Page 40 - Youth Discipleship Student Textbook

word games is never to be found. The word play is used a number of times: playing on musical
instruments, playing the harlot, Israel sitting down to eat and drink and rising up to play (a reference to
their naked dancing and worse), the boys and girls of Israel playing in the streets of Jerusalem after the
return from captivity. The words vacation, retirement, and sports are not found in God's Word.

Entertainment is a method of getting peoples minds off what is really important. It’s focus is on what is
happening now and what gives people pleasure. People rush to be entertained to move their minds
away from the pressures of life and the difficulties that they must endure. It is, in a sense, like a drug
that takes their mind off their problems. Building a church or youth ministry based on entertainment
will result in shallow Christians who know little about God’s Word or His ways. This is one of the major
problems with our churches today.

Read the Gospels. Can you see any place there where Jesus entertained the crowds or his disciples? If
st
anything, He totally avoided the world’s entertainment as did the 1 century Christians. Be careful
about how you use entertainment to attract people to your ministry!!!

The FUN event you create could have an opposite result in the lives of youth. For example, I
participated in an event years ago called “Operation Nightmare.” It was a youth event held on or near
Halloween. The goal of the event was to attract youth to come to an event where we would scare them
with all kinds of gross and ghoulish scenes (chopped up people with chain saws, monsters, etc.) and
then present the Gospel to them. I played a dead person coming out of a coffin. After we scared the
living daylights out of the kids, we preached the Gospel to them. The results: they were so engrossed in
the evil events that they could not even hear what we were telling them. There was little if any
response to Christ’s call to repentance. The entertainment we offered drove them AWAY from the
Good News of Jesus Christ.

5. One of the goals of youth ministry is to prepare the students to SERVE the LORD in ministry.
Therefore, the youth ministry should attempt to engage students in various ministries which fit each
student’s spiritual gifts. As such, students need to understand that they have a spiritual gift and that it
can be used to serve others.

6. Seek to be different.

Create a youth ministry that is TRANSFORMED (metamorphosis = different and unique from the World)
in every way (music, dress, behavior, attitudes, etc.) Teach the students to STAND UP and be unique at
school, not to blend in. Demonstrate to the student group ways they can be testimonies of Christ to
their friends. Popularity with the world is not what they should desire…but faithfulness to Christ should
become their desire.

There was a man who had to take a trip to a certain city on a horse and buggy and he needed a driver.
The trip was along the side of a mountain down a road that had steep cliffs close to the side of the road.
He went up to various drivers and asked, “How close can you get to the edge without going over?”
Some drivers told him they could get one foot away, others told him they could get within 6 inches of
the edge. Finally one driver said, “I stay as far away from the edge as I can.” He hired that driver.

The efforts of our youth ministry should not be to see how close we can get to the world practices
without violating God’s Word, but how unique and different we can be to stand out as light among the
darkness.

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