ymCafe

When God called Jeremiah to be a prophet, Jeremiah thought he was far too young to do what God had asked him to do. God’s response to him was this: “…do not say, ‘I am only a child.’ …Now I have put my words in your mouth.’” (Jeremiah 1:9 NIV). Several hundred years later, we find Paul encouraging Timothy, not to let “anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12).  Our God hasn’t changed.  He’s still putting his words in the mouths of young people, and they still have the capacity to set an example for us all

Young people have great gifts, but too often no one helps them realize this. A college girl once came to me after taking one of those spiritual gift inventories, and said, “Wow, I have gifts?”  And I said, “What, did you think God left you out?”  Her eyes sort of got really big and she said, “I guess I never thought of it that way.”

To call out the gifts in our young people takes the body of elders.  Our youth need recognition from adults that they are gifted. The church as whole, not just the youth minister or the adult volunteers, must take part in recognizing the gifts of young people to empower them to step forward in the calling God has placed upon them.  Granted, most youth don’t have a well-defined idea of what calling is. However, as they are mentored by adults in the church, who continually affirm the gifts that God has given them, then they will be able to start actively walking the path that God has for them.

Teenagers and young adults are looking for something to die for. See, if something not worth dying for, then it’s not worth living for. They are looking for a revolution, and what better revolution to offer them than the revolutionary love of Jesus Christ, who came preaching a kingdom that turned the world as we know it upside down, and made the most radical sacrifice of all in his death on the cross. This is the sort of passion young people long to find. They long to live a life with that sort of commitment and that sort of passion. As we get this message to them, disciple them, mentor them in what it means to live out the gospel—to live out the kingdom of God—on a day-to-day basis, they will pick up the torch and start to spread it themselves. And the next thing you know, we’ll have groups of young revolutionaries in our churches, working side-by-side with people of all generations, living out the call of God to us, the body of Christ, to do the work of the ministry.

The call is then to us, will we take up the mission of actively discipling young people? Intentionally include them in the corporate life of our church? Walk with them through the messy parts of the road to adulthood? For when we do this, we will see changes beyond our imagination in a generation of young people, we will see more variety in the generations that make up our own parishes, and we will all benefit from the life and passion that teenagers and young adults bring to anything that they have decided is worth living for.