After Five Years This One Thing Holds True

"Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain." - Psalm 127:1

Of all places this verse applies, none may be so clear as in the work of ministry. I have definitely seen this verse to be true in my own work in youth ministry. It's been 7 years that I have paid attention to this, 5 years since I started 456, and I have seen class after class of students come and go. I remember in my earlier days (although these days are still 'early days'), I was very eager to build my own vision. I had my own naive ideas that were founded on legitimate desires that the Lord had put in my heart. But who could blame me for trying in my youth?

That is one of the great perils of youth ministry, particularly when students are put in leadership. Many students often don't have the spiritual or emotional maturity to lead diligently before the Lord. But the Lord chooses the youth anyway! Really, youth pastors are stewarding the Lord's calling over the younger generation, teaching them to lead and live rightly according to the hour they live in. Sadly, many youth pastors do not empower their teens with this vision because the youth pastors themselves don't know the Lord's calling over their students. As youth leaders, we have to get with the program. The Lord is calling our youth, and are we contributing to that calling or distracting our youth away from their eternal destiny in the name of entertainment?

Back to the verse, in my earlier days, we envisioned great evangelistic outreaches in the auditoriums of high schools. We wanted to take a full worship team, get some skits and students to give their testimony and put it all in the high school auditorium and get all of our friends saved! We just never could seem to get it together years ago, but just last year Angela Tsang from Blue Valley Southwest showed up and put together The Point Of Life Outreach in the Blue Valley Northwest auditorium! Students were saved and now we're doing it again in February 2013!

Four years ago we put together a rally called the Heal Our Land Project to unite all of the school's campus ministries and spread the vision of revival in our schools. We held these rallies in almost every youth group in Olathe, but hardly anyone showed up for an entire year! Now all of the sudden a new group of student leaders approached me with the exact same idea and now we have the "Night To Unite" this Saturday where FCA groups and prayer groups from schools all over Kansas City will be uniting in an evening worship and prayer at a local church, again years later.

Four years ago we also launched theWall, which for a season was a 6-hour prayer meeting to unite students in prayer every other week (or sometimes monthly) for an entire year. We had full worship teams, traveled from church to church until we landed at a prime location on Metcalf Ave., yet hardly anyone showed up. Those who did show up were some of the most faithful and dedicated students I will ever know, yet I knew the Lord told me that we were in a season of preparation, learning how to worship and pray without numbers so that we wouldn't be distracted when the numbers came.

Those earlier days, even though I tried many things perhaps in my own strength, trying to build the ministry myself, served to prepare me for these days of out-of-control expansion. Now when a student shows up with an idea, chances are I've done it before and can help them make it much better than when I did it.

It is clear to me now that we are in the season of the Lord building the house. The landscape of the high schools in Kansas City just changed in one summer. The freshmen that are coming into our schools are serious leaders that are hungry for a move of God. I wouldn't say that my labors in the earlier days were "in vain," but they definitely did not have the momentum that the Lord has given us today.

I sometimes feel like Isaiah who said, "I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and in vain; Yet surely my just reward is with the Lord, And my work with my God" (Isaiah 49:4). It is never in vain, but it sure is nice to have the Lord's help!

After See Your At The Pole Ends

SYATP 2012 at Olathe South High School

See You At The Pole (SYATP), which birthed the Global Student Day Of Prayer, started in 1990 with a group of students in Texas who had the idea to meet at the flag pole for prayer before school. As the vision spread, and more schools caught the vision, they coordinated to meet on the same day, and quickly the idea gained national attention and became an annual occurrence that has spread to schools around the world! 

SYATP was one of the first nationally successful attempts to rally students to pray at their school. After several Supreme Court cases continually removed God and prayer from school, this was the first real attempt to return prayer to America's schools that took root. Once a year, all of the Christians in school gather to unite in prayer before school, but the vision can't end there...

The devil's rage has all but totally removed God and prayer from our schools. With the growing sentiment towards tolerance and equality, student's religious rights are shrinking. Most schools would rather remove all religious student activities than have to navigate opposing religions. Back in January, 2012, I posted a blog where I outlined the reasons why religious equality really is impossible. It is a farce to think that all faiths can be treated equally, and it is foolish to assume that Christian students will continue to have the privileges they have now with the current course of our nation. Something has to change.

Scripture outlines a prophetic timeline that describes very well the hour we live in today. As we continue to approach the return of Jesus, both wickedness and righteousness will increase across the earth (Matthew 13:30). We can see this very clearly in the culture we live in today. On one hand, you have the 'religious tolerance' groups silencing the church, but on the other hand the Lord is raising up a movement of prayer for revival among students around the world! Satan is raging against this generation, I believe, because he sees the potential in this student movement to turn America back to God! Yet the wickedness increases.

It is clear that youth ministry as it is is not working. Statistically, we're losing an entire generation. We cannot assume that See You At The Pole will even be allowed next year and go on coasting through our teenage years. The Lord is calling students to wake up and pray not just one day a year, but to get lives of prayer like Daniel!

Allow me to make a prediction, according to my own observations. I think that very soon gatherings like See You At The Pole will face the threat of this antichrist religious tolerance deception and will actually no longer allowed at most schools. Did you know that already Christian groups on college campuses are being ordered to allow students from other religious to join their leadership team or be forced to shut down? Exclusivity is quickly becoming a reason to shut religious groups down on school campuses! BUT, I also predict that while See You At The Pole may be forced to end, daily prayer meetings for revival will spring up all across the nation! What is the loss of one day of prayer at the flag pole when students on that campus are praying daily for revival. It's already happening!

My prayer is that the church would wake up and answer 2 Chronicles 7:14, that students everywhere would mobilize into prayer groups and become missionaries in their schools that we would see America turn back to righteousness! I believe there is still great hope for America, if we pray, and if we act.

Is it so impossible to think that at age 15 your prayers are effecting what school will be like for your children? What will school be like 20 years from now? The answer to that question is in your prayers...

High School Missions Night To Unite!

David Sliker on Gay Marriage

David Sliker recently posted this statement to his Facebook page concerning the issue of gay marriage. This is perhaps the most clear and concise statement concerning the issue of gay marriage that I have ever seen. I fully agree with Sliker's statements on this issue and am sharing it for the benefit of believers who may not have clarity on this issue.

The following is taken from David Sliker's facebook page. 

Here's the problem with gay marriage: there is no such thing. It doesn't exist. 

How could I say such a thing? I am by no means attempting to be inflammatory or sensational. Simply truthful: marriage is not a man-made institution; thus man has no right to define, redefine, or transform what God has ordained and established sovereignly. Marriage is from God, belongs to God, and is a prophetic 

declaration that He wants to make to the human race about His relationship with us. Therefore, we need to tread carefully and fearfully around this subject. It is precious to Him.

Hear me now: I don't want to talk about civil unions, and the rights that homosexuals can receive from our government related to cohabitation and life together. It's an entirely different issue that merits healthy discussion, as it relates to the subject of what our government should, or should not, sanction and promote within American society. In that arena, a discussion on the issue of basic human "rights" and privileges granted by our society is very appropriate to discuss and debate. These civil issues of American governance fall within our God-given "sphere" to work through together as a nation.

Marriage, however, falls outside of the boundaries of debate and human "rights". No one has a intrinsic "right" to redraw boundaries that God Himself has drawn and defined. The subject of marriage, why it exists, and what it was originally intended to display is not something we get to speak into or shape; it is a part of a storyline that God Himself jealously guards. It is as immutable a truth as grace itself, or mercy, or love. We are not allowed to define any of those truths - we must encounter them by the power of the Holy Spirit and be instructed. In the same manner, we must encounter the Bridegroom God to truly understand marriage and what it shouts to the nations of the earth.

The secondary issue related to a gay man's "right" to marry is the cry, "How can true love be denied?" Again, both the issue of "rights" and "true love" are beside the point. Outside of intimate relationship with Him, the Father has given men the freedom of choice and the freedom to walk in a manner contrary to His will. However, calling that free expression of the heart "love" does not mean that God now approves, sanctions, or desires to fill the earth with homosexual relationships. His opinions do not evolve, and His boundaries for men and women are clear.

Therein, however, lies the heart of the matter. If this was truly only a fight for "civil rights" within a free society, then the issues at hand could be contained within a political, or legal, debate. If rights within a free society are being denied to men, then citizens must work together to see that all men and women are treated equitably, charitably, and honorably. However, it is not really about what is ethically, politically, or legally permissible. This debate is about - and has always been about - what is morally and spiritually permissible.

What lies at the core of the debate is not the right of men to live with other men and enjoy civil and political rights and privileges; it is about men being able to engage together in intimacy and have that union considered as holy and sacred as the union between a man and a woman in "holy matrimony." In other words, the ultimate desire in redefining marriage is the redefinition of morality itself, what is sin and what is not, and what is shameful - and what is not.

That is the ultimate problem with the "gay marriage debate". We conduct the discussion from within a man-centered arena as we look to present the most compassionate arguments for our "side". Beloved, God is NOT on "our side" of the debate. The plumb line and ultimate test - in the fear of the Lord - is whether or not we are on His side.

"What do you think, Father?" This must be the primary question on our hearts and minds - we must work to align ourselves with His heart rather than bolstering our wise-sounding opinions. We must not succumb to wisdom that is not from above - wisdom that is "earthly, sensual," and, ultimately...."demonic" in nature. This kind of wisdom breeds confusion and "every evil thing". This kind of wisdom destroys the very lives compassionate, well-meaning folks are trying to save, and help.

I know this - the church cannot be passive on this issue. We can be loving, we can express love, and we can treat men and women struggling with immorality (homosexual AND heterosexual) with compassion, tenderness, and kindness. What we cannot do is redraw God's boundaries in the name of compassion. That is not compassion. That is compromise. It is not loving. It is fearful.

This is not the hour to be fearful, but to be loving as God is loving and declare the wisdom of the boundaries He has drawn - in relationships, in marriage, and in love. To do this is the only true way to serve, love, and honor those who are hurting, broken, and trapped in the shame of immorality. To be faithful to declare the truth of God's word, God's heart, and God's plan is to participate in His means to true freedom and joy for all who turn to Him.