Youth Ministry and Evangelism — Part 2
I am slow in getting Part 2 to the Youth Ministry and Evangelism series up on this blog — sorry. As you can see from the Archive category I am very new to blogging and I confess that posting is a rather new daily practice for me. So for those of you who have emailed wondering when and if I was going to post Part 2, here it is.
One of the most important bits of doctrine that we should be more passionately teaching and modeling to our students is this … equally important to the truth of eternal life one receives when she chooses to surrender to Jesus as King and live under his sustained sovereignty is the truth of the new life that each believer has also been gifted. It is within this new life that we can partly understand our calling and identity as followers of Jesus and begin to live missionally.
Our new life (Romans 6:4 and many other places) is not something to dismiss, talk around or briefly cover in our times and moments of teaching. Rather, the new life that each of us has been given is absolutely critical to the overall development/discipleship of each of our students. And I contend that our students (and us) cannot be effectively sharing their (or our) faith unless they understand several inseparable components of the rebirth or new life. Here is a list (incomplete no doubt) that reveal several signs of new life that we must help our students discover, grasp and express… (I dug the list out of some of my old seminary notes – thanks Dr. Barackman!)
The Signs of New Life from I John
Community with God and His people (I John 1:3)
Conformity to God’s intended ways (I John 2:3)
Becoming Holy (I John 2:29)
Loving God’s Humanity (I John 3:14)
Confessing Jesus (I John 4:15)
So then, with a holistic vision of evangelism in mind, I think that if we can help our students express the above signs/practices in their daily rhythms it will go a long way to helping our students invite and welcome not-yet believers to follow Jesus as they live according to God’s mission.
What are some other ‘signs of new life’ found in scripture? What else is critical about our ‘new life’ that we should help our students to discover?