessed to live in a place where, honestly, it's kind of easy to be a Christian there's a church on every corner, or it's easy to identify as a Christian. I should say there's a church on every corner. You have constant hey, come to this event, come to this camp, come to this, that the other. But what happens is that can start to kind of create this callousness where it's just another thing on the list I'm checking another box, I'm doing another thing, I'm participating in another club and it can lead to Jesus really only being present in my life on Wednesdays and Sundays. Boxes are checked but lives aren't changed. It's where you get to this place where people are playing church. It's behavior modification. Right, try to be a really good person, try to check off the boxes, but we all know that doesn't lead to transformation.
Speaker 1:In fact, I truly believe that a lot of what we're seeing with our college and young adults deconstructing and walking away from the faith, is because the faith they thought they had was this cheap cultural version that doesn't lead to life. And so how is a student ministry, how do, instead of just plucking people out of the river downstream, how do we keep them from falling in? And that's what the whole point of this vision casting in tonight is about. And so we tried to craft a statement that really, hey, this is who we are as a student ministry and we'll have that up on the screen, and if you've got a pamphlet, that's in this pamphlet as well. This is just the slides, it's all the same.
Speaker 1:And that statement who we're trying to be, how we're trying to fight this issue is this that FBC youth is dedicated to breaking through the mold of cultural Christianity by inspiring students in Bernie, texas, to be transformed by the gospel, to live fully surrendered to Jesus and to make an eternal impact in their schools, friendships, families and futures. Really, these three aspects, these three big points, to be fully transformed by the gospel, live fully surrendered to Jesus and make an eternal impact. And I'm just going to move through those really quickly. One is to be transformed by the gospel, and so if one of the main issues we face with this cultural Christianity where it's just a box I check something that I say that I am but something that doesn't show up in my life If one of the issues is behavior modification, the answer is gospel transformation.
Speaker 1:And hear me, as a student ministry, our goal is not to just take a couple of your kids' bad habits and replace them with good ones. That's not what we're here for. That's not our goal. Right Habits and we'll get to this more like that stuff matters and it's a piece of the puzzle, but it's far from the whole.
Speaker 1:Our goal is that your student would come here and they would hear the gospel clearly preached, that they would hear the truth that God created this world and everything in it. He made each and every single one of us in his image to know him. Yet we've chosen to rebel, we've chosen to sin against him we fall short, and that separates us from him as the source of life, which leads to death. And he didn't desire for us to be separated, so he sent his son. Jesus, lived a perfect life, died on the cross for our sins. That wasn't an accident. He didn't stumble into Jerusalem and get killed. He made a choice to bear the wrath of God for our sins so that we could receive his reward that if we place our faith in him, we'd be saved and we'd become his child, we'd be adopted, we'd be redeemed, and so that's the gospel, and we try to preach that every single week.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter what we're preaching on, we're trying to include that, and the point is well, really that's what we're called to do, as the church right, ephesians 3, 10 through 11 says. His intent was now that, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And so we want your student to understand the reality of sin, that sin separates us from God, that we're not all right, we're not perfect, just the way we are. God made us with value and worth, but there's something wrong, and that something wrong is our separation from the God who created us. And so then we want to teach hey, this is how you come to place faith in him, and then this is who you now are in Christ. And that has got to be the starting point of anything right. It's got to be that it's rooted in the gospel. And so that's the first piece. The second piece is living fully surrendered to Jesus. And so again we talk about in cultural Christianity it's like, okay, I'll give Jesus my Sundays, I'll give Jesus my Wednesdays, I'll give him like a week for camp, I'll give him a weekend for D. Now I'll say a prayer before a game and like I'll count that as the sports thing, like that falls under that box. But the reality is like there's no life in that.
Speaker 1:Following Jesus isn't just another extracurricular. And I mean Jesus says this time and time again, in Luke 9, 23 through 25, he said, and he said to all if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me, for whoever would save his life will lose it, but for whoever loses his life for my sake, he'll save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? And then Luke 14, 26 through 7, same thing If anyone comes to me and does not hate father, mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even their own life, such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. So obviously he's using very severe language to drive home a point. But I've heard it said this way A lot of times.
Speaker 1:When we say, hey, I'm going to follow Jesus, we think about okay, he's now priority number one, right, he's one of my big priorities, he's the top. And one of my favorite preachers flipped that on its head. He said no, no, no, Jesus isn't priority number one, he's the paper that the priority list is written on. And so what we want your student to understand is that it's no longer like, hey, I'm going to try really hard at church. Jesus, my allegiance to him, informs everything else in my life. It's the lens that I look at the world, informs my sports, my money, my job, my relationships, how I interact with my parents. It has to go into every area of my life, not just Wednesdays and Sundays, and so that phenomenon of I can go to church on Sunday morning right off of going to a party and getting blackout drunk on Friday and Saturday night. That doesn't click with what it means to follow Jesus and there's a real lack of that understanding in the church today and in Bernie, just honestly, from being with students and doing life with them, and so we want them to see that following Jesus means full surrender, and that can be scary because it means I don't get to be king of my life anymore. Jesus is king, but he's a good king, right, he loves us. And so then, lastly, make an eternal impact in their schools, friendships, families and futures.
Speaker 1:And another aspect of this cultural Christianity that we fight is this consumer mentality. Right and we see this a lot in Bernie right, I'm going to go to this church, I'm going to pick this thing. I'm going to go to this church and pick this thing. We're blessed to have some amazing churches and just some amazing godly Christian leaders in this town, and there's nothing wrong with being able to be kingdom-minded and all that sort of stuff. But the mentality of like, hey, the church is here to serve me, I'm going to get out what I want, I'm going to take this, take this, take that, and you know, if it stops serving me in the way that I want it to, I'm going to bail, like that's what leads to students walking away because they fall in love with youth group culture, they fall in love with how we did things back there and they lose picture of hey, I'm called to make an eternal impact in every area of my life. Right, and we see that. Or let me back up a little bit.
Speaker 1:There's a way that I heard recently at Passion and even before that, how they kind of drew this picture and it was a speaker and he was saying, basically, our lives should be lived for the eulogy, not the resume, and what that means is we spend so much time chasing all these things that we think are going to look good on a resume Good grades, get into the right school, get a good job, be you know, get a good spot on the team, you know you have to go to the right showcases, you have to get on the right select team, the travel team, and then when you get into that school, you have to get in the right honor societies. And we just try to build all these things, get some letters behind your name, a few awards while you're at it, but the reality is, one day, at the end of our student's life, they're going to realize none of that's going to matter, it's all going to be forgotten. And so this author that I was reading says no, you need to live for the eulogy resume. You can choose a life where you achieve a whole lot and when your funeral comes, you're sitting there and people say, yeah, he made a lot of money, you know, he succeeded, he ran a business well, but what life is there in that? No, we want our students to see. I want at your funeral, when you're in that room, people to say, hey, I'm in heaven because God used him in my life, like that's why I'm in this room, that's why I'm in the body, and so we're calling our students to that.
Speaker 1:We realize in Bernie we have some incredibly gifted, incredibly talented students who can do amazing things. And what would it look like for them to get just a small understanding of how do I use this for the kingdom? Not to store up a ton of money, not to achieve a lot of things not that those are necessarily bad but how can I use my gifts and my skills to bless others, to invite others in, to open doors for people to come experience the God that we've been able to experience. And so the question is right fully transformed, fully surrendered, make an eternal impact, that's great and all. But how you actually achieve that right, it's not helpful for me to come up here and just spout off a bunch of vision without any actual plan for, okay, how do we know if we're moving in this direction? How do we make this type of disciple? Not that you can just produce them, but how to create an environment that this can flourish in. And that's a great question. And it's a great question because a lot of times we try a lot of things that don't work.
Speaker 1:We just try a ton of Bible study, like a lot of information, and not that that's a bad thing, but information alone has never produced transformation. Right, we try a bunch of willpower these are from one of my favorite authors as well Like, we try a bunch of willpower but the problem is it's finite, it runs out. We try experience and this is where we go wrong in student ministry a lot. Right, I'm going to go to camp, we're going to have open mic, cry night, I'm never going to sin again, and then you go back and it's like the exact same thing the next week. And none of those things are bad, but they're just pieces of a puzzle. We need good Bible study, we need to understand God's Word, we need to be able to have self-control and discipline and willpower. We need to have experiences, these peak moments, but all of those things are just means to end. They're not the end themselves. And so we came up with these five outcomes and that'll be thrown up on the screen here in a second.
Speaker 1:And really, what these five outcomes are are buckets right, and if we are growing and investing and discipling in these areas, I believe that your students will be flourishing spiritually. And not that we're trying to grade their performance or anything of that nature, but just what does it look like to have a model or a framework of how to grow into the image of Jesus, to be more like him? And so the first one is truth, to apply the word of God to your life, because what you believe shapes you right. And so your students believe stories about all sorts of things. They believe stories about their money, they believe stories about their relationships, they believe stories about you, their family of origin. We believe all these things and, whether we realize it or not, that shapes how we act. And so how we want to disciple students is we want them to I mean straight out of scripture, romans 12, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So understand, hey, these might be the lies from the enemy that I've bought and believed, but I'm going to transform my mind, I'm going to place myself under God's word and I'm going to align my beliefs with the truth of scripture. And so that's an important aspect of what we do here on Wednesdays, here on Sundays, we're going to teach the word of God.
Speaker 1:This spring we're going through the Sermon on the Mount. We're just chugging away, doing the whole thing because it covers. I mean, it's God revealing Jesus as his worldview Like this is the kingdom, this is what it looks like to exist in the kingdom of God, and so we're just going to camp out on that of. What does it look like to be a believer? How do you align your view of reality with ultimate reality? And that's God's word and God's truth. And so we've included with these and this is yours to keep, by the way some diagnostic questions as well. So, as you're walking through life with your student and you're trying to see, hey, where are they at?
Speaker 1:In these five areas, one question to ask that starts a really great conversation is just what is God teaching you right now? Right, maybe through his word, maybe through a sermon that you heard, but like, what is God teaching you right now? And when I ask that question, that can even be challenging to us, right, cause like, oh man, like I know what God's telling me to teach my kid, I know what you know, somebody's told me I need to be learning, but like, what is God actually speaking to me? And so, as we ask that question and incorporate that into our small groups, hopefully you know if we can continue to equip time for you guys, as families, to have conversations of just like, hey, you know, around the dinner table, what's God been teaching you this week? And it kind of brings that to fruition, and the more you ask that question, the more you get eyes for it.
Speaker 1:So then, the second outcome is habits. So we talked about this a little bit earlier, but we want to pursue holiness daily, right? And so we realize we all have habits, whether we realize them, whether they're intentional or unintentional Checking Instagram as soon as you wake up in the morning. That's a habit that shapes us right when we the type of music that we listen to on our drive into work or, for your students, the type of music they listen to while they work out or while they're at school or driving to school Like those are all habits and practices that form us in a certain direction, either into the image of God, into the image of Jesus or into the image of the world. And so we want to be intentional with that, and not that we're just going to work our way into holiness, but that each of these habits right Things such as scripture reading, prayer, generosity, that each of these habits right Things such as scripture reading, prayer, generosity, silence and Sabbath and solitude Like these are all areas to surrender to God. Like we're just creating space to meet with him and he's gonna be the one who does the work in my life and my heart.
Speaker 1:But we still have to have some effort. Like it's gonna take our volition of hey, I'm gonna enter into the space. I'm gonna intentionally remove distractions space, I'm gonna intentionally remove distractions and I'm just gonna have a practice of 30 minutes every day. I wake up, I'm gonna read some scripture, I'm gonna spend some time in prayer and I'm just gonna offer up my day to the Lord, Like that's a small habit that you know. In two, three weeks you might not notice any difference, but over years and years, and years it makes a massive, massive difference.
Speaker 1:I mean, one thing we've started with our daughter, who's two and a half years old, is we do a bedtime blessing. I got it from Habits of the Household by Justin Whitfield. I don't know how to pronounce his name, habits of the Household. It's a great book and it's as simple as every time we're putting her to bed we just have a series of questions that we ask. I ask her hey, can you see my eyes? She says, yes, you know that I love you. Yes, do you know that I love you no matter what bad things you do? Yes, do you know that I love you no matter what good things you do? Yes, do you know someone else who loves you like that? And she goes Jesus and like her super cute, excited voice, and it's just this one little thing. But then now, if I screw up a single word in that bedtime blessing, I hear about it not allowed to continue. We got to start the whole thing over and it's just a small habit but over time. My prayer is that that small habit would just help her to see the love that God has for us, right, and just the love that can transform us. And so that's just a little glimpse of that, but habits is a big piece of that. One question that you can ask for this is how are you pursuing holiness today? So I know that's kind of like this big loaded term holiness, but really it's just like what are you doing in your day-to-day life to look more like Jesus? We say, as a Christian, I want to grow in my walk. Well, are your habits going to take you there? We all have them. Where are they taking you? If they're taking you somewhere else, you need to change them, and so habits are a big piece of that, a bucket to look out for.
Speaker 1:Third is community doing life together. We realize that we're not made to live on an island, we're made to do life together and we need community to encourage each other, to pray for one another, to keep one another accountable. We try to offer this. We try to offer this in small groups. We try to offer this on Sunday morning growth groups, and there's various groups that meet throughout the week. I know we have some of our leaders who lead NUEO groups, but the question to ask here is who is speaking into your life? The goal is that your student would have mentors. Obviously, you as a parent, like this is your primary role, but man, it takes a village, doesn't it Like we need each other in this room even to be able to help each other out, and your student needs these godly voices to help point out blind spots, to help give them wisdom when they have decisions, because we realize they're not always going to come to us with everything that they're feeling or thinking. Obviously, in a perfect world we would love for them to, but the best thing we can do is make sure that they're surrounded with other believers who are going to ultimately be more like Jesus. And so community is a big piece. So checking hey, where are you at? Who are you around? Are you with people that are gonna make you more like Jesus? Are you with people who are gonna take you in the opposite direction?
Speaker 1:Fourth is evangelism. We want to invite others in. We're called to go and make disciples, and that's not something that starts once you graduate seminary or once you graduate high school, like that starts at conversion and obviously that's going to change as you mature in your faith and you become more equipped. But inviting others in obviously is going to be sharing the gospel these big. You know, I'm going to share my faith with so-and-so, I'm going to share my testimony. But it can be even much smaller, more subtle things, right? Hey, my friend, who I know doesn't have friends, sits alone at lunch. Like I'm just going to invite him to sit with me, like I'm going to invite them to come to church, like I'm going to invite them to come to D now.
Speaker 1:And the idea is that this is not a country club, like. Like, my goal for the student ministry is not for it to be where the popular kids go, where the Bernie kids go, where the champion kids go, where the sporty kids go, like God made everybody in Bernie, texas, right, and we're blessed that we get to have a relationship with him and know him. And I want other people to experience that. I'm inviting them in to the same healing, the same freedom, the same hope that I have as a believer, and so we want our students to get a glimpse of that, of hey, this isn't just for you, right the work that God has done in your life is then to go and be taken to be a comfort and a blessing to other people. And so, again, diagnostic question who are you trying to invite in, right? Who are you reaching out to? Who are you trying to share your faith with, to pray for, to get to come to church, whatever that might look like?
Speaker 1:And then, lastly, service. This is serving with a purpose, so not just like checking off the box to get service hours, but God has given each of our students gifts and talents and abilities, and how are you using them to build the kingdom, how are you using them to build the church? Right, and so kind of getting this glimpse of, even as a student, there's so many ways that you can serve in this church. Our kids' ministry is in need of godly people who have a heart for discipleship with kids. Right, we have tech, we have sound, we have welcome, we have all sorts of ways to serve.
Speaker 1:And so our goal again, to fight against that consumer mindset. How can you get plugged in, how can you serve? And, man, like, can you think about how incredible it would be for your student to graduate senior year and already just non-negotiable knows, hey, I'm going to pick a church that I can serve in. Like I'm not just going to go to somewhere because they have cool lights, or wherever. When I go to college, I want to find a place that I can make a difference, like if they were using that to make their decision, like that's incredible. And so we want them to catch a glimpse of that.
Speaker 1:And so those are those five outcomes truth, habits, community service and evangelism. And they're buckets, right. It's not like we're grading performance, it's not like we're, you know, trying to say you get a C this month on truth, but it's really just giving you guys a lens to say, hey, where's my student at in these? Like, maybe you have a kid who's super high on the truth scale. Like they went to a Christian school, they know the Bible right, and they've got great habits. They read their Bible every single day. And they are, you know, in Sabbath. They have a Sabbath day. Most students don't know what that word means, but like I'm all for it, I. But like I'm all for it, I fast every. Like they've got it all down.
Speaker 1:But that outward facing of service and evangelism, those buckets are a little bit empty. Hey man, how can we as a family, go and serve together, like how can we go to taking it to the streets on Saturday, learn how to share our faith? Like how can we kind of correct that holistically? And we've done that as a student ministry. Like we are using these five as a tool to assess our events and say, okay, are we only about truth but not teaching our kids how to share that truth with other people? Or are we only about this? But we're not, you know. So we use that as well to critique and to analyze our events and to see, hey, are we pouring into these five areas so that when a student graduates from the student ministry, they would have a full understanding of what it means to follow Jesus? And I think that if we do a good job at this, those like we can.
Speaker 1:I just have this vision of if we, with the groups of kids and the families that we have in this town, we're incredibly blessed in this church We've talked about this as a staff all the time Like it's crazy that we get to be a part of a church like this that has people like you, and if we can send out young people who are on fire for Jesus, who get what it means to serve to beat back the darkness.
Speaker 1:Can you imagine the type of generational impact that could leave? I think back to the sermons we've had over the past few weeks of passing that baton. That's what this is. This is passing the baton Because the reality is man, all of our students, even if you have a sixth grader like. The day where you're launching them into the world is coming a lot sooner than we'd like to think. And so who are we launching? How are we launching them? And my prayer is that we would be launching students who are on fire for Jesus. They are fully transformed by the gospel, they're fully surrendered and they're giving their lives away to others, to the kingdom.