Great Commandment Youth Ministries
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From CosmoGirl (November 2003), "Don't you just hate it when people try to convert you to their religion? Or when they talk about how no religion other than theirs is the right one? I have enough respect for my friends not to preach to them, but some of my friends don't respect my beliefs enough not to try to convert me. That really bothers me." --Joy, age 16
You teach your youth to spread their faith to friends at school. Yet those friends are asking for the respect to not be converted. I'm sure not every U.S. high school teen has this opinion but you can hear the postmodern thoughts which are rampant in our teens in this one quote. What do you do? Respect for others is important. For too long many Christians have been guilty of not respecting people and property all in the name of the Great Commission. But you can't not obey the Great Commission either. How do you encourage your teens to reach their friends for Christ when their friends don't want any part of that?
A good answer may be in the following quote from an article that had nothing to do with this question.
"The evangelical community has elevated the Great Commission to the primary issue of Christian living and action. While disciple making is important, should it really be the bottom line?" This is a loaded question for those denominations which have annual reports which ask you to report on how many salvations your church has had.
Back to the quote: "Jesus is approached by a man who wants to know the bottom line. Jesus' response to him is, ‘"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the greatest and first commandment.' (Matthew 22:37-38) We see in Jesus' response that our primary priority is to love God with the very core of our being. The second priority grows out of our love for God and that is to love our neighbors. Jesus goes on to say that the whole of Scripture can be encapsulated in those commands (v. 40). The Great Commission, then, becomes the by-product of the Great Commandment.
"We need to let God reframe our thinking on this. We mark our ministries as ‘Great Commission ministries' when they should really be ‘Great Commandment ministries.' Our time and energies should be poured into developing a deeper love relationship with God. But often this is dwarfed by the great work that we are trying to do for God. Love, not growth, must be the measure of success in ministry. Issues of performance, power, politics, and position would be eliminated if church leaders made the Great Commandment the measure of success.
"...We can experience incredible freedom when we focus on the builder instead of the work. There isn't much that we can do to enhance what God is doing, and there isn't much that we can do to mess it up, either. God is in total control of the results. Oh, sweet freedom!" (Steve Gerali, director of the Youth Ministry Undergraduate Degree program at Azusa Pacific University, Youthworker Journal, March/April 2004)
If love is our measure, then we will be granting the respect to the lost that they want and the message of the gospel will not be watered down.
One of my favorite quotes of all times comes from former-mayor of New York City, Ed Koch, at the death of Cardinal John O'Connor. While politically and religiously opposite during their entire relationship, Ed Koch had this to say about the life of Cardinal O'Conner at his death: "More important, he truly lived the old line ‘Hate the sin, love the sinner.' You can't fully appreciate that line until you saw someone like the Cardinal, who really lived that life. Whatever his position on gay rights, he was more than active in New York's AIDS hospices. He dedicated a major facility at one of the archdiocese's hospitals to caring for AIDS patients, and he would visit, unannounced, to care for patients, washing them, changing their bedpans. He attended to thousands of patients over the years. In our book, I wrote that the difference between me and the Cardinal was that he was in the business of saving souls, while I was in the business of saving lives. On rereading the book recently, I had to apologize for that one line. He saved more lives than I ever could have." (Newsweek, May 15, 2000)
That is a Great Commandment life lived. May the same be said about you. May the same be said about the youth in your youth group.
P.S. Another important thing to remember about school and the Great Commandment/Great Commission is the stress students are under and the reprieves they like and need. The small breaks they have during the school day are important to be kick back times and not always times they do other things which are on their to-do lists. According to another one of the favorite quotes compiled in the Stuffed Culture Collection: "Our lunch is our most valuable time, and now we have to eat fingers." This is from a student at Cape Cod's Barnstable High School, after a fellow student found a piece of human finger in his turkey sandwich. A lunch worker had apparently sliced it off the day before. (Newsweek, February 12, 2001) A rare event, a hysterical event, but the message is clear. The reprieve at lunch is important. Be careful to also respect the downtimes your campus missionaries need.
