Roberta and I attended a seminar in Tulsa on October 26^th that grabbed my attention and made me realize that our ministry in Loyal has to take a new direction! In the short time I have this morning I hope to share some of that vision with you in a manner that will excite and challenge each of us!

          According to some surveys only 4 percent of high school students across our great nation believe that the Bible is the Word of God. That means 96 percent do NOT believe the Bible is the Word of God.

          That is probably not a big surprise, but the implications are ominous indeed! In the past few years we have seen increasingly perverted TV, film, music and video games, proliferation of Internet pornography, and a rise in activist government officials promoting gay marriage, attempts to remove the Ten Commandments from public buildings, and attempts to remove God from the Pledge of Allegiance.

          What does a nation with 4% evangelical Christians look like?

·       Netherlands legalized euthanasia

·       Nudity in newspapers in England

·       Scotland’s consenting age is 14 years old

·       A pastor was arrested for preaching biblical perspective on homosexuality.

While approximately 55% of the American people attend church on a regular basis, for the first time in American history there are only 4% of Bible- based believers.

·       65% of WWII generation believed the Bible to be God’s Word

·       35% of the Baby Boomers believed

·       16% of Generation X believed

·       4% of the group of this generation (Millennials)

Since more than 2/3 of the adults that are Christians gave their lives to Christ before age 20, I believe that it is imperative that we give more attention to winning our youth to Christ!

The seminar we attended was called “The Battle Cry Leadership Summit.” They believe that if we do not reach the current high school students in the next 5 years we will have to accept the fact that we have become a post-Christian nation! The high school students of today will be the college graduates in 4 years, then will start taking over the leadership in the business world, the government, and the judiciary.

Additionally, those who do not know Jesus as their Savior are at risk for eternal damnation.

I.                Freedom is never free. We have enjoyed religious freedom in this nation since its inception; however, Christianity continues to come under fire on a routine basis. Each of us must determine to do something about it!

II.             Apathy will destroy a nation – and it can destroy a church.

III.          Most churches work diligently to please their tithers. This is certainly understandable, but it is dangerous. As the tithers age, their interests are not always the same as the youth. If we do not focus on the youth, there is no one to take place of the tithers as they “age out.” We have seen several churches in the K-O Conference simply close because the older members either died off or went to the nursing homes!

IV.          The people who put together the seminar are seeking to find 100,000 churches across the nation that will commit to doubling their youth groups over the next 12 months.

V.             Every person has a “Bell-Curve of Influence.”

This bell-curve goes from 10 years younger than you are to 10 years older. At age 68 my influence range is ages 58 – 78. While I love young people, the truth is, I do not identify well with them… that is going to change as much as this old man can adapt. However, we need to find and develop someone that is at least 25 years younger than your pastor to help us bridge the gap!

They recommended we intentionally seek a young man of high caliber that the young girls will say, “When I grow up I want to marry someone like that.” And the young boys can say, “When I grow up I want to be like that person.”

The other strong recommendation was that the pastor relates the scriptures to the news. This will be a new adventure for me! The example they gave was that there is enough food in the world to feed approximately 2 Billion more people than the current 6.5 billion people in the world. THE PROBLEM IS NOT A FOOD SHORTAGE, BUT A DISTRIBUTION PROBLEM

God provides for all of our needs. However, He needs the cooperation of the people He placed here to make it all happen. When God created the world through His Son, He gave mankind the responsibility to run things right!

Someone has observed we can never gather enough cans of peas and carrots to take care of the world hunger problem… but we can teach people wealth-building principles so that they can eventually take care of themselves.

When Jesus said that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, He was making a big statement!

We are the salt of the earth so we can give a good flavor to life for everyone.

We are the light of the world so we can give direction.

Put another way, God intended for His people to lead the world, not criticize it! 

The scriptures tell of many young people who made a great impact on the world:

·       David was a teen when he killed Goliath

·       Mary was a teen when she gave birth to Jesus

·       Joseph was young when he was sold into slavery in Egypt. A few years later he was second in power only to Pharaoh

·       Samuel was a child when his mother sent him to the Temple to learn from Eli

·       Timothy was put in the ministry at a young age.

 

Please join me in prayer and recruiting youth to make a difference in our church! I plan to get more involved with them as my health improves, and will seek ways to involve them in worship!

This morning I have 3 maps:

1.     The world

2.     The United States      

3.     Oklahoma

The world represents where our money and prayers go….

My question is this… where is our personal ministry?