[0:00] We're going to keep going. We're right on schedule, which is amazing. And then we're going to have a good, healthy lunch break of about an hour and 15.
[0:10] There's a stack of stuff over there to eat. And then we're going to come back, talk a little bit more about theory, and then go to practice. So, you know, quick review.
[0:22] The youth ministry world is changing. The people who've pushed a model that's called the attractional model, do things to attract kids and then move them into the faith, they're now rethinking it big time because of the dreaded pyramid.
[0:39] We're losing most of our kids. And I'm arguing that they're thinking pragmatically. What will attract kids? We need to think theologically. What does God want us to do to attract kids?
[0:52] And so I want to argue the three pillars. We be a Christian youth group. That will mean that maybe some of our non-Christians will leave. And I don't like that. But that's sometimes the way it happens.
[1:03] Let's be a Christian youth group that does Christian things and let's do them in a way that attracts young people. Now, I want to take a sideways step and talk about discipleship and relationships.
[1:14] Because, again, I think in Sydney we lose some of the relational thinking. And if I can be brutally honest, I think our thinking goes like this.
[1:26] All we have to do is teach the Bible and everything else falls into place. That's a really crazy thought. Like, it makes no sense at all.
[1:37] And I've heard a number of ministers say that. I've heard ministers have said to me, my job is to preach and to pray. And my response is, well, you're a lazy guy who doesn't read his Bible.
[1:49] Because the Bible never says that. Paul was the most relational of guys. He's hanging out with Timothy. He's hanging out with Titus. He says, we loved you so much.
[2:00] We're going to look at this in a minute. We loved you so much that we spent our lives with you. I said lives like a mad scientist. Our lives with you. It's all about relationship.
[2:12] Relationship is key to everything. God is relationship. He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He has existed forever in perfect relationship.
[2:23] He sends his Son to die on the cross for us so that we can have perfect relationship. Heaven is perfect relationship. The kingdom of God is about perfect relationship. We are to be filled with love, joy, peace, and the Holy Spirit.
[2:34] It's all about relationship. So if you want to see things happen, you have to build in a relational structure. And by the way, the old style of youth ministry that many of us grew up in is actually not very good at relating because we run a mixer.
[2:52] Here's your homework. Go on a website and Google mixer. Google Christian youth mixer. You'll find a whole bunch of them.
[3:04] Look at them and ask the question, does this mixer mix? And quite often, you don't even communicate with the person.
[3:15] You get something from them or you, do you have red hair? And you do something else. We've really programmed out relationships.
[3:27] And when you read Scripture, now here's a long Bible passage. There's so much good stuff in this Bible passage. It's just, 1 Thessalonians is like my favorite book. I love 1 Thessalonians.
[3:38] And especially chapter 2. Paul says in verse 6, as apostles of Christ, we could have been a burden to you. They could have thrown their weight around. They could have said, hey guys, can you support us financially?
[3:50] We're important. But we were gentle among you. What were we like? We were like the number one relational structure in a person's life.
[4:00] We were like a mother caring for her little children. Heavy relational term. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel, but our lives as well because you've become so dear to us.
[4:13] Now by the way, that verse is always misinterpreted because if you read youth ministry books, they will say, get to know kids, earn the right to be heard, and then tell them the gospel.
[4:26] And they'll go to this verse. So I met with one of the heaviest of youth ministry educators in the world, a great guy, a terrific guy. But he quoted that, and I said, dude, I said, golly, have you read 1 Thessalonians 2.8?
[4:41] Paul goes to Thessalonica in Acts 17, and he preaches the gospel for three Sabbaths, and then a relationship forms, and we're looking at it together, and he goes, oh gosh, I never saw that.
[4:54] What this verse is, Paul shares the gospel, and then becomes friends. No, I think you can become friends first, and then share the gospel. I'm just saying, that's not what this verse says. Notice what this verse does say.
[5:07] It's not just about preaching the gospel. Ciara comes to youth group, she's 11. Hello, young Ciara, sit down, because I'm preaching, baby. Ah, see you later.
[5:20] I've got to go pray. She'd be like, what are you doing, man? Let's go hang out. Let's go, let's go eat at the McDonald's, but that was kind of like, you didn't go to that McDonald's.
[5:33] That was kind of, you. Ask us later about the McDonald's, right across the street from our church. Don't buy a milkshake. Anyway, so you've got to build in life, and relationship, and getting to know each other, all that kind of thing.
[5:52] We're going to talk about that in just a second. Surely you remember, brothers, our toils and hardship. We work not, may not be burned to you. Verse 10, you are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous, and blameless we were among you, believe.
[6:05] You know that we dealt each with you. Here we go. Heavy relational term. Either the primary or secondary relationship in a kid's life. Who knows? Who's more important, father or mother? Who knows? But we were like a father.
[6:19] That's how intimate of a relationship we had with you. And what did we do? We did what a good dad does. We encouraged you. We said, you're doing well. You're doing great.
[6:29] It's excellent that you're praying. It's excellent that you're growing in the faith. This is fantastic. Stay with it. We comforted you. I know it's hard. I know people give you a hard time for being a Christian.
[6:40] I know God seems mysterious. I know his sovereignty is hard to understand. I know all that. Talk with me about it. And we urged you, keep going. Come to youth group.
[6:52] Keep reading your Bible to live lives worthy of God who calls you to this kingdom. And we also thank God because when you receive the word, you accept it as it actually is the word of God. There's just so much relational good stuff right there.
[7:06] 2 Timothy 3. Really famous passage. We concentrate on verse 16. Rightly so. It's just tremendous.
[7:18] Doctrinally super important. But notice the first bit. Paul's writing to Timothy. He says, Timothy, you're going through a hard time. Everybody who wants to live a God and life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
[7:29] The world doesn't like Jesus. The world doesn't like you. Evil men and imposters will go from bad to worse. Deceiving and deceiving. But as for you, don't be like those evil men.
[7:40] You see them. They're succeeding. They're popular. People love them. They're splitting churches. Kind of in the context of the passage. They're splitting churches. They're getting into house churches.
[7:51] And they're dividing it and everything. Don't be like them. As for you, continue in what you've learned and become convinced of. Paul doesn't say because it's true, even though it is true.
[8:06] Continue what you've learned because you know those from whom you've learned it. You had a relationship with these people and you could just see the way Scripture had transformed their life.
[8:19] And as you got to know them, you just thought, this is so trustworthy because the people who taught it to me are so trustworthy. Probably Timothy's grandmother and mother Lois and Eunice and Paul as well.
[8:31] And it just really changed you. And from infancy, you were taught the Scriptures which make you wise and God-breathed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Just tremendous stuff.
[8:42] Continue in what you've learned because you know those from whom you've learned it. So that means Ciara was not, sorry, Ciara, I hope you don't mind me using it so much. Sorry, Ciara was not in my Bible study group.
[8:54] Was she in your Bible study group? Yeah. But Ciara was in Julie's Bible study group, you know, more appropriate. Julie the ministry of Ciara. And Julie and Ciara got to know each other as they learned the Scriptures.
[9:06] And outside of the Scriptures, they'd have coffee together, meals together. We'd have Ciara over to our house. A whole bunch of stuff. Lonnie, I'll never forget the time we went to the drive-in movie together.
[9:17] It was fantastic. Shanghai Nights. Two, six, eight. Which one? It was one of those. I don't know what it was. Two. Yeah. Sharing life together. Now, relationships are key to everything.
[9:31] So look at your youth group. Mark DeVries in Sustainable Youth Ministry says you have to have balcony time. You need to spend an hour of your week and look at the youth group from the balcony and just dissect it.
[9:45] Look at it. And so ask your youth group, are we promoting good relationships? Are people getting to know each other? Are youth leaders getting to know youth leaders?
[9:55] Are youth leaders unified with each other? Are youth leaders getting to know kids deeply? Are youth getting to know each other? Are the youth getting to know the church together?
[10:06] What is our relational structure and how is it working? Because it's key. Godly relationships, committed relationships. Your youth group stands or falls on this issue.
[10:20] Now, one of the... I've got to be careful what I say, but one of the... We have sets of rules that are really helpful to make sure that our relationships aren't misconstrued or get out of line.
[10:41] Those are really good things and they're necessary. But we must be careful that those rules don't say to us we actually can't have relationships. And some youth leaders have used some of the rules put into place, which are really good rules, to say I can't have a milkshake at McDonald's with a young person.
[11:02] And we've got to be careful of that because that will rob a very important and needed aspect of youth ministry. So think through your structure.
[11:14] And I want you to think about relationships in two ways. I want you to think about youth groups organizationally and pastorally. So this is a fairly simple diagram. Most of you are with me on this, so we don't need to spend more than a minute on it.
[11:29] But that's your youth group. And you need to break it up into small groups. Most of us do that. You probably shouldn't give a public talk with a Tic Tac because suddenly you had it and then you don't have it anymore.
[11:44] So if any of you see it, just point it out later. There's still some life in that Tic Tac. Keep going. Now, that's my youth group. What's the first major division in your youth group?
[11:58] It's real obvious. Boys and girls. That's right. So you split your youth group into boys and girls. And for obvious reasons, I don't even really need to say it, but it's easier, better, more productive if males deal with males, girls deal with males in the small group relational setting like that.
[12:16] So split your youth group up into sexes and into grades or years. And what years and grades you split it up to, that's for you and your culture and your ministry.
[12:31] Especially if you've got a lot of leaders and a lot of kids, year seven, year eight, year nine, year ten. Most of us don't. So we have to break it up into maybe year seven and eight, year nine and ten. And so you then work it out into subgroups like that.
[12:45] And whatever it is, each one of those leaders, each one of those groups has a leader. So Julie and I have worked in a youth group where we had two groups.
[12:55] I took the grade nine to 12 guys. Julie took the grade nine to 12 girls. But we've worked in other churches where we've had two leaders for every grade.
[13:07] We had a lot of kids. We had a lot of leaders. And so we break it up into that program. Now then we go a step further. And this is another relational structure that I think is very important.
[13:19] Whomever is the youth leader of the program, your job is to minister to the leadership team. That is your primary relational focus.
[13:33] That doesn't mean that you don't relate to kids, but your primary relationship is to the leaders. So one of the first things you've got to do at a church is say, who are my youth leaders?
[13:46] Or I've got to start to develop some youth leaders. And I want to pour my time, my love, my discipleship, and my Bible study into my youth leaders.
[13:57] These youth leaders minister to small groups. Nothing new there. This is where you guys excel. You're very good at this because you've learned this a lot.
[14:12] Now, I, the leader, am still part of a leadership team, and I run a small group. So keep that in mind. I, the youth leader, still am part of a leadership team and run a small group.
[14:24] And this set of small groups, they reach out to their family and friends. Now that means that me, the leader, sets the tone for the group.
[14:36] And I infuse the group with everything. And I, the leader, impact hundreds of people. So that takes a lot of work.
[14:49] And so I've got to think through a whole bunch of issues. One of the issues I've got to think through is, how do I minister to that group of people? How do I minister to that group of people? It's really hard.
[14:59] Because they're busy. They're gifted. They may be doing other things in the church. Yada, yada, yada. Now, what I've always suggested, I've written about it, and I strongly believe it.
[15:11] If you want to see that work, if you want to see a really effective youth ministry, one of the best things to do is to form a small group Bible study of that group of people.
[15:26] Right there. And so say to those people, next year, I want to ask you, and I don't want to force you, but I really want you to leave your cell group, and I want to form a cell group, a Bible study of leaders, where we're going to study the Bible and encourage each other with a specific focus on doing youth ministry.
[15:50] That will not be popular. Guarantee it. 100%. It's never popular. But it will be very effective. And one of the things it will do is it will keep these people healthy in youth ministry.
[16:03] One of the things that many of us are finding is we have a constant turnover of youth leaders. There's a whole bunch of reasons for that. I think Friday nights, quite frankly, a culprit. What working person wants to go to youth group on a Friday night?
[16:15] Not many. And they just get tired. So I want to be ministering to this person, building them up.
[16:26] And so think through, could you as a leadership team leave your small groups, form your own small group, one of the things you could do is the Bible study that I give them, they then give them.
[16:41] You could do that. So that means that the Bible study of the leader doesn't need to do as much preparation. You know, not a lot of, most of us have done that a lot. Anybody have a question or a thought or comment on that?
[16:57] Yep? Okay. Okay. Now, the next thing we need to do, we've organized our youth group into small groups. So we've thought about relationships on an organizational level.
[17:08] Let's split up our youth group. I'm going to take these guys. Josh, you're going to take those guys. Julie, you're going to take those girls. Lonnie, you're going to take those girls, etc. By the way, there's a great evangelistic spin-off to that.
[17:22] Because a new kid walks in, and we know who to talk to that. It's really clear who talks to that kid. New kid, new kid, new kid. Woo! We have a new kid.
[17:33] This is awesome. Who talks to him? He's grade seven. He's mine. The kid is looked after. He's grade 12. Josh, he's yours.
[17:44] He's a girl. Julie, he's yours. I've actually done that. Mother brought their child to youth group years ago. And I'm looking at this child thinking, I don't know what you are.
[17:59] And so the mother said, my child, even the mother, my child is thinking about getting involved. And I thought, I'm making a call here. Bud, it's great to have you have a great set of Bible studies for guys.
[18:13] Grade 8 Bible studies. I'm a girl. Now I want to think, I want to think, okay, organizationally, I've got a small group thing going.
[18:30] In that small group, we're going to study the Bible, we're going to hang out, we're going to get to know each other, all that good stuff. Many of you have done this. I don't need to spend a minute on it. But then there's going to be other stuff that comes out.
[18:45] And so I want to develop this kind of culture, where from the small group, I go out to coffee with my guys. Or I go to McDonald's.
[18:58] Or whatever. Whatever it is. And so those guys know that the relationship just isn't about me teaching the word to them. But there's also a much broader category.
[19:11] And so I'm going to have a whole bunch of aspects that I'm going to deal with. All these things. So kids are going to need pastoral care. My parents are getting a divorce.
[19:22] We'll come to Bible study and we'll do a study on divorce. Well, yeah. But also, let's go talk about it, bro. God, it's terrible. Let's go. Can I meet you at McDonald's?
[19:33] When can I meet you at McDonald's? Why don't we meet for three weeks and talk this through? Would it be helpful if I called one of your parents? Is there something I can do? This kid needs to know that I not only share the gospel, but I share my lives as well.
[19:45] So relationship building, discipleship, mentoring, answering questions, all these things are going to come about relationally. Now, this is hard work and it's expensive.
[20:00] It costs our time and it costs our money and it costs our effort. So every church I've worked at, I've said, listen, I'm going to need money to spend time with kids.
[20:11] So I'm going to, in Vancouver, I'm going to need Starbucks cards. And so the church factored in and we spent thousands of dollars every year taking youth to Starbucks.
[20:25] So Josh was one of my youth leaders and all the time I'm giving Josh a Starbucks card. Josh would send me an email and he'd say, I'm running out of Starbucks and I'm thinking, Josh, that's awesome.
[20:36] That means he's taking his guys in Bible study out for coffee, talking with them, loving them, giving them advice, opening the Bible with them. And Josh is saying, I'm running low.
[20:47] Bang. So I give him another Starbucks card. And I'm thinking, this is great. All these relationships starting to form. Julie, you got any comments on that? No? Anybody got a question or a thought on this issue?
[21:00] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's a very good question. Certainly if I say to a year seven boy, would you like to go, they're going to freak out.
[21:17] I'm going to freak out. Roughly for guys, grade 10, year 10, year 11, usually in pairs, you know.
[21:32] Usually they don't get it. And then once you do it, they crave it. So there's a little bit of a hurdle to get over. But that's where usually this stuff, this type of getting to know kids doesn't come from youth group.
[21:49] It comes from small group. So if I were to walk up to a kid in youth group and say, hey, you know, it's really good having you here. We've sort of gotten to get to know each other. Let's have coffee. That's a little bit odder than Jono, who's in my small group.
[22:02] He's been coming to small group for a year. Really loves small group. Obviously, it's a much more natural setting. So I would argue this kind of stuff springs more from the small group. Julie, girls, what are you doing?
[22:14] How old are you, you know? Yeah, you know, girls, I think girls do this at a younger age. But I remember when I was at Oakhurst, I was saying to other girls, let's go out for coffee.
[22:24] She's like, really? What are you doing now? And do I have coffee? And it was just so foreign to her. And one thing I will comment on is what happens out of this, if this becomes a culture of your group, is the kids start to do it with each other.
[22:40] And I had a group of girls in Vancouver, and they met together every week of the last week of the week, and they did socialise outside of that.
[22:52] They had other friends. And so I said to them, okay, so I didn't name them. I go, okay, this week, Katrina, you're going to have coffee with Vanessa. You've got a week to see each other, and I'll ask you next week, did you actually see each other?
[23:06] And they actually got in the habit. They did it, so I didn't have their kids tell them how to do it. But that culture developed so that the kids started to see, this is what the leaders do with us, and now this is what we do with intelligence.
[23:19] So if one of them comes to you through, and they say, I'm really upset, the kids' automatic response was, well, let's get together coffee this week. And they got into that habit. So the flow on was past leader and kid.
[23:31] Yeah, good, good. Yeah, yeah. Now, the other thing we would do in small group, again, nothing new here. You guys have been doing this forever, is our small group Bible studies met Friday afternoon in Vancouver.
[23:45] It was a good time. In other churches, I think we met Wednesday afternoon at Oakhurst. That was a good time. We would often hang out afterward. So we would have our Bible study and stuff, and then we'd say, you know, this is going to be a night where we go to Maccas or hang out.
[24:02] In Vancouver, we'd hang out a lot. My Bible study and I, the older they got, come grade 12, Bible study went from 5 to 7, and then we hung out almost every Friday night from 7 to whenever and did whatever.
[24:15] Yeah? How do you do this for the other kids that, obviously, you don't take them out for coffee? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Obviously, they still need to be the ability to ride. Yeah. Good question.
[24:27] I think I'm going to go the classic pack activity. So if we've broken up our group into subgroups, I'm going to say, okay, subgroup, we're going to regularly do stuff.
[24:41] And this is the time when you let off steam, have a fun activity. That's the beautiful setting for it. We're going to go bowling. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. And it stems from our life together.
[24:55] It stems from the gospel. And now we're going to spend our lives with each other. And then as you get a little older, we'll move into a little bit more heavy one-on-one, just chatting about life.
[25:06] But with my grade 7 small group, gosh, we played cricket. We'd go on hikes together. We'd have movie nights. Great fun.
[25:20] Yeah. Anybody else got a quick? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was just going to bring you up going back to Jason. What age would you say for many of the girls that that kind of thing would start? What age?
[25:33] You know what? I'd say the same thing for girls. You can do it younger and they respond better. Because girls are much more engaged in conversation. And girls are not threatened to sit across the table and look at each other in the dialogue.
[25:47] Whereas boys, it's a lot harder to think. Let's have an intense conversation for ages every morning. And so girls are much more... You know, partly it's... I would certainly start with a grade 9-up.
[26:00] But I've worked at it earlier. And so one of the things I did with a young group once was I said to them, I want to get together with you outside of a new group. So I want to get into a pair with someone that you'd like to do something with.
[26:12] And then the pair of you come to me and say, what do you want to do for the three of us? So one of them might come and say, we'll go to a new group. One pair said, we want to start in the morning and see how long we can do a roadies and do it all day.
[26:28] Great. So... So... So... So... So... That whole idea of, you feel safe and secure because it's not as intense.
[26:40] But yeah, earlier with the group. Yeah. Now again, I want to... If I'm overworking the concept, sorry. But I want you to see that this stuff comes out of being the Christian community.
[26:52] So when we were at St. Ives, just up the road, heavy study pressure community. So we would have study halls. We would say, this is clearly a good thing for youth. Was it designed to attract non-Christians?
[27:04] No. Was it bring your friend to study hall and then we're going to tell them about Jesus? No. Did non-Christians come? Yes, they did. In droves. But that's not what it was designed for.
[27:16] But it was, hey, we as a community can see a perceived need here. This is serious need. And so then we started to have a study camp. You know, you guys, the city's been running study camps as long as the hills.
[27:28] It was awesome. It was doing life together that springs from this kind of being God's people and doing it in a way that's culturally appropriate.
[27:40] Now, I'm going to make a couple more comments. Anybody else have a thought or statement or question? I'll answer that again. Yeah. With study hall, I actually had my father study. He was going to go to the first time. I said, come over to my house on Saturday. I'm going to make you study.
[27:52] And I wanted to learn. And they have a day of just studying together. That was really cool. Whereas in Vancouver, that just, Oh, Chris, we never did it. It was not an issue. Vancouver, you know, if we'd have said, hey, we're going to have a study hall, they'd be like, why?
[28:08] You know? We're Canadians. We're just going to dig oil out of the ground. Club seals. Yeah. You have a great Australian accent, by the way, bro.
[28:25] That's awesome. I love it. I'm from down south. So, taking time, spending money, and effort. If you've got youth leaders that aren't on board with you, it's problematic.
[28:37] Problematic. How do you deal with that? Yeah. Because we've got, we want to talk to this year, but we're in a team of 13. Yeah. Yeah. So, we go back and say, hey, guys, this is awesome. Let's do it. Yeah, dude, that's really hard.
[28:49] I'll tell you something you already know. That in the Bible, leadership is about character.
[29:01] And it's about godly character. Titus chapter 1, 1 Timothy chapter 3, it's really clear what God says to us. It's who you are as a godly person.
[29:13] That's what makes you a leader. And I then want to take a step further and say, godly leader, you need to be committed to a godly program. And this is where youth leaders often say no.
[29:26] Now, they don't actually say no, but they do say no. They say, I want to be leader for all sorts of other reasons. It was expected, or it's trendy, or it's attractive, or whatever.
[29:38] And I want to be doing these certain types of activities. And that, there's no way around it, but teaching, spending time with them, wooing them, talking with them, and then cutting them off.
[29:51] And saying, we've run the games thing, and it's just not working. It hasn't worked for us. Come on. And the Bible's clear on what it says. Please run a small group where you actually study the Bible with these guys or girls, and love on them, and just get the joy from that, not from doing some other activities.
[30:13] And a lot of leaders, a lot of parents, a lot of ministers, that's not what they want. It's about lots of other things. Generally, it's about numbers.
[30:24] Yeah, Cameron. I had a similar situation there, and I took my leads away on weekend retreat. And thankfully, it was a great spot.
[30:36] It was in the middle of an estate forest. There was no mobile phone coverage. There was a generator power. So there was... But it was just, hey, let's see what we're...
[30:46] Let's look at... You know, I used some of the Mike Yacquanelli stuff, and Ken's actually written a full page response, up-page response to Mike's thing.
[30:58] Sat down, look, this is where they've been, this is where they've gone, this is where it hasn't happened. God, then, to spend some time with the word. And you put them in a place where you've got no distractions, and they've got to look at it.
[31:13] And then you come out of it, I lost half the group. But the other half... got it. and started the world with it.
[31:24] So that's hard work. And I think what Ken was saying before, you have your, if I was a group of leaders, that's where you win them.
[31:37] The long term, where you win them, where you are. And the best leaders are the ones that you yourself have grown. So that's going to be an organic solution to your problem, is if I come in as youth leader, one of the groups that I'm going to target strategically in my small group is, are there any grade 10 or 11 or maybe grade 12 boys?
[32:01] Quite often, the grade 12ers don't accept the new guy because I'm not like the old guy. But I want to take an older group of guys, and I want Julie to take the older group of girls because within a year or two, they're obviously going to grow up, go to university, and they will be leaders who think like me.
[32:18] And that's the best way. It's just to fight. If you have to fight with your leaders, fight with your leaders, but then just start producing these. Organic leaders. And this is the best conversation if you could ever have it.
[32:31] Hey, listen, I want you to think about becoming a leader. Oh, me? Ow. What do I do? You just do to them what I did to you. That's it?
[32:44] That's it. If you can have that conversation, bang. And so they just say, wow, okay. And they run a small group, just like you've run a small group with them, and hopefully the same thing happens, and then you start to get this nice, organic flow of leaders.
[33:00] But do change it. If I'm hearing your question rightly, and I hope I am, changing things is hard. Ugh. Brutal. Now I saw another hand, I thought, somewhere.
[33:11] Yep. I have a question. Yeah. Do you have any advice for us? We lost out using this at the beginning of India. How can we as a group of leaders without that head from the diagram and everything else try and keep the stuff that we want that can have a great system?
[33:27] How do we do that without that person? Is there a search for a new youth leader? Is that like happening? Yeah. Yeah. It kind of. It might be the youth.
[33:38] We're all in a Bible study together. Yeah. Yeah, it's really hard. It's, it's, it's, that, we all know that that, it's the central minister, the central youth leader, so important, you know?
[33:51] It just, they keep the, they keep the glue together, they keep us motivated, they keep us moving in the same direction. They, they do work that makes our life easier for us.
[34:03] You guys, sorry, you girls? Is it just girls? You, you, you, you people. Okay, you people. Anybody know George Stathios? Is that a name you guys know?
[34:13] Do I know there's a, George Stathios, good, good buddy of mine. He's awesome. Awesome. He got married. He got married on January 1st, 2001. That's George Stathios. It was in 2000.
[34:25] It was after Y2K. And, the minister who led us, such a great minister, but I thought it was Mayor Quimby from the Simpsons. We're at the wedding today, and Julie Lentow, she's Mayor Quimby from the Simpsons.
[34:38] And so, for all during the wedding, we're going, you people, if you know Simpsons, oh, sorry, I'm being taped. And it, Steve, why did you say those things about George Stathios?
[34:52] Y'all, I can't even forget that. Let me think about your question. I don't want to give a trite answer to a deep question.
[35:08] Let me think about it, and I will say something after lunch about it. Okay, let me make some last comments, and let's take a lunch break. Now have a think about your youth group.
[35:22] And this is actually going to be a frustrating answer. Sorry, this is going to be a frustrating next set of comments, given your situation without a leader. But you now have a whole bunch of things to think through that are going to take time.
[35:36] So you're going to have to think about doing Christian activities. Well, that's actually a hard thing to do, because we haven't been taught to do it. I'm going to tell you this afternoon, we've been taught to sing, to pray maybe, to Bible study, and to play games.
[35:52] That's kind of all we've been taught how to do. And I'm going to say, no, let's do a whole bunch of other activities in the youth group meeting. Oh, that's going to take time. We're going to have to think about how we do this in culture.
[36:03] How do I communicate? That's going to take time. I'm going to need to spend time with leaders. That's going to take time. I'm going to need to spend time with youth outside of youth group.
[36:15] That's going to take time. So that means you're going to have to think about maybe cutting out some other activities. And I think there are lots of activities in youth ministry that we do that maybe we need to cut out.
[36:30] That maybe we need to say, gosh, I'm spending 10 to 20 hours a week on that, and it's not producing a lot of fruit. But I know that if I spend time with my leaders, or if I spend time with youth, or I think creatively about my teaching, that will pay fruit.
[36:45] So each one of us is in a different situation. So you're going to have to think through what we drop out. What we drop out. What we drop out. Anybody got a last comment or question?
[36:56] I'm just warning you, if you do, it means we're going to go to lunch later.