Gospelize PDF

“Greg Stier takes his infectious heart and razor-sharp mind and
pours it into Gospelize Your Youth Ministry in a way that is both

inspiring and practical. Greg’s commitment to an evangelism that
invites ‘transformation from the inside out,’ especially as lived in
and through teenagers, is what drives his ministry and grounds
this helpful and detailed resource. What he makes clear from the
first pages is that evangelism is not simply a programmatic option
among many for youth ministry, but rather is the core reason and
outcome of a healthy ministry. In Gospelize Your Youth Ministry,
Greg Stier provides the foundation, the plan, and the structure to
ensure that the book of Acts lives on in and through your ministry.”

“This book is a necessary disruption to how we do youth ministry.

We cannot keep doing youth ministry without having the Gospel at
the center of it. I love how confrontational and practical this book
is—Greg lays the truth out loud and clear. I cannot think of a more
important book for youth pastors today.”

“If we don’t make disciples, we’ve missed the assignment! Gospelize

Your Youth Ministry will inspire you to follow your good intentions
and to live out a deep commitment to making the Gospel core to
who you are and how you lead your youth ministry. Thank you,
Greg, for sharing these practical ‘how-tos’ and especially for being
the most Gospelized Kingdom dude I know!”

Gospelize 2.0.indb 1 11/17/2022 6:37:19 PM

“As the global youth movement attached to the World Evangelical
Alliance, our priority has been to listen to and serve grassroots
leaders across the globe. One urgent and recurring theme has
been the need to equip teens to reach, disciple, and empower
their peers. I know of no one better placed to do this than Dare 2
Share and know of no better resource than this one to make that
happen. Time is short. Let’s get it out there and catalyze a Gospel
Advancing movement!”

“If you want to see a disciple-making movement among youth

starting from your church, you cannot not read this book!
Gospelize Your Youth Ministry will give you the critical toolbox to
boost the movement. It provides stories and practical application
to help you imagine what youth group could look like, and Greg
Stier’s contagious passion will transform your missional DNA.”

“Trust me, this book will refresh you, encourage you, and refocus
you on the original ‘Jesus’ mission that got you into ministry. In
addition, it will help you develop a plan of action that will trans-
form the way you view and do youth ministry for the rest of your
life.”


“Infused with hard-won wisdom, Gospelize Your Youth Ministry
is an invitation to practical ways to reignite your youth ministry
with profound and courageous strategies that give teens a seat at
the table of Gospel Advancement, with Jesus’s values at the center
of it. This book, and all Greg Stier’s work, shows just how perfectly
he nails the pulse of Gospel Advancing strategies that are practical
for every context in the world and very relevant in the face of a
growing, youthful Africa, to mobilize Africa’s youth bulge into an
agency of youth leaders who are wildly, passionately, outrageously
devoted to Gospel Advancing.”

“Here’s the thing: Too many youth ministries function comfortably

without Jesus’s interference. A ‘Gospelized’ youth ministry risks
everything on the premise that Jesus still shows up with love, truth,
and power when we’re faithful. If you’re called by Jesus to work
with kids, this book will urge you to get reacquainted with Jesus’s
values for ministry, fix some broken patterns, quit messing around,
and join the greatest multiplication strategy the world has ever
seen. All for Jesus’s glory!”

“Practical, biblical, inspirational—and very challenging! I’d

highly encourage any leader to interact with Gospelize Your Youth
Ministry. You will gain new insight into biblical texts and practical
strategies to move your ministry forward exponentially.”


“With Gospelize Your Youth Ministry, Greg Stier has written a
powerhouse book that I’m convinced can transform the way youth
ministry is done in America (and maybe even across the world)!
Based on timeless truths in the book of Acts and the latest evange-
lism research, this dynamic book unpacks principles that can move
any youth ministry from typical to transformational, from meet-
ing-driven to mission-driven, from entertainment-based to Gospel
Advancing. I pray that you and your youth ministry team take the
time to read this book slowly, explore these principles thoughtfully,
and apply these truths passionately. If you do, both you and your
youth ministry will forever be changed.”


GOSPELIZE


Gospelize Your Youth Ministry
Copyright © 2022 by Dare 2 Share Ministries, Inc.
All rights reserved.
A D2S Publishing book

P.O. Box 745323
Arvada, CO 80006
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy
Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011, by
Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. If bold appears
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Scripture quotations marked (NIV, 1984) are taken from the Holy Bible, New
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Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible,
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try of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.lockman.org
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living
Translation. Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois
60188. All rights reserved.
People’s names and certain details of their stories may have been changed to
protect the privacy of the individuals involved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy,
recording, or otherwise—without prior permission of D2S Publishing.
Editors: Kellee Katagi, Carrie Evans, Jane Dratz
Stier, Greg.
Gospelize Your Youth Ministry: A spicy strategy to ignite your teenagers
ISBN: 978-1-7356036-3-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015948838
Printed in the United States of America

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 / 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08

To Pastor Ralph “Yankee” Arnold,
who taught me how to Gospelize

......................................................................................1

.................................................................................5
Don’t Just Stand There—Gospelize! .......................9
The Last Lost Chapter of Acts ..............................19
Gospel Advancing Ingredients.............................29
Pray First.................................................................43
Reach Your Circle ..................................................53
Follow the Leader ..................................................69
Go Viral: How to Multiply ....................................83
Conquering Your “14er” .......................................99
Counting What Really Counts...........................117
Program Your Priorities ....................................131
Start a Gospelized Network ................................147
Beware the Party Poopers! ................................163
Apostolic Resolve ...............................................177
.................................................................................191
....................................................................195

Foreword
Have you ever had an “aha” moment? You know, as if a lightning bolt
had fallen from the sky, striking your conscience, and suddenly that
thing you were wrestling with or wondering about became incred-
ibly clear? The book you’re about to read was my aha moment, my
lightning bolt. In fact, it was bigger than that.
It was the answer to my prayer.
Six months before I encountered Gospelize Your Youth Ministry and
Greg Stier, I was handed the reins of the Youth Ministries division
of Word of Life Fellowship, an international organization dedicated
to the evangelization and discipleship of youth, especially teenagers.
Word of Life has been reaching youth with the Gospel of Christ
for more than 80 years through camps, evangelistic campaigns, dis-
cipleship training centers, Bible institutes, and youth ministries in
local churches. When I was 13 years old, I attended a Word of Life
camp, and my life was forever changed.
Then, after 22 years of serving in Argentina and France, and then
leading our International Ministries division, I was being asked to

revitalize a key component of what we did both in the United States

and around the world. Our Youth Ministries division was dedicated
to helping youth leaders and volunteers all around the world run
effective teen ministries in their local churches. We provided tools,
resources, and training for that purpose.
However, over the previous decade or so, growth had plateaued, and
we were struggling. It seemed that “something” was missing. But
what? So, I prayed, asking God to show us what we weren’t seeing.
The following year, I was invited to sit around the first Gospel
Advancing Roundtable, a Dare 2 Share initiative connecting like-
minded churches and organizations, with the singular goal of “every
teen, everywhere, hearing the Gospel from a friend.”
As I heard Greg passionately share his bold vision and then lay out
the 7 Values of Gospel Advancing ministry, which are outlined in
this book, tears filled my eyes. My heart began to burn as it had very
few times in my life. This was my lightning bolt, my aha moment,
my answered prayer. This was what we were missing.
You see, our ministry was founded eight decades ago by a passionate
evangelist, Jack Wyrtzen, a friend of and precursor to Billy Graham
and others. God used Jack to fill Yankee Stadium, Madison Square
Garden, and radio waves around the world with the message of the
Gospel. He often said, “I believe it is the responsibility of every gener-
ation to reach their generation for Christ.” Walk around any Word of
Life campus long enough, and you’ll see that written on some wall
or T-shirt or promotional piece.
But while we’d become exceptionally good at my generation reach-
ing the next generation, we’d somehow lost sight of equipping and
inspiring this generation to reach their own generation. We’d grown
content with reaching teens through our own programs, instead of
turning teenagers into a massive, multiplying, missionary force of
their own.

We needed to get back to our roots. We’d become, as Greg calls it,
“institutionalized.”
So, we tore apart everything we were doing in Youth Ministries
and rebuilt it with this renewed vision. We used the 7 Values you’re
going to read about as our filter and matrix.
Fast-forward five years, and our entire curriculum, our devotion-
als, our youth leadership coaching, and our evangelistic events all
reflect the priority of helping teenagers share their faith with their
friends. That same vision has even found its way into our camps and
Bible Institutes.
In addition, we’ve partnered with Dare 2 Share to help translate the
evangelistic Life in 6 Words app into dozens of languages, including
Arabic, Hindi, and Mandarin. We’re now training leaders and teen-
agers on every inhabitable continent in the world with this same
Gospel Advancing philosophy. It has reenergized our 1,600 youth
workers in more than 80 countries. We’re all-in.
I’ve been begging Greg for a new version of his book—an edition
to show the world that this vision and these values are not some
radical, new Western youth ministry fad. It’s far more than that—it’s
biblical. These are timeless principles taken straight from the book
of Acts, vital and applicable for every culture, every teenager, every
youth leader on the planet.
Before you dive into this hilarious and thought-provoking read, I
challenge you to take a moment right now and, as I did, ask God to
show you what you might not be seeing.
Then, get ready. The lightning bolt is coming. Your own aha moment
awaits.


Introduction
Jesus, so it seems, was a youth leader. He banked on his band of

teenagers to change the world—and they did!
My belief (and the premise of this book) is that teenagers today,
through the power of the Holy Spirit, have the same ability to
advance the Gospel to their own generation and beyond—and that
your ministry can be a major catalyst to make that happen.
But, wait a second, you might say. What makes you say Jesus was
a youth leader? We can’t know for sure, but the evidence points
strongly in that direction.
First, there’s cultural and historical evidence: According to
gotquestions.org, the average age a Jewish student would start fol-
lowing their rabbi was somewhere between 13 and 15, which means
most of the disciples likely weren’t much older than that.
And then there’s this intriguing story in Matthew 17:24-27:
After Jesus and His disciples arrived in Capernaum, the
collectors of the two-drachma temple tax came to Peter and
asked, ‘Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?’

‘Yes, He does,’ he replied.

When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak.
‘What do you think, Simon?’ He asked. ‘From whom do the
kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own
children or from others?’
‘From others,’ Peter answered.
‘Then the children are exempt,’ Jesus said to him. ‘But so that
we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your
line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth, and you will
find a four-drachma coin. Take it, and give it to them for my
tax and yours.’
All the disciples were in Capernaum, but it seems only Jesus and
Peter paid the temple tax. When you cross-reference this passage
with Exodus 30:14, you realize that this tax was applicable only to
those age 20 and older.
If I’m reading this correctly, that means Jesus was a youth leader,
with one adult sponsor and one really rotten kid, named Judas
Iscariot. He had a small budget and no youth room. But with His
youth group of 10 on-fire-for-Christ kids, and the help of one all-in
adult leader, He launched a spiritual revolution that spread through-
out the world and continues to this day.
My own life is a testimony of the radical power of the Gospel—and

of teens’ effectiveness in spreading it.
As a fatherless kid raised in a family of street fighters, bodybuilders,
and thugs, I witnessed the miraculous spiritual transformation of
my entire family—all because a church in the suburbs of Denver,
Colorado, had the courage to venture into the city to share the Good
News of Jesus.

Watching the simple Gospel message transform my tougher-than-

you-can-imagine uncles and God-could-never-forgive-me-for-all-
my-sins mom powerfully impacted my life as well.
After the Gospel, the next most-influential factor that has shaped
my life and ministry is the philosophy of that suburban church,
which believed not only in the power of the Gospel but also in the
potential of teenagers.
The church’s founding pastor—Ralph “Yankee” Arnold—had
started it with teenagers in mind. He believed the best way to reach
a city was to mobilize teenagers to reach other teenagers for Christ.
Yankee believed that teenagers came to Christ quicker and could
spread the Gospel faster and farther than adults ever could.
And from what I experienced, he was right. The church’s youth min-
istry equipped and challenged its students (including me) to share
the Gospel—and we did. Over the years, hundreds of teenagers and
adults put their trust in Christ as a result of the church’s middle
schoolers and high schoolers sharing their faith.
What does all this have to do with you and your ministry?
Answering that question is precisely what this book is about.
Throughout these pages, we’ll dig into the book of Acts to discover
the ministry model—a strategy we call “Gospelizing” or “Gospel
Advancing”—that allowed Jesus’s teenage disciples to turn the world
on its head.
We’ll discover—also from the book of Acts—the 7 key values that
underpin spiritually thriving, Gospel Advancing ministries.
We’ll learn how implementing these values not only equips and
inspires your students to spread the Gospel but also helps them fall
more in love with Christ personally, in a way nothing else can.

We’ll hear real-life stories from youth leaders worldwide whose

Gospelizing efforts have yielded Kingdom-expanding results—and
we’ll glimpse how they’ve overcome some of the challenges they’ve
had along the way.
We’ll explore the difference between just checking all the activity
and Bible-lesson boxes and enthusiastically embracing Jesus’s final
mandate: to “…go and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew
28:19).
As you read this book and begin implementing the 7 Values it
outlines, I encourage you to start with baby steps—and don’t give
up. These values are simple to understand but often challenging to
apply. You can be sure Satan will do his best to discourage, deceive,
distract, and destroy you and your efforts. There’s nothing our
enemy hates more than a Gospel Advancing, disciple-multiplying,
God-glorifying ministry. So fortify yourself in prayer, and refuse to
stop pushing.
As Galatians 6:9 urges us: “Let us not become weary in doing good,
for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”


Don’t Just Stand
There—Gospelize!
‘But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and
you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth.’
After He said this, He was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud
hid Him from their sight.
They were looking intently up into the sky as He was going, when
suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ‘Men of Galilee,’
they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same
Jesus, who has been taken from you into Heaven, will come back in
the same way you have seen Him go into Heaven.’ Acts 1:8-11
Imagine experiencing that moment when Jesus gave His disciples
the final charge to go into the world and spread the Good News
to everyone, everywhere. You would have just spent the previous
40 days reveling in the shocking joy of Jesus’s resurrection from a
horrific death, and now His pierced, beautiful feet are leaving the
ground.

Jesus starts floating upward, upward, upward. He goes higher and

higher, finally disappearing into the gentle clouds that waft across
the deep-blue Judean sky.
Then a voice startles you out of what feels like a dream. You turn
to see two men dressed in white who’ve appeared out of nowhere.
“Why do you stand here looking into the sky?” they ask. Their pointed
question reminds you that Jesus has given you, in His final words, a
promise and a purpose.
The promise and purpose Jesus offered His disciples set in motion a
revolution that has continued to this day.
First, He promised that the Holy Spirit would soon be upon them
and that He would bring with Him a divine power—not to set up an
earthly kingdom but to advance a spiritual one.
Next, He gave the disciples a purpose: to be His witnesses, starting
where they were (Jerusalem) and then spreading farther and farther
away (to Judea, then Samaria, and then the ends of the earth).
Finally, Jesus disappears into a cloud, and the disciples just stand
there awestruck, staring into the sky.
It all happened so quickly.
But God doesn’t give them the luxury of sitting around, processing
what just took place. Instead, two angels immediately appear on the
scene and ask why they’re still there.
In essence they’re saying: “Don’t just stand there! Spread the Good
News!” They were reminding the disciples and all their spiritual
descendants—which includes us—that there’s a mission to accom-
plish (advance the Gospel), a plan to accomplish it (start where they
were and expand to the ends of the earth), and a deadline to accom-
plish it by (when Jesus comes back on a cloud).


The angels reminded them it was time to do what Jesus told them
to do—wait for the Holy Spirit and then get busy with the mission.
And that’s exactly what they did. Ten days later, immediately after
being baptized with the Holy Spirit, they stood up and started telling
everyone the Gospel. As a result, 3,000 were added to their number
in one day (Acts 2:41).
But they were just getting started. In every chapter of the book of
Acts, we see the Gospel powerfully advancing:
• Jesus commissioned His disciples to take the Gospel
across the street and around the world.
• the disciples’ tongues were set on fire with the Gospel.
• God used Peter to first heal a man’s broken body and
then share the Gospel to heal his broken soul.
• the power of prayer shook a building, and the power
of the Gospel shook an entire city.
• the apostles were commanded to keep quiet, but they
never stopped preaching the Gospel.
• the Gospel grew and multiplied across Jerusalem,
because the apostles prioritized prayer and preaching and del-
egated everything else.
• Stephen was stoned for declaring the Gospel.
• the Holy Spirit prompted Philip to chase down a
chariot and preach the Gospel to an Ethiopian eunuch, who
then took the message to Africa.
• Jesus commissioned Saul to declare the Gospel to
the Gentiles.
• the Gospel transformed Gentiles.
• the Gospel transformed Greeks.


• the impact of the Gospel continued to increase and

spread.
• Paul and Barnabas embarked on their first mission-
ary journey to spread the Gospel.
• Paul was stoned for preaching the Gospel, but he,
unlike Stephen, survived and kept on preaching it.
• the apostles rebuked legalists for trying to compli-
cate the Gospel.
• Paul, Silas, and a teenage boy named Timothy took
the Gospel to Philippi.
• Paul preached the Gospel to the intellectual elites of
Athens.
• Paul took the Gospel to the pagan partiers of
Corinth.
• Paul mobilized the Ephesian believers to spread the
Gospel across the province of Asia.
• Paul recounted the power of the simple Gospel to
the elders of Ephesus.
• Paul updated the apostles in Jerusalem on how the
Gospel had shaken entire nations.
• Paul was arrested for preaching the Gospel in
Jerusalem.
• Paul was almost assassinated for preaching the
Gospel.
• Paul explained the Gospel to a governor named
Felix.
• Paul explained the Gospel to a ruler named Festus.
• Paul explained the Gospel to king named Agrippa.


• Paul was shipped off to Rome to stand trial before
Nero for preaching the Gospel.
• Paul preached the Gospel for two years while under
house arrest in Italy.
In fewer than 30 years, we see the Good News spread from
Jerusalem to Rome—without planes, trains, or automobiles, without
Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook. Instead, the simple Gospel spread
face-to-face and person-to-person and shook the known world for
God.
Throughout the ages, the baton of responsibility for preaching the
simple Gospel has been passed down from one generation to the
next. Now that baton is in our hands.
As followers of Christ today, we’ve inherited that two-millennia-old
mission, plan, and deadline. Until our Savior returns to planet Earth
on a cloud, He’s called us to join Him in accomplishing an eterni-
ty-altering quest.
The quest to make disciples.
The quest to spread the Good News.
The quest to Gospelize.
I love the word Gospelize. When I first heard it, I was exercising
in my basement, while listening to someone on an app reading a
Charles Spurgeon sermon (yes, I’m a preaching nerd). While I was
pumping out the pushups, I heard these words from the premier
preacher of the 19th century:
I contend for this: that to Gospelize a man is the greatest miracle in the
world. All the other miracles are wrapped up in this one. To Gospelize
a man, or, in other words, to convert him, is a greater work than to
open the eyes of the blind.1

Spurgeon didn’t invent this word. It was an Old English word that
simply meant to “evangelize” someone.
Instantly, I was hooked. The word evangelism smacks of bullhorns
and pointy fingers of judgment. But Gospelize sounds like transfor-
mation from the inside out, which is exactly what the world needs,
what our teenagers need, what we need.
So what does it look like to Gospelize a youth ministry? One way to

understand it is to picture adding “Gospel spice” to your ministry
mindset and model.
Every culture around the world has some sort of spice they use
to make their food taste better and add that extra burst of flavor.
Whether it’s curry in India, chili powder in Mexico, garlic in Italy,
ginger in Japan, or salt and pepper in the United States, spices bring
zest to food. They turn bland into blissful and dull into delicious.
In the same way, to Gospelize is to add Gospel spice to everything
we do. It makes us dangerous to the kingdom of darkness and turns
our bland meetings into arm-wrestling matches with Satan for the
souls of our teenagers.
Like a distinctive spice, the pure, simple Gospel stands out strikingly
among all other worldviews and philosophies. When C.S. Lewis was
asked, “What makes Christianity unique among all the world reli-
gions?” his answer was, “Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.”2
Grace is the undeserved favor of God we receive through the death,
burial, and resurrection of Christ—and it’s absolutely mind-blow-
ing. We’re saved by what Jesus has done, not by what we do. We
receive eternal life through faith, not by works. This message adds a
spice to our recipes that no other religion in the world can duplicate
or replicate. It’s true of Christianity alone.

Gospelize_Chapter 1.indd 14 11/29/2022 2:00:04 PM


Gospel spice reminds us as believers why we’re here to begin with.

It brings us back to the foot of the bloodstained cross and reminds
us that we’re sinners saved by God’s grace, through Jesus’s sacrifice.
It lifts our heads toward the harvest field of the yet-to-be-reached
and sets our hearts ablaze with a passion for the lost. It enables us
to stand on the promises of who we are in Christ, because of what
Christ did for us 2,000 years ago at Calvary.
To Gospelize is to add Gospel spice to everything we do.
In more straightforward terms, to Gospelize your youth ministry

is to build a context in which the Good News of Jesus is moving
deeply into the souls of your teenagers and outwardly through your
teenagers to others. When you make the Gospel central to every-
thing you do, you’re Gospelizing your ministry.
Gospelizing your youth group is much, much more than simply
getting teenagers to share the Gospel with their peers. When you
read through the book of Acts, you see that evangelism is front and
center. But the Gospel-sharing efforts of the early followers of Jesus
sprang out of a context of believers who loved God and loved others.
They emphasized prayer and were committed to God’s Word. It
wasn’t just about making converts; rather it was about relying on
prayer, caring for each other and the people around them, and
advancing the Gospel by multiplying disciples.
This forward movement of the life-changing message of Jesus was
accomplished through the moving of the Spirit’s power, first in the
early disciples and then through them to reach others.
So how do you create a context in which this happens consistently?
Ahh, that’s what this book is about!
In Acts 1:8, Jesus called His disciples to pursue His mission by being
His witnesses, starting where they were at and expanding outward.
But, led by the Spirit, they didn’t just make disciples, they multiplied


them! This means life-on-life investment in those who had put their
faith in Jesus, training them to reach their spheres of influence. By
the time you get to Acts 28, the Gospel had become an unstoppable
force.
If you read the book of Acts closely, you can see this was an excit-
ing, messy, and dangerous process. But you also see the disciples
learning and growing in their ability to advance the Gospel, not just
personally, but also by equipping other believers.
This book-of-Acts strategy from 2,000 years ago works just as pow-
erfully today. And not only does it work, but it transcends culture.
It’s not a Western way, an Eastern effort, a Southern strategy, or,
well, you get the idea. Rather, it’s an “anywhere” model that’s effec-
tive on every continent and in every culture.
What we read in the dusty pages of Acts needs to be dusted off and
done again today in our 21st-century, postmodern context. Why?
Because the mission is clear, and the deadline is near. As Acts 1:11
promises, He will be coming back!
So don’t just stand there—Gospelize!


to


The Last Lost
Chapter of Acts
The book of Acts is a wild, 28-chapter ride, complete with riots,

healings, shipwrecks, arrests, supernatural prison breaks, visions,
arguments—all serving to advance the Gospel throughout the
Roman empire.
And then, it just stops. The last two verses leave you dangling on the
edge of a proverbial cliff:
For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and
welcomed all who came to see him. He proclaimed the Kingdom of
God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and
without hindrance!
OK.
That’s it?
What about Paul’s execution? What about the church’s spread
beyond Italy? What about the great persecution under Nero?
Nope.
It just leaves us hanging there.


Personally, I think there’s a divine reason for this incomplete story.

Through Luke’s pen, the Holy Spirit is writing a script that’s meant
to feel unfinished because, in a sense, it is. We are the continuation
of the book of Acts!
Look at what the good Dr. Luke wrote at the very beginning of this
amazing book:
In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to
do and to teach until the day He was taken up to Heaven, after giving
instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles He had chosen.
Acts 1:1-2
Though Luke put his pen down at the end of Acts 28, the Holy Spirit
is still writing a story in and through us. Although it’s not part of the
canon of Scripture, and it can’t be found on any human parchment,
it’s the story of church history that continues on today.
And you and your youth group are part of it!
So, if the book of Acts, in a sense, is still being written, how do you
infuse that same dynamic, enthusiastic, Gospel Advancing spirit
into your youth group? Well, that same Holy Spirit is infused into
the hearts of all of your believing teenagers. And those teenagers are
called to proclaim the same Gospel the early disciples did. When
your teenagers begin to spread this Good News, something surpris-
ing happens: They start to grow in their faith in ways you never
expected.

Imagine that if you wanted to keep your job, you had to sit through
a six-week, eight-hours-a-day bomb-defusing class led by a team
of bomb-disposal experts. You didn’t have to pass the class to keep
your job, but you did have to sit through it. Most likely, after the awe
of realizing you were in a bomb-defusing class wore off, you’d start
to realize how many math, chemistry, and engineering principles


you were going to have to listen to. At that point, you’d probably
begin to lose interest. Soon, you’d be checking your social media
accounts, texting friends, playing games on your phone, or doo-
dling—anything but tuning into this boring class on bombs!
Now, let’s change the scenario a bit. Let’s say that at the beginning of
the class I told you that after six weeks of training, the military was
going to contract you to go defuse bombs in a hostile nation. How
well do you think you would listen then? Of course, you’d pay close
attention, take copious notes, and stay after class to ask questions of
the bomb-defusing experts. “Was it the red wire or green wire we
cut in that scenario?” Why? Because you’d know you would soon be
in the danger zone and could die, if you weren’t trained and ready!
Without the prospect of getting plunged into the danger, the six-
week class would have been just a boring exercise in chemistry and
wire cutting. But with the prospect of actually needing this knowl-
edge to accomplish your life-or-death mission, everything changes.
In the same way, many of your teenagers feel as if they’re stuck in a
six-week-long, boring Bible class when they go to youth group. To
them, it can sound like an exercise in dusty theology and ancient
religious studies. But if they know you’re going to lovingly, but
relentlessly challenge them to share the Gospel with their peers,
there’s a good chance they’re going to study the Bible extra-hard
and pray even harder! And all of this will help them grow deeper in
their relationship with God.
You can also think of it like this: If you pour milk into a sponge and
it just sits there, the milk will soon spoil. But if you pour milk into
a sponge and immediately wring the sponge out, it will be ready to
absorb more milk. In the same way, if we pour the “milk” of God’s
Word (1 Peter 2:2) into young souls and they never wring it out to
others through evangelism, then they too will spoil.
But if we equip them to consistently “wring out” the Good News of
God’s message to others, then they will come back thirsty for more.


Teenagers who consistently share the Gospel with others are the
same ones who consistently ask you questions such as:
• How do we know the Bible is true?
• What is the Trinity again?
• Why does God let bad things happen to good people?
…and so many more.
Why? Because they’ve squeezed out what they know about the
Gospel to their unreached friends, and now they want to know
more! They need answers to their friends’ questions. They want to
know why they believe what they believe.
Many youth leaders think that giving teenagers more and more and
more apologetics or theology training is the answer. But all of these
subjects become just more “milk in the sponge” unless teenagers
consistently wring (or ring!) out the message to others.
If they don’t, they’ll likely spoil. If they do, they’ll come back thirsty
for more.
I’m convinced from the whole of the New Testament, and from
personal experience, that injecting a Gospel Advancing philosophy
into a youth group will accelerate the discipleship process faster
than just about anything else, because it shifts the perspective from
“my needs” to “God’s call.” It drives teenagers to rely on the Spirit,
and it pushes them to obey God.

If this is all true, then why, you might ask, aren’t more students (and
adults, for that matter) sharing their faith? There are many answers
to that question, but perhaps the biggest one is this: When you “go
public” with your faith—especially when you share it personally
with other people—you’re putting your relationships and your
social status at great risk.


This risk is nothing new. It’s been around at least since Jesus walked
on Earth, as this story shows:
Yet at the same time many even among the leaders believed in Him.
But because of the Pharisees they would not openly acknowledge their
faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved
human praise more than praise from God. John 12:42-43
Here’s an example of some early believers who had put their faith
in Jesus but refused to publicly acknowledge it. Why? Because they
didn’t want to risk their relationships with other leaders and their
status in the community.
Some people might say these were not true believers, but I would
remind you that the Holy Spirit’s commentary on their hearts is that
they had believed but weren’t willing to go that next step. In the
same way, many believing teenagers in your youth group have never
taken the next step of sharing their faith with their peers because
“they loved human praise more than praise from God.”
But central to the call of discipleship is the call to relational risk.
Jesus told His own disciples in Matthew 10:37-39:
‘Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy
of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not
worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is
not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever
loses their life for my sake will find it.’
What’s striking about this passage is that it specifically comes in the
context of Jesus unleashing His followers on an evangelistic cam-
paign (Matthew 10:1-7). As He sends the 12 out, Jesus is reminding
them that being a disciple involves sacrifice, including risking even
their closest, most important relationships. He’s calling them to take
up their cross and willingly die a social death—and perhaps even a
physical one—for His sake!

As you’ll see throughout this book, the evangelism approach we

advocate is bold but not pushy. We encourage leaders and stu-
dents to share their faith out loud, with words, but we urge them
to combine it with respect, a listening ear, active love and care, and
compassionate prayer.
But even when that’s done well, sharing Jesus’s message may, in some
situations, offend father, mother, sister, brother, and friend. It may
even fracture relationships. But the very act of embracing this kind
of social risk will yield an incalculable reward—true, abundant life
with deep significance—a life of growing, maturing, and thriving in
Christ.

I’ll never forget when pastor Tim Keller tweeted these words:
“Teenagers have more information about God than they have expe-
riences of Him. Get them in places where they have to rely on God.”1
Maybe that’s why Jesus sent His disciples out on their first solo evan-
gelistic campaign without anything to rely on but the Holy Spirit. In
Matthew 10:9-10, Jesus said: “Do not get any gold or silver or copper
to take with you in your belts—no bag for the journey or extra shirt or
sandals or a staff, for the worker is worth his keep.”
So they had no extra money to bank on, no extra clothes to put
on, and no walking stick to lean on or use as a defense if they were
attacked by wild animals along the way. They had only the Holy
Spirit. And a little later in this same passage, Jesus again instructed
them to rely fully on the Spirit by telling them: “At that time you will
be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of
your Father speaking through you” (Matthew 10:19b-20).
In the same way, when you train your teenagers to share the Gospel
and then put them in a position of having to trust God, it activates
their theological information about Him, triggers their thirst for
Him, and accelerates their spiritual dependence on Him.


The very thought of sharing Jesus with their classmates, teammates,

and friends often triggers a palpitating heart and knocking knees.
But knocking knees are more likely to bend to God in prayerful
reliance.
I’ve seen this demonstrated again and again for 30-plus years at
Dare 2 Share events. After we train teenagers to share the Good
News, we have them hold their cellphones high into the air. And
then we have them call, text, or send out a spiritual question to their
friends via social media to initiate Gospel conversations. Many of
them give me that “Are you serious?” look, as it begins to sink in
that I’m actually asking them to do this totally-out-of-their-com-
fort-zone thing. That look quickly turns into an “Oh no, you are
serious!” look.
But, before I have them call or text their friends, we pray. And you
can feel the prayers going up, because for many of these teenagers,
this is the first time they’ve been put in a position of risk. As a result,
many of these teenagers are praying like they haven’t prayed in a
long time.
When’s the last time you put your students in a position to take a
risk, just as Jesus did with His followers? As Tim Keller said, your
teenagers have plenty of information about God. It’s time we put
them in a position where they have to trust in Him. Relational evan-
gelism does just that.

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life
through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and
goodness. 2 Peter 1:3
If God has given us and our teenagers everything we need for godly,
thriving lives, then it’s no leap to assume that He’s given us every-
thing we need for a godly, thriving youth ministry.

You and your believing teenagers have the same Holy Spirit that
the apostles did. In fact, you could make the case that you and your
teenagers even have more than the early disciples did, because you
have the complete canon of Scripture and 2,000 years of church
history to learn from—both good and bad.
What if you decided that, through God’s power, you were going to
prayerfully lead the way for Acts-like, Gospel Advancing transfor-
mation in your church and community? What if you decided that
you’re tired of reading about revivals of the past and wanted to be a
part of one here and now? What if you led the way for carrying on
what the early disciples started, and you pushed to complete the task
before Jesus returns?
Now is the time, and you are the leader! Your teenagers are waiting
for someone to lead them toward a life of significance, and you are
the person God has strategically placed in their lives to challenge,
encourage, and equip them to get there.
I urge you not to wait for “when they’re ready,” because if you
really want your teens to grow, then you’ve got to get them to go.
This is a time-tested approach to developing an on-fire, Gospel
Advancing, Spirit-infused atmosphere of Acts-type excitement in
your teenagers.
This won’t necessarily happen overnight—in fact, it could take
years, as you overcome obstacles and work to change your youth
group culture by implementing the 7 values that mark a Gospel
Advancing ministry. But stay faithful to the mission and the simple
Gospel message, and perhaps someday, people may write these
same words about your youth group:
And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being
saved. Acts 2:47b




Gospel Advancing
Ingredients
Corey and Tanya are two of my family’s best friends on the planet.
We met in Switzerland a decade ago, and ever since, we’ve been
delighted by this amazing couple’s passion for faith, family, friends,
fun, and food.
A few years ago, we had the privilege of spending two weeks with
them in Zug, Switzerland, to celebrate their daughter’s wedding.
And, in Switzerland, as in most countries, a big part of celebrating
is eating.
Tanya, a Swiss citizen, loves cooking. She’s a genuine natural-food
chef. But she also loves teaching. The meals she prepared for our
family were not only delicious but also came with an explanation of
the ingredients and how the food was made.
As Tanya tutored my wife and me in delicious Swiss cuisine, she
relentlessly reminded us of the importance of the right, fresh ingre-
dients. I remember all of us visiting a small grocery store, where she
meticulously studied the fruit, vegetables, cheese, and meat to make
sure it was the best of the best.


It paid off. The fondue—and all the other Swiss dishes she made for
us—were absolutely delicious.
As I’ve traveled the world, I’ve seen again and again that what’s true
in Switzerland is true globally. From fish and chips in England to
tacos al pastor in Mexico to rogan josh in India to arepa in Colombia
to shawarma in Israel, the key to good food is quality ingredients.
Every culture has food and recipes that define it. And to be genuine,
each of these dishes needs the right, fresh ingredients. If even one
ingredient is missing, it can completely change the taste of the dish.
What’s true of the best meals worldwide is also true of the strongest
Gospel Advancing ministries worldwide. There are seven staple
ingredients—which we call the 7 Values—that make a youth minis-
try truly effective.
The Gospel provides the spice.
As you learn to use these ingredients in your youth ministry, you
can put your own twist on them, like any good chef. And then you
can share your “recipe” with other youth leaders through a Gospel
Advancing network.
Just so you know, I didn’t develop these 7 Values. I discovered them.

They’ve shown themselves, again and again, to be true statistically,
scripturally, and strategically. Let me explain.
Years ago, Dare 2 Share commissioned a national
research project that evaluated the effectiveness of youth ministries
evangelistically. About 10% of those surveyed had a new-conversion
growth rate of 25% or more per year. In other words, a full quarter
of their annual growth was from non-Christian teenagers putting
their faith in Jesus and getting plugged into the youth group. As we
analyzed the research, it became clear that the highest-performing
youth ministries embodied these 7 Values.

After identifying these 7 Values in our survey results,

I cross-checked them biblically, especially with the Gospels and the
book of Acts. I was greatly encouraged by the number of passages
that affirmed these same 7 Values. This book will highlight many of
those passages, as we examine the values and show how to put them
into practice.
I’ve spent 35-plus years in ministry as a youth leader,
church planter, and para-church youth ministry leader. Across
those years and roles, as my understanding has grown, I’ve labored
to strategically inject a Gospel Advancing philosophy into every
position I’ve had. In my role as the visionary and voice of Dare 2
Share, I’ve engaged with thousands of youth leaders across the
nation and around the world. And here’s my practical, frontlines
observation: I’ve tasted these seven ingredients in every ministry
dish worth biting into.
Should I be surprised? Not at all. Why? Because Jesus embedded all
of these values into His earthly ministry. And He passed them on
to the early disciples. Over the intervening 2,000 years, they’ve been
adopted and adapted in countless variations across cultures and
eras—in multitudes of different recipes that incorporate the same
basic ingredients.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Jesus was—and is—just as active
after He took His place at the right hand of God as He was when He
was seated next to ordinary men. (Actually, He’s more active now,
because He doesn’t have to sleep anymore!) So the book of Acts
is our glimpse into how His followers, in the power of His Spirit,
blended these 7 Values together to fit their times—and radically
changed the world.
In the chapters ahead, I’ll be diving deeper into each of these 7 Values
and explaining how you can blend them together to fit our times.
But before I drill down into them individually, I want to give you

a brief overview of each and a quick explanation for why I believe

they drove the advancement of the Gospel in the book of Acts.

They all joined together constantly in prayer. Acts 1:14
Prayer is the first thing the disciples did after Jesus ascended. They
met with Him in the heavenlies through relentless prayer. This snap-
shot of their commitment to pray constantly should demonstrate to
us that we too need to join together and pray fervently and consis-
tently—not just for our own needs but also for God’s Kingdom to
extend to the world around us, as Jesus Himself taught the disciples
to pray (Matthew 6:10).
We must pray. We must pray for each other and for the lost. We
must pray for our churches and our communities. We must pray
until our knees are numb and our voices are hoarse. We must pray
until God answers.
This intentional and intensive brand of prayer will keep us depen-
dent on Him, strengthen our faith muscles, and produce results that
only divine intervention can explain.
Isn’t this what the disciples saw modeled in Jesus’s life and ministry
again and again and again?
The early church carried this same passion for prayer. Acts 2:42 says
that “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellow-
ship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Prayer was central to
their meetings. It wasn’t served as an appetizer or a dessert, but was
part of the main course.
When we pray and teach our students to pray, we’re connecting them
with the One who can transform not only their lives, but also the
lives of their friends, classmates, teammates, family members, and
coworkers. When prayer becomes the engine and not the caboose

of our youth ministry efforts, then we’ll start getting serious traction
toward building Gospel Advancing ministries.

When Priscilla and Aquila heard him [Apollos], they invited him
to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.
Acts 18:26b
I love the way the Bible subtly provides insights into issues. This
simple verse offers a snapshot into how relational evangelism was
done in the early church by the “non–rock stars”—those who didn’t
have the public platform of the more widely known apostles, such
as Paul, Peter, and Philip.
What Priscilla and Aquila did in this passage is a picture of rela-
tional evangelism at its finest—or maybe of discipleship, depending
on your view of whether Apollos was a “theologically confused”
believer at this point.
First, they listened to him. They took time out of their busy lives to
try to understand who he was and what he believed.
Second, they identified the gaps in his understanding. Whether or
not Apollos was saved at this point is up for debate among some
Bible scholars, but what’s not up for debate is that he was missing
some key elements of the Good News in his theology.
Third, “they invited him into their home and explained to him the
way of God more adequately.” It was a big deal in this culture to invite
someone over to your house. It was a sign of acceptance, hospitality,
and love. Instead of being pushy, they lovingly helped him see the
gaps in what he believed, and Apollos consequently became a pow-
erful ambassador of the Gospel in the hands of God. Acts 18:27-28
gives us a glimpse of the impact Apollos went on to have:
When Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, the brothers and
sisters encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome

him. When he arrived, he was a great help to those who by grace had
believed. For he vigorously refuted his Jewish opponents in public
debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah.
In the same way, you can help your teenagers learn how to pull “a
Priscilla and Aquila” with their friends. They can learn how to listen,
find the critical gaps in others’ understanding of the Good News,
and then lovingly explain “the way of God” to them more accurately.
As you coach your teenagers to engage their peers with the right
mixture of love and boldness, it opens the door for the Gospel
to transform more and more of their friends, classmates, and
teammates.

The Spirit of God enabled the leaders of the early church in Acts to
live the life and preach the truth that Jesus had modeled for them
over the previous three and a half years.
Jesus made it clear in Luke 6:40: “The student is not above the teacher,
but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher.” The dis-
ciples were bold in proclaiming the truth, because Jesus modeled
boldness in proclaiming the truth.
We see this played out in Acts 4:13:
When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they
were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took
note that these men had been with Jesus.
The disciples became just like Jesus, their leader, and then they
became the example for the early Christians to follow.
In the same way, your teenagers will emulate what they see in
you—for better or for worse. As someone once said, “No tears in
the writer, no tears in the reader.”¹ What’s true of writing is true
of evangelism in the context of a youth group. If youth leaders—
including adult volunteers and student leaders—don’t have concern

for the lost or aren’t personally engaging in Gospel conversations

with others, then the students very likely won’t either.
But when we model prayer, spiritual growth, evangelism, and disci-
ple multiplication to our teenagers, they’re much more apt to grow
in these areas. We don’t have to be perfect at it, but we should be
making forward progress toward the goal. As we do, our teenagers
are much more likely to follow our lead and become more like us, as
we become more like Jesus.
Soon we’ll be able to say to them, as the apostle Paul said to the
Corinthian believers: “Follow my example, as I follow the example of
Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1).

Relational evangelism is essential. But if we stop there—if we just
make new converts and go on our merry way—we’re missing the
piece of the puzzle that can truly accelerate the advancement of the
Gospel: making disciples who in turn make disciples.
Jesus Himself attested in Matthew 28:19-20 that an essential part
of disciple-making is teaching new believers to obey everything He
commanded us to do, including sharing their faith.
The apostle Paul, partway through book of Acts, seems to embrace
training believers as his primary disciple-making strategy, shifting
away from mostly sharing the Gospel with Jews in the synagogue
and Gentiles in the marketplace (see Acts 19:8-10).
The power of this approach was exponential. It centered on people
going deeper in their own faith and multiplying the reach of the
message, as more and more disciples shared the Gospel in their
relational circles of influence. Ultimately, the Good News saturated
entire regions, as Paul describes in 1 Thessalonians 1:6-8:
You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed
the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by

the Holy Spirit. And so you became a model to all the believers in
Macedonia and Achaia. The Lord’s message rang out from you not
only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become
known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it.
This regional saturation with the Gospel was not the result of any
super apostle, but of everyday people sharing the Good News rela-
tionally. The Thessalonians were mimicking Jesus (1 Thessalonians
1:6), modeling joyful endurance to other believers (1 Thessalonians
1:7), and multiplying disciples to share the Gospel with everyone in
their spheres of influence (1 Thessalonians 1:8).
Youth programs that see these kinds of exponential results are
intentional with their discipling strategies, finding ways to move
students from new believers to mature, obedient, Gospel Advancing
followers of Jesus.

you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and
Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ Acts 1:8
I’m convinced that the boldest vision of all time started with Jesus
Himself. His goal was that His followers would take the Gospel “to
the ends of the earth,” making and multiplying disciples in every
tribe and nation (Matthew 28:19).
A bold vision starts when you aspire to share the message of the
Gospel with the teens in your area—perhaps those in the schools
your students attend. The “bold” part includes aiming, as a group,
to share with not just the teens who happen to come to your youth
group meetings, or even just with the friends your students have the
courage to invite, but with all the teens who live in your area, even
those who would never set foot in your church building.
It’s easy to get myopic about the four walls of your youth room and
forget how big the community and world you live in actually is. But

Jesus calls us to have a bold enough vision to make an impact far

beyond our own buildings.
Thriving youth ministries have a bold vision to reach as many teen-
agers as possible. This vision drives their personal and program-
ming efforts. The most effective of these have three levels of vision:
They reach their own community (Jerusalem), the broken parts of
their community (Samaria), and the regions well beyond their com-
munity (ends of the earth).


The word “outcomes” sounds a bit formal. But God is all about out-
comes. Outcomes reflect the results of our labors—the fruit we’re
seeking to produce through our ministry efforts.
When Barnabas visited Antioch in Acts 11:19-24, he “saw what the
grace of God had done.” What did he see? He saw outcomes! He wit-
nessed firsthand the fruit of the Good News being preached and
accepted.
What did that fruit look like? It was both qualitative and quanti-
tative. In other words, it was good and there was a lot of it. In the
same way, we want to see the evidence of God blessing our ministry
efforts—“outcomes”—on both levels.
On a qualitative level, we want our teenagers to grow in their knowl-
edge of and service to Jesus. As Peter reminded his readers in 2 Peter
1:5-8:
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness;
and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and
to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to
godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you
possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from
being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
God wants our teenagers to develop godly character and be “effec-
tive and productive” for His Kingdom. These are the qualitative
outcomes He’s looking for and working toward in them and in us.
On a quantitative level, these outcomes have to do with the number
of people we’re impacting with the Gospel of Jesus. As Acts 2:47
reminds us: “the Lord added to their number daily those who were
being saved.” Praying and caring for people lays the groundwork
for them to respond positively to the Gospel message, so it can be
helpful to track these activities as well.

This particular value should prompt you to ask yourself tough, but
critical, questions. Questions such as:
• What percentage of your meeting times does your group
spend praying for their friends who haven’t yet trusted
Christ?
• How often are your students finding ways to show care for
their peers?
• How many Gospel conversations are your teenagers having
with their friends every month?
You see, it’s not just about numbers. It’s about the right numbers.
And the right numbers have to do with how many people are coming
to Christ and growing in Christ, as a result of you mobilizing your
teenagers to make disciples who make disciples.

In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the
Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews
because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution
of food. So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, ‘It
would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the Word of God in
order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from
among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We
will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to
prayer and the ministry of the Word.’ Acts 6:1-4
The apostles could have gotten caught up in the minutia and micro-
managed every aspect of ministry, but they didn’t. They delegated
some ministry responsibilities, so they could take care of their top
ministry priorities.
What were their top priorities? To give their attention “to prayer and
the ministry of the Word.” As a matter of fact, if you look closely at
what was actually going on in this passage, you’ll see evidence that

they prioritized these same seven Gospel Advancing values we’re in

the process of unpacking! Think of it like this:
They programmed prayer.
They programmed evangelism, because part of the

“ministry of the Word” is evangelistic in nature.
They had built into leaders who reflected these same
values, because we see at least two of them prayerfully and
passionately preaching the Gospel in later chapters—Stephen
in chapter seven of Acts and Philip in chapter eight.
All of this was a result of the fact that “the number of
disciples was increasing.”
This rapid multiplication was an outgrowth of the
bold vision Jesus laid out in Acts 1:8.
The number of hungry widows being fed is defi-
nitely a biblical outcome, as is the number of disciples being
multiplied.
The point of this passage is about programming your
priorities, so it’s hard to miss this one!
Because the apostles committed to programming their priorities,
the early church was a Gospel Advancing powerhouse. They didn’t
let other priorities, or other people’s priorities, hijack the plane.
Instead, they delegated other duties to qualified leaders and kept
their eye on the end goal.
In the same way, programming these 7 Values into your daily sched-
ule, weekly programs, and annual calendar will ensure they truly
become ministry priorities. What dominates your schedule domi-
nates you, so if you don’t purposefully and passionately incorporate
these values into your programs and your calendar, they’ll just be
words on a wall (or flyer or website).


These 7 Values are the seven basic ingredients needed to build a
Gospel Advancing ministry. Remember, the basic ingredients will
always stay the same, but how you mix and match them into a spicy,
new dish is up to you.
As you begin to stir these values into your ministry, you and your
teenagers will “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8).
And so is Swiss food, by the way—and Italian and Mexican and
Indian and…I guess I love it all!



Pray
First

As a 9-year-old in a high-crime-rate area of Denver, I dreaded my

walk to school every day. This was the danger mile—full of gangs,
bullies, and all-around bad people.
Although my family was big and tough, I was small and weak. I
knew that if someone attacked me I’d be helpless to their punches or,
worse yet, bullets. So my eyes were always scanning my surround-
ings, looking for possible dangers.
One cool, fall morning, I was on my daily routine, warily walking to
school, when I spotted danger out of the corner of my eye. Headed
full speed at me from across the street were two German shepherd
dogs, ears back, teeth bared.

Having no time to scream or run or pick up a rock, I merely backed

into the chain-link fence, crisscrossed my tiny arms across my face,
held on to the fence with all my might, and braced for the attack.
They hit me hard, taking my breath away. One went for my arms,
and the other for my stomach.
Thank the Lord my ma had purchased me a discounted black-
leather jacket in the “bargain basement” of our local department
store. That jacket saved my life.
As the German shepherds tried to pull me from the fence, they
could never quite get their fangs to pierce the leather of my jacket.
But I knew that if they were able to get me to the ground, there was
a good chance they would tear me to shreds.
Just as my fingers started to give way to the pull of these dogs, I
spotted something else out of the corner of my eye. It was an
elderly lady, affectionately known around our neighborhood as “Ma
Zeemer.” Having heard my screams, she scurried out of her house
and shuffled down the street in my direction—with a baseball bat.
Once she got close enough, she reared back and swung, hitting the
dog closest to my face. “Crack!” I could hear the wood of the bat
connect with the dog’s skull. “Yip!” the dog whimpered, as he let go
of my arms and fell to the ground. With another “crack” and “yip,”
the second dog released his bite too.
Ma Zeemer jumped between me and the two stunned dogs, swing-
ing the bat and cursing, daring them to attack again. Instead, after
shaking their heads a few times to recover from the blow of the bat,
they turned and went back across the street.
In that moment, Ma Zeemer was my “intercessor.” The word
“intercession” comes from two Latin words that mean “I go” and
“between.” In other words, an intercessor is a “go-between.” It’s
someone who stands between someone else and impending danger.


In Exodus 32, after the people of Israel forsook the God of Israel
to worship a golden calf they had made while Moses was on the
mountain with the Lord, God planned to destroy the Israelites. But
Moses interceded for them. He stood between them and the wrath
of God. He was a go-between, an intercessor.

Intercession is simply a big word for talking to God on behalf of other
people’s needs. These needs may be physical, financial, emotional,
relational, or, especially, spiritual in nature. This type of prayer leans
heavily into praying for believers to grow deeply in their faith, love,
and spiritual maturity. Paul provides us with a vivid example of this
in Philippians 1:9-11:
And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in
knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern
what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ,
filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus.
Intercessory prayer also challenges believers to pray for each other
to boldly share the Good News. There’s a passage in the book of
Ephesians that describes this perfectly (and is one of my favorites):
Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so
that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the Gospel, for which
I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as
I should. Ephesians 6:19-20
Isn’t it refreshing to know that the great apostle Paul needed others
to pray for him to be bold when sharing the Gospel? Paul depended
on the intercessory prayers of other believers to infuse him with
divine fearlessness to Gospelize the Gentiles!
In the same way, we’re called to pray for the teenagers we lead to
grow deep in their faith, as they bravely share Jesus’s message of
grace. This kind of intercessory prayer will accelerate your teenagers

toward living and giving the Gospel throughout their spheres of

influence.
Another crucial aspect of intercessory prayer is that it focuses on
reaching the lost. As someone once said: “We must talk to God about
others before we talk to others about God.”
Paul’s heart was so broken for the lost Israelites that he wrote in
Romans 9:2-3:
I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could
wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of
my people, those of my own race.
So, in light of this broken heart for the unreached people of Israel,
what did he do? He tells us in Romans 10:1:
Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the
Israelites is that they may be saved.
Paul interceded for the lost Jews, who were so heavy upon his heart.
He stood between them and the danger.
Are you interceding for the lost teenagers in your youth group and
community? Are you equipping your teenagers to do the same for
their friends?
In our research, the teenagers who reached the most friends for
Christ prayed the most for their friends to come to Christ. There’s
an unbreakable link between intercessory prayer and effective
evangelism.

This is exactly what the early church did. This is exactly why they
were able to advance the Gospel from Jerusalem to the ends of the
earth.


It takes only a cursory reading of the book of Acts to see that prayer
was the engine of every move the early believers made. Their “pray
first” philosophy drove their strategy, problem solving, group meet-
ings, and disciple multiplication efforts.
They prayed first:
• when they were waiting for the promised Holy Spirit: “They all
joined together constantly in prayer…” Acts 1:14
• when they were making key leadership decisions: “Then they
prayed, ‘Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which of
these two you have chosen…’” Acts 1:24
• when they kicked off the first official church services: “They
devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to
the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Acts 2:42
• when they were threatened and told to stop evangelizing: “On
their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and
reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them.
When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer
to God.” Acts 4:23-24
• when they faced hardships, such as Peter being thrown in
prison: “…but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.”
Acts 12:5
• when they sent out their first official missionaries: “So after
they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them
and sent them off.” Acts 13:3
And on, and on, and on it goes. A “pray first” philosophy permeated
the whole of the early church. From the first page to the last, the
book of Acts drips with stories of intercession. So should the story
of your youth ministry.


In writing to his protégé Timothy, Paul reiterates the number-one

priority in programming the church services Timothy was
overseeing:
I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession, and
thanksgiving be made for all people—for kings and all those in
authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness
and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants
all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.
1 Timothy 2:1-4
Paul is reminding Timothy that the first order of business is not
business, not music, not even the sermon. Sadly, the average church
service today spends more time making announcements than
engaging in intercessory prayer. But priority number one should be
prayer—all kinds of prayers, for all kinds of people. What’s true of
the church service is true of your youth group meeting.

What if praying first was the pattern in your youth group meet-
ings and small group gatherings? What if “first of all” prayers were
poured out for the souls of the lost? I’m convinced from both biblical
evidence and personal experience that your youth ministry would
explode with new-conversion growth.
God has a heart for the teenagers in your community—a bigger
heart than you have! He “desires all people to be saved and to come to
a knowledge of the truth.” So when you engage in prayer for people
who don’t know Him, you tap into the mighty river of compassion,
mercy, and love that flows through His divine veins, and a trans-
fusion takes place in your heart and in the hearts of your teenag-
ers. Soon, the very heart of your youth ministry will be beating in
rhythm with His for the lost.


It was Jesus Himself who created a “pray first” template for transfor-
mation in Mark 1:35-39:
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the
house, and went off to a solitary place, where He prayed. Simon and
his companions went to look for Him, and when they found Him,
they exclaimed: ‘Everyone is looking for you!’ Jesus replied, ‘Let us go
somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also.
That is why I have come.’


Jesus prayed first. He got away to pray. He would even miss minis-
try opportunities to pray. Jesus needed those times of communion
with the Father, during which He received strength, wisdom, and
marching orders from on high. As my friend Dr. Dann Spader often
says: Jesus didn’t pull His “God card” out in order to carry out His
earthly ministry.¹ He worked out of prayer and in full dependence
on the Spirit, who dwelled in Him. Although He was fully God and
fully human, He chose to live as a human who was full of the Spirit
of God.
In a similar way, you can, like Jesus, live your life empowered by the
Spirit for the mission He’s given you—and so can your teenagers!
But in order for this to happen, prayer must characterize your life
and ministry.
Does this brand of intercession pulse through your youth group,
your leadership team meetings, and your own personal prayer life?
If not, what will it take to get there?

A few years back, when I was speaking at a youth leader training
session in Chicago, I spent some time talking about the lack of pri-
ority many leaders put on intercessory prayer. A hand went up in
the audience, and a particular youth leader shared that he, too, had
been convicted by the Holy Spirit that prayer should be a bigger part
of his youth ministry focus. So he decided to do something about
it. He actually made prayer a significant part of his weekly youth
ministry meetings.
He dedicated the last 10 minutes of his Wednesday night meetings
to intercessory prayer. Getting his students in a big circle each week,
they began to pray for the Holy Spirit to fill them and fuel them for
evangelism during the coming week. They prayed that God would
prepare the hearts of their classmates for the Gospel, and that He
would open up opportunities to share Jesus with them.

This youth leader admitted that at first this mandatory prayer time
was awkward. There would be long periods of silence from time to
time. But he kept doing it, week after week, and finally, the teenagers
began to catch on.
He went on to tell the room full of youth leaders that this prayer
time was now the part of the weekly youth group time that his
teenagers looked forward to the most. Not the games, not the Bible
lesson, but prayer.
It was this consistent intercessory prayer focus that enlarged the
hearts of his teenagers toward evangelism, opened up opportunities
for Gospel conversations, and prepared the hearts of their peers to
hear the Good News. May a pray-first philosophy do the same for
your ministry—and ignite the hearts of your students to spread the
Gospel far and wide.


Reach
Your Circle

Even in this age of high-tech productions, I’m convinced that

relying on traditional outreach events isn’t the most effective way
to advance the Gospel to this generation. Instead, living, breathing,
Christian teenagers going about their daily lives are themselves the
best outreach strategy possible.
Check out the apostle Paul’s perspective on this:
You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and
read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the
result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the
living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
2 Corinthians 3:2-3

Your teens are a letter from Christ, known and read by everyone.
And when you inspire and equip them to share the Gospel with
their friends, they become a walking, talking, loving, relational, per-
sonalized “outreach meeting” everywhere they go!
Done well, nothing can be more organic, authentic, and effective
than friend-to-friend sharing. If you look closely throughout the
book of Acts, you’ll discover a riptide of Gospel conversations hap-
pening friend to friend and family member to family member, all
across the ancient world. This person-to-person Gospel Advancing
movement doesn’t always grab our attention like the tongues-on-
fire disciples gathering a curious crowd in Acts 2, or like Paul’s
preaching on Mars Hill. But in the long run, I believe it did more to
spread the Word to the world than all 12 apostles did—even with
Paul thrown in for good measure!
Paul, dynamic preacher that he was, understood the power of rela-
tional evangelism. Consider his words in Acts 16:31, where he tells
the post-earthquake-terrified Philippian jailer: “Believe in the Lord
Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” Paul knew
that once the family patriarch came to Jesus, the rest of his family
members, servants, and friends would fall like Holy Spirit–tipped
dominoes.
Or consider Acts 18:8:
Crispus, the synagogue leader, and his entire household believed in the
Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul believed and were
baptized.
In the Greek, the word “household”—oikos—is much broader than
just your immediate family members. Christian apologist Michael
Green, in his book Evangelism in the Early Church, explains the stra-
tegic implications of this:
The family, understood in this broad way as consisting of blood
relations, slaves, clients, and friends, was one of the bastions of

Graeco-Roman society. Christian missionaries made a deliberate

point of gaining whatever households they could as lighthouses, so
to speak, from which the Gospel could illuminate the surrounding
darkness.¹

This is exactly how my family—and many of our friends, coworkers,
neighbors, and more—came to Jesus. My uncle Jack was the first
one to trust in Jesus. Then he told his coworker and fellow body-
builder Thumper about Jesus. As soon as Thumper trusted in Jesus,
he invited Jack to tell his family members about the Good News.
Within a few weeks, they’d all put their faith in Jesus and began
telling others.
Eventually, my uncles Bob, Dave, and Richard—and their circles—
came to faith in Christ. I witnessed all of this firsthand. So I carried
the tradition into my neighborhood with my friends. Because my
youth leaders had equipped me to share my faith, I knew how to
explain the Gospel and lead others to trust Christ. So that’s what
I did.
As a result, I reached my own circle of neighborhood friends.
When I was a pastor, this is how our church grew. Church members
young and old identified which people in their circles they wanted
to reach with the Gospel. Then they prayed for them, built relational
bridges by caring for them, and shared the Gospel with them. They
knew how to share the Gospel because I gave it clearly at the end of
every sermon and invited people to respond.
This church numbers in the thousands today, and the majority of the
people attending there came because everyday Christians reached
everyday people with the Gospel. They prayed for them, they cared
for them, and they shared the Gospel with them.

Who’s in your teenagers’ circle?

Each of your students has their own version of an oikos, and it’s
much larger than anyone had in the early church. Their oikos is
comprised of friends—both online and face-to-face—as well as
classmates, teammates, coworkers, family members, and more.
Whereas the average person in the New Testament probably had an
oikos of 8–15 people,² the average teenager has a circle of influence
that numbers in the hundreds.
If your teenagers can be equipped to engage their family members at
home, their peers at school, and their friends online, they can take
the Gospel farther—and faster—than anybody in the book of Acts
could have ever dreamed.
The typical way for teenagers to reach their friends has been to invite
them to an outreach meeting, weekend retreat, or camp where the
speaker, pastor, or youth leader will share the Gospel.
Some call this the “come and see” approach. In John 1:40-42, this is
how Andrew reached his brother Simon. He invited him to come
and see Jesus.
The “come and see” approach is good. Millions of teenagers and
adults have put their faith in Christ because someone invited them
to a place where the Gospel would be shared.

But to reach the current and coming generation of teenagers, “come

and see” must be combined with “go and rescue.” Teenagers must
be equipped to reach their own circle of friends. Part of that may be
encouraging them to invite their unreached friends to an outreach
meeting. But the bulk of it must be Christian teenagers being mobi-
lized to reach their friends in the hallways of their schools, on the

soccer field, at their jobs, and on their social media platforms. Why?
Because for every one teenager who will come and see, there are nine
who won’t. Who will reach them, if not our Christian teenagers?
To do this effectively, teenagers need the answers to three questions:
Why? What? How?
And the answers to these questions fall into three key categories:
• Gospel urgency (the why)
• Gospel fluency (the what)
• Gospel strategy (the how)

Asking a teenager to share their faith is asking them to take a giant
risk—relationally, emotionally, even spiritually.
If we expect them to take that risk, we must inspire them with
Gospel urgency and help them know why they should risk their
social standing to share Jesus with their friends, classmates, team-
mates, and coworkers.
You can inspire your teens with the following three voices that are
continually calling them (and us) to share the Gospel. These three
voices will give your teenagers a Gospel-sharing approach that is
balanced, biblical, and bold.

The last and lasting mandate of Jesus to “make disciples” is the call
from above. Jesus Himself calls all believers to share the Gospel,
help those who respond to grow in their faith, and then go make
more disciples.
This is not optional. It’s a command from our King.

The first voice calling us to share the Gospel is that of Jesus. And
that voice alone should be more than enough to inspire our teenag-
ers to share the Good News.

When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because
they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Matthew 9:36
The Greek word for “compassion” means “to suffer with.” As Jesus
scanned the crowds He was ministering to, His heart broke for
them. He felt their pain. He internalized their hurts.
Why? Because “they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a
shepherd.” Jesus’s hearers knew that sheep without a shepherd would
be harassed by predators and helpless against the elements. Soon,
they’d be torn to shreds by the wolves or die from the lack of grass
to eat and water to drink.
Jesus knew that, spiritually, the crowds were just like those sheep.
In the same way, when we help our teenagers see the true spiritual
state of their friends and sympathize with the pain their peers are
going through apart from Jesus, it enables them to hear the whisper
from within.

Jude gave us a very simple command in the one-chapter book he
wrote. In verse 23, he says: “…snatch others from the fire and save
them” (NIV, 1984). The imagery here is that of lost souls teetering
on the edge of Hell, and our job is to share the message that can
rescue them from death.
It’s not popular these days to talk about Hell, but Jesus Himself
talked about Hell a lot, using riveting and dramatic language (check
out Luke 16:19-31). John’s descriptions of Hell are also shockingly

scary (Revelation 14:10-11 and Revelation 20:11-15). Hell is the

place where sinners suffer the wrath of God forever—literal fire
and brimstone and hopelessness—and if Jesus didn’t shy away from
talking about it, we shouldn’t either. Teens need to know they can
help rescue their friends from the Hell they’re headed to and going
through apart from Jesus.
Regardless of which voice—the scream from beneath, the whisper
from within, or the call from above (or a combination)—motivates
your teenagers, they need some level of Gospel urgency. They must
know their “why” when it comes to evangelism.

Gospel fluency answers the question “What should I share?”
This is a crucial aspect of evangelism training. To be effective, teens
must have a basic level of Gospel fluency.
Too often, we skip this step. But we should keep the first things first.
This is exactly what the apostle Paul was referring to in 1 Corinthians
15:3-4:
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance:
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He
was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the
Scriptures.
Notice the wording here. Paul “received” it. In other words, this
pre-Pauline creed—which was a simple way to give early Christians
Gospel fluency—was passed on to the apostle Paul. He memorized
it and then trained the Corinthian believers to memorize it word for
word as well (“I passed on to you…”).
Why did he memorize it? Why did he train it? Because this message
was “of first importance.” So important that he made sure the
Corinthians mastered it, just as he had.

This message could be repeated as both creed and story. It was a

creed that the Corinthians believed and a story they could share
with their unbelieving friends.
Over the course of three decades at Dare 2 Share, we’ve crafted and
honed a creed for teens to believe and a story for them to share: the
Gospel story.
To make the key points of the Gospel easier for teens to memo-
rize, we’ve put them into the form of an acrostic. Millions of young
people and adults alike have mastered this acrostic. It gives them
basic Gospel fluency, so they know the message of Jesus and can
use it with almost any evangelism method. This acrostic has been
translated into dozens of languages, and in English it goes like this:
od created us to be with Him.
ur sins separate us from God.
ins cannot be removed by good deeds.
aying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again.
veryone who trusts in Him alone has eternal life.
ife with Jesus starts now and lasts forever.

This simple message defines the core message of the Christian faith.
As I tell teenagers, it’s about a relationship with God, not religious
acts. When teenagers understand this simple truth and can articu-
late it to their friends in love, amazing things can happen.
The goal, however, is not to just memorize the words and then quote
them at somebody. Think of each of the six sentences as talking
points. They give your teenagers (and you) a simple outline of
points to communicate in a conversation.
Another way to look at the six sentences of the acrostic are as six
chords. When you first learn to play the guitar, you learn one chord
and then another and then another. As you master these chords,


at some point you’ll be able to put them together with other notes
and play a song. In the same way, the concepts in the acrostic can
be woven into a conversation to tell the beautiful and compelling
Gospel story.

Throughout the New Testament, we see an effective, three-part
process for spreading the Gospel. At Dare 2 Share, we call it the
Cause Circle, and we summarize it this way: Prayer – Care – Share.

When your teens pray for their unreached
peers, their hearts become more and
more in tune with God’s heart. They
start to notice the opportunities that God
opens to engage their friends in spiritual
conversations. The Lord breaks down
strongholds—those in the hearts of your
teenagers that keep them from sharing the Good News and those in
the hearts of their friends that keep them from putting their faith in
Jesus. But it all starts with prayer.
Paul writes in Romans: “Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and
prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved” (Romans
10:1). Although the apostle Paul was technically “the apostle to the
Gentiles” (Romans 11:13), he had a deep burden on his heart for the
people of Israel, and he prayed passionately for them to be saved.
This great apostle knew that only God could soften their hardened
hearts and transform them from the inside out.
As a youth leader, one of your top priorities should be to pray that
God would stir in your students’ hearts a longing for Jesus to trans-
form their peers and loved ones. This passionate desire for the lost to
be saved will trigger relentless prayers on behalf of their unreached
friends and family.


The second element of this sharing strat-
egy is care, which means showing people
the love of Jesus through your actions and
words. It involves putting them first and
being genuinely concerned about their
well-being.
The book of Acts is full of examples of early believers caring for
those around them. Here are just a few examples of their love lived
out in sacrificial ways:
• Some sold their property to support those in need (Acts
4:34-35).
• Some willingly crossed taboo racial boundaries to share the
Good News (Acts 11:19-21).
• Some extended forgiveness to those who were about to kill
them (Acts 7:59-60).
The entire book of Acts is a dynamic example of what it looks like to
care for others deeply from the heart. Believers met others’ physical
needs. They donated money. They sacrificed their time and per-
sonal comfort. As a result, people were healed physically, emotion-
ally, relationally, and spiritually.
Equipping your teenagers to listen can be an especially powerful
way to help them care for those around them. There’s something
magnetic (and unusual!) about a teenager who knows how to ask
good questions and listen deeply to others.

Jesus modeled this for us. Throughout the Gospels, He asked

hundreds of questions. These questions drew people into deeper


discussions, sometimes sparking arguments and sometimes trans-

forming hearts.
When you teach your self-focused teenagers to ask a question and truly
listen to their peers, you’re showing them how to truly care for others.

really

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How, then, can they call on the one they have
not believed in? And how can they believe
in the one of whom they have not heard?
And how can they hear without someone
preaching to them? Romans 10:14
The Gospel must be shared and declared.
As leaders, it’s our job to help teenagers both live out the Gospel
with love and share the Gospel with words. These approaches
balance and complement each other, like two wings of an airplane.
At Dare 2 Share, we equip teens to engage in Gospel conversations
using three simple concepts: ask, admire, and admit:
• We teach them to ask good questions, just as Jesus did, and to
be genuinely interested in the answers. We encourage them to
ask about someone’s spiritual beliefs and not argue once the
person shares.
• We teach them to instead admire what they can about what
the other person believes. This doesn’t mean they agree with
everything, but rather they search for common ground (just as
Paul did with the Greek philosophers in Acts 17). This keeps
the other person from feeling defensive and allows teens to
have a conversation based on common ground.
• We teach them to then admit that they need Jesus too. This
is when Christian teens can share their story of how Jesus
rescued them from sin.
We’ve found that this simple concept of asking,
admiring, and admitting leads to Gospel conver-
sations that are relational, not rehearsed. For more
information on how to train your teens to ask,
admire, and admit, scan here:


Getting your teenagers and adults to engage their circles—and
beyond—requires Spirit-empowered action. You can’t just talk
about it. You must do it. As the great preacher Charles Spurgeon
told the young men he was training more than 130 years ago:
Brethren, do something, do something, do something! While societies
and unions make constitutions, let us win souls. I pray you be men of
action, all of you. … Our one aim is to win souls; and this we are not
to talk about, but do in the power of God! 3
What are you going to do in the power of God?

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Follow
the Leader

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“How I minister to you is how I want you to minister to these teenagers.”

This was the phrase that kept reverberating in our minds. There
were about six of us youth ministry interns at a medium-sized
Baptist church in Arvada, Colorado, and we were all excited about
the new youth pastor. We huddled around his still-clean desk as he
explained his youth ministry philosophy to us. When he was done,
we were eager to put it into action.
He met with us weekly, so we met with our teenagers weekly.


He consistently prayed with us and for us, so we consistently prayed

with and for our students.
He spent time outside the church with us, so we spent time outside
the church with them.
Personal evangelism and relational discipleship were priorities to
him, so personal evangelism and relational discipleship were prior-
ities to us.
He led, and we followed. Then we led, and our students followed.
As a 21-year-old youth ministry intern, I was experiencing the
reality of Luke 6:40: “… everyone who is fully trained will be like their
teacher.”
By the time this youth pastor moved on to his next ministry posi-
tion, we had become like him in many ways. His example forever
marked the way I view and do ministry, reinforcing Paul’s words in
1 Corinthians 11:1: “Follow my example, as I follow the example of
Christ.”
The disciples spent three and a half years following Jesus during His
earthly ministry. Then, after the Holy Spirit indwelled and empow-
ered them at Pentecost, it was time for them to follow their leader
down a new road—leading the church to glorify God and make and
multiply disciples.
And guess what their leadership looked like? It looked like Jesus!
They were following the one, true leader, Jesus Christ. But Jesus was
following the leader too. He explained it this way in John 5:19:
‘Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do
only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does
the Son also does.’
Jesus followed the Father. The disciples followed Jesus. The Christian
life is like one big follow-the-leader game—you know, where all the


kids line up behind a child who’s been designated as the leader, and
they mimic whatever the leader does.
Once Jesus ascended and sent His Holy Spirit to dwell within His
disciples, they finally figured out how to really follow the leader.
Because the Holy Spirit now lived within them, He was the one
leading them to follow the Lord Jesus Christ.

One of the measures of how successfully the disciples had mastered
following their Master was the degree of outrage their efforts elic-
ited from the Jewish ruling council known as the Sanhedrin. These
Jewish leaders were the same men who had conspired to have Jesus
murdered. And now they saw the same dangerous DNA in His dis-
ciples—specifically Peter and John.
Like an angry principal, the Sanhedrin called Peter and John into
the office, so to speak, after they caught wind of them preaching in
the temple about Jesus’s death, resurrection, and offer of salvation to
all who believe. When they confronted the two about their unrelent-
ing, Jesus-focused preaching, Peter and John answered: “Salvation is
found in no one else, for there is no other name under Heaven given to
mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
Instead of cowering before a committee that could have them killed,
these two men stood unflinchingly on the mission and message of
Jesus. What was the Sanhedrin’s response? Acts 4:13 says:
When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they
were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took
note that these men had been with Jesus.
I especially love that last phrase: “they took note that these men had
been with Jesus.”
And what was Jesus like? He courageously shared a gritty Gospel
message that reached into the lives of the broken people He encountered.


That’s what the Sanhedrin saw in Peter and John.

And that’s what your teenagers should see in you and anyone else
you’ve chosen to lead the way in your youth ministry.
You, your staff, and your adult volunteers are the default thermostat
for how much disciple-multiplying heat your entire youth ministry
generates. If you and your leaders are cranked to high, then your
students will tend to be the same. If you’re lukewarm on evangelism,
prayer, and disciple multiplication, then your teenagers will likely
be lukewarm as well.
The point is: If you desire a Gospel Advancing ministry, choose
adult leaders who display the characteristics you’ll want to see in
your students. Look for those who:
• regularly seek God through time in the Word and prayer.
• can articulate the Gospel.
• share the Gospel personally (or are willing to start).
• love students and live authentic, godly lives.
That doesn’t mean your leaders need to be perfect—one look at
Jesus’s disciples can tell you that. Peter, for example, struggled with
pride. Remember how he bragged to Jesus: “Even if all fall away on
account of you, I never will” (Matthew 26:33)? We all know how that
ended! And in Mark 3:17, Jesus gave John and his brother James
the nickname “Sons of Thunder” after they asked God to destroy
a Samaritan village with fire from Heaven (Luke 9:54). That’s the
equivalent of a teenager asking God to strike an unbeliever with
lightning for not accepting the Gospel.
Flaws shouldn’t disqualify a leader if they show they’re teachable
and growing in each of these areas. In fact, leaders who’ve struggled
to overcome sins and trials often excel in depending on God versus
self-reliance.


Another vital characteristic for each of your leaders is authenticity.

My youth ministry mentor, who was the head of the youth min-
istry department at Colorado Christian University, used to tell us
that teenagers are secretly asking three questions about their adult
leaders:
1. Do you love Jesus?
2. Do you love me?
3. Are you for real?
Look for leaders who can answer “yes” to all three of those ques-
tions. Look for leaders whose lives display humility, authenticity,
and dependence on God as they seek to live out Gospel Advancing
values in their personal lives.
Peter and John—as they stood before the Sanhedrin in Acts 4:13—
had learned what it meant to walk in a strangely divine mixture of
humility and boldness. We should also strive to embody these char-
acteristics and recruit other adult leaders who do the same.

After years of interviewing Gospel Advancing youth leaders across
the United States and around the world, I’m convinced that the key
to getting a youth group fully Gospelized is to start with not only the
adult volunteers, but also student leaders.
As I often say: “Show me the strength of your student leaders, and
I’ll show you the strength of your student ministry.”
When you choose a student leader, you’re saying to the rest of the
youth group: “This is what it looks like to be a surrendered follower
of Jesus.

You’ll want to look for similar characteristics in your student leaders

that you’re seeking in your adult leaders. Look for students who:
• regularly seek God through time in the Word and prayer.
• can articulate the Gospel.
• share the Gospel personally (or are willing to start).
• love others and live authentic, godly lives.
Sound familiar? That’s because of the follow-the-leader concept
I mentioned before: You want students who are imitating adult
leaders who are imitating you—as you imitate Christ.
Again, your student leaders don’t need to be perfect, but they should
be passionately pursuing Jesus and seeking to share the Gospel.
When teens set the pace for other teens spiritually and evangelis-
tically, the group starts to see serving Jesus as something doable.
Your youth ministry becomes poised to transform from a series of
meetings into a movement that is powerfully changing teens’ lives.
So how do you identify, recruit, and train student leaders?

Jesus shows us how. The Bible gives us cues and clues as to how Jesus
identified, recruited, and trained His “student leadership team.” But
to fully understand how He chose His disciples, it’s good to know a
bit about the rabbi/disciple relationship at that time.
In the culture of Jesus’s day, most boys wanted to follow a rabbi
someday. It was the best thing that could happen to a young Jewish
man. Between the ages of five and ten or so, they would go to bet
sefer, a school associated with the local synagogue, where they
would master the basics of the Torah. And when I say master, I
mean memorize. They would also begin to learn the family trade.
The best of the best of these students would move on to bet midrash.
At this school, also taught by a rabbi, they would master the rest of


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the Old Testament scriptures and begin to learn various interpre-

tations of these passages and receive instruction on how to apply
them to their own lives. During this time, they would experience
their first Passover in Jerusalem—just as Jesus did in Luke 2:41-42.
By the age of 14 or so, the best of the best of these students would
move on. They would intensely study for “the test” and would pursue
the process of interviewing with a famous rabbi, in hopes that they
would be selected to travel about the countryside with him. After
the interview, they would be either invited to “Come, follow me” or
sent back home to work in the family business.1
Jesus’s disciples were, most likely, all a part of bet sefer. A few may
have made it on to bet midrash. But none were extraordinary
enough to have been invited to follow an actual rabbi. Like most
Jewish boys, they didn’t measure up to the quality level demanded
by the religious system of the day. Instead, they’d turned full time to
occupations that reflected their working-class roots.
So when Jesus invited Peter, Andrew, James, and John in Matthew
4:18-22 to come and follow Him, it was a big, big deal. These working
men had not been selected as disciples by a respected Jewish rabbi
of the time. But now Jesus, the very Messiah Himself, the King of
kings, Lord of lords, Rabbi of rabbis, had said, “Come, follow me.”
Sometimes we make the same mistake the respected rabbis of Jesus’s
day did when it comes to finding our student leaders. We tend to
look to the ones who can quote the verses—those who, at least on
the surface, seem to have it all together. And, sometimes, these
teenagers are the best ones to lead. But sometimes it’s the grittier,
scuffed, and scarred teenagers who have more potential to be true
leaders.
Look for humble and hungry students—ones who are not only
willing to set up chairs in the youth room but who will also fill
them with the peers they’re seeking to reach with the Good News.


High-will/raw-skill teenagers—those who are motivated but often

unequipped—can often be transformed, with the right training,
into high-will/high-skill leaders.
Sadly, sometimes your teenagers who know the Bible best follow
it the least. I’m sure you’ve encountered students who can spout
Scripture but are lacking the heart and passion that comes from a
personal, intimate, vibrant, and growing relationship with Jesus. If
teenagers aren’t actively living and sharing their faith, they all too
easily become—as we’ve said before—like sponges full of milk. If
they don’t wring out the milk of the Word to others through love,
service, and evangelism, they sour and spoil.

Courageous leadership implies a mission and a destination. You and
your leadership team are leading others toward the ultimate mission
Jesus Himself gave us in Matthew 28:19: “Therefore, go and make
disciples of all nations….”
You need both student and adult leaders who are willing to get in
the trenches and lead the way—one prayer at a time, one Gospel
conversation at a time, one disciple at a time. Over time, this can
turn the tide and get your group to what Malcolm Gladwell dubbed
“the tipping point…that magic moment when an idea, trend, or
social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.”²
This is when Gospel Advancing momentum begins to drive your
youth ministry efforts.
Academic research backs up this principle, which states that the few
can lead the way and greatly impact the many:
Scientists at (RPI) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that
when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief,
their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society.³
Their study called these 10%ers “True Believers.”


The key to any successful sociological movement is to have 10% of

the population 100% committed to it. If you take a look at history,
both distant and recent, you’ll see that it wasn’t the 90% who changed
the world around them. Instead, it was the fully committed 10%—
whether a handful of first-century Jewish believers, marginalized
German radicals, Middle Eastern Muslim extremists, or American
LGBTQ+ activists, to name just a few examples—who turned the
culture on its head.
This 10% statistic has powerful implications for the way we do
ministry. As leaders, we’re typically taught to reach the masses. But
this is counter to the way Jesus approached His own ministry. Yes,
He ministered to the masses. But He primarily “radicalized” a small
group of more fully committed followers, and after He ascended
into Heaven, they radicalized the rest. Isn’t it interesting that of
the 120 in the upper room, there were 12 of these core followers?
That’s 10%!

The first step toward identifying your 10%ers is to fervently pray,
asking God to bring forward both the adult and student leaders He
has chosen to lead.
For adult leaders, this is by far a more effective method than the all-
call Sunday morning announcement that the youth ministry needs
more leaders. Instead, pray that God will give you clarity on what to
look for and whom to choose. He is more than able to raise up the
best leaders.
Then keep an eye out for adults in your church who are living a
Gospel Advancing lifestyle. When God brings them to your atten-
tion, give these potential leaders a vision of where you’re headed,
explain why you think they’re the best choice to lead teenagers, and
share stories of changed lives in your youth ministry.


To prepare and identify possible student leaders, help your teenag-

ers understand why it’s so important to live and share their faith.
You can do this the same way Jesus did: by sharing raw truth with
your students and then getting them out beyond the walls of the
church with you to do ministry.
Jesus never shied away from the big subjects—the raw truth of God’s
dramatic love for us (remember the prodigal son?), Heaven, forgive-
ness, transformation, the purpose of life, and the reality of Hell.
It’s been said that the key to great preaching is great subjects. I
encourage you to unpack these same kinds of great subjects—sal-
vation, Heaven, Hell, the cross, Judgment Day, and the return of
Christ—for your teenagers. God can use these foundational spir-
itual realities to inspire your students to go all-in and serve Him.
In addition, give your students ample opportunities to pray for the
lost, care for those in your community, and share the Gospel with
others. As you do, watch for those who are embracing the oppor-
tunities and are hungry to know and serve Christ better. These are
likely your 10%.
When people find out that I train teens in evangelism for a living,
they inevitably ask: “Isn’t it hard to train teenagers to share their
faith?” And my answer is always the same: “No, after you motivate
teenagers to share the Gospel, training them is easy!”
We say it all the time at Dare 2 Share: “The way to the brain is
through the rib cage.” In other words, if you capture teenagers’
hearts, then their brains will follow.

To find your future 10%ers, pray, pray, pray—and then inspire,

inspire, and inspire some more! But before you do, remember that
the 10% starts with you.


A young pastor once asked the great revivalist Gipsy Smith how he
could start a revival at his own church. The evangelist told him to
simply go home, draw a circle on the floor with a piece of chalk, and
kneel within that circle. Smith then instructed the young man to
pray for revival for everyone on the inside of that circle, and once
he did that, he would start to see revival on the outside of the circle.
So get a piece of chalk, draw that circle, and kneel within it. May
you be the first to join the 10%. Then call your teenagers to do the
same. It may be the most unlikely of teenagers who join you in this
quest—the ones a rabbi would have overlooked 2,000 years ago, but
who have the potential, through Christ, to change the world!


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Go Viral:
How to Multiply

Ask 20 pastors today to define discipleship, and you could easily get
20 different answers. And regardless of the definition they give, in
practice it’s often reduced to believers sitting around talking about
God with other believers—not a bad thing, but if it stops there, it
misses the point of discipleship.
To get closer to what Jesus meant when He told His disciples to “go
and make disciples” (Matthew 28:19), I like to focus on the verb form
of the word: discipling. Discipling suggests an active, life-on-life rela-
tionship that results in transformation and spiritual reproduction.
Without that last piece—without training new disciples in how to
make new disciples who themselves make new disciples—believers
stagnate and Gospel Advancing can devolve into Gospel retreat.

But when you, as a youth leader, train your teenagers to not only
reach their circle of influence—their oikos—with the Gospel, but
to also train those who respond to go deep in their knowledge of
Jesus and wide in spreading the Gospel to those around them, it sets
the stage for exponential growth. It’s a viral phenomenon we call
disciple multiplication.
This phenomenon plays out dramatically in the book of Acts, as an
evangelistic epidemic spreads across the first-century world. Here’s
just a glimpse of the Gospel’s viral velocity in Acts:
Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three
thousand were added to their number that day. Acts 2:41
And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being
saved. Acts 2:47b
But many who heard the message believed; so the number of
men who believed grew to about five thousand. Acts 4:4
Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the
Lord and were added to their number. Acts 5:14
The Word of the Lord spread through the whole region.
Acts 13:49
So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in
numbers. Acts 16:5
…the Word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.
Acts 19:20
We long for our youth groups to grow exponentially in all the right
ways—spiritually of course, but also with a ton of new believers.
Why? Because new disciples are evidence that you’re making a dif-
ference, not just in the lives of the teenagers inside your youth room
walls, but also in the lives of those outside of your Christian bubble.


There’s something dangerously exciting when these teenagers begin

to come to small group and youth group. New believers often don’t
have a “religiously correct” grid, so they can easily drop curse words
after worship (“This God stuff is %$&#@! awesome!”). They can be
in the parking lot after youth group, talking about sharing Christ
with their friends while smoking a joint, without thinking twice.
New believers often don’t know any better.
But it’s this same raw excitement and gritty authenticity that can
motivate them to reach their friends with the message of Jesus, long
before Christ has smoothed their rough edges.
Yes, it’s messy. So buy a mop, because it’s worth it. It’s worth every
late-night conversation, awkward text, and angry parent who doesn’t
want their teenagers around “those” kinds of kids.
But it’s “those” kinds of kids—and adults—who filled and fueled the
early church. It was fishermen who reeked of fresh fish, prostitutes
who reeked of cheap perfume, and lepers who reeked of rotted flesh
who flocked to Jesus in droves. These were the ones who knew they
needed a doctor, and the church became their hospital, their hostel,
and their hope.
When we read the book of Acts today, we often secretly ask our-
selves: Why not me? Why not here? Why not now? If you’re not
asking those questions of yourself, you should be. Because you have
the same mission as the disciples and the same Holy Spirit living
inside you, so there’s no reason you can’t have the same results!
The question is: Are you willing to put the same focus and effort
into making and multiplying disciples as they did? If so, you’re
setting the stage to see your youth group grow exponentially—in
ways you never imagined, both spiritually and numerically.
This is what we see happening progressively throughout the book
of Acts.

Paul was masterful at choosing strategic cities to spread the Gospel
to, cities such as Thessalonica, an important Greek trade hub. But
he was there for what appears to be less than a month. Acts 17 says
he spent three Sabbath days preaching in the Thessalonican syn-
agogue—until the Jewish leaders got upset and drove him out of
town.
His impact in those three weeks, however, was powerful. Paul talks
about it in 1 Thessalonians 2:7b-12:
Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we cared
for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted
to share with you not only the Gospel of God but our lives as
well. Surely you remember, brothers and sisters, our toil and
hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden
to anyone while we preached the Gospel of God to you. You are
witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous, and blameless
we were among you who believed. For you know that we
dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children,
encouraging, comforting, and urging you to live lives worthy of
God, who calls you into His Kingdom and glory.
Paul and his crew poured their lives into the new Thessalonian
believers, all while working secular jobs to fund their efforts. This
life-on-life investment into these new Christians speedily propelled
them forward in sharing their faith. Just look at how 1 Thessalonians
1:8 trumpets their spread of the Gospel:
The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia
and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere.
The Greek word for “rang out” is execheo, which means “to echo
out” or “reverberate.” In their culture, this word was used to
describe the sound of a trumpet blasting or thunder rolling. It’s a
big word that captures how effectively the Thessalonians spread the


Gospel message all across Macedonia and Achaia—a sizable chunk

of Greece.
What does all of this have to do with your teenagers and discipling?
When you bring a Gospel Advancing focus to your relational
investment in your students, God can produce dramatic Kingdom
impact. Even while working another part-time job—or a full-time
job, as Paul did—you can witness changed lives that change lives.
By the time Paul went on his third missionary journey, he was
well aware of the reverberating impact of the Gospel through the
disciple-multiplying Thessalonians. My guess is that he began to
think: “If this is what happened after a brief investment, what would
happen if I camped out for a while and got serious about training
believers to multiply?”
I believe—although I cannot definitively prove it from the
Scriptures—that Paul’s strategy evolved from primarily doing out-
reaches at the synagogue, as he did during his first two missionary
journeys, to primarily equipping believers to multiply disciples.
And I think it was the Thessalonians’ commitment to spread the
Good News and disciple their new believers to do the same that
convinced him to make the switch. Let’s take a look at how Paul’s
strategy changed in Ephesus.

By the time we get to Acts 19, we see Paul settling in at the School
of Tyrannus in Ephesus for two whole years. This is the longest the
biblical record indicates that he stayed anywhere on his missionary
journeys. So why did he stay so long in Ephesus? Acts 19:8-10 gives
us some clues:
Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three
months, arguing persuasively about the Kingdom of God. But
some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and


publicly maligned the Way. So Paul left them. He took the

disciples with him and had discussions daily in the lecture hall
of Tyrannus. This went on for two years, so that all the Jews
and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the Word of
the Lord.
Take a look at that last phrase, “…so that all the Jews and Greeks who
lived in the province of Asia heard the Word of the Lord.”
How is that even possible? I guarantee you all the Jews and Greeks
in the province of Asia didn’t crowd into the lecture hall to hear Paul
preach. In the same way, not every teenager in your community will
come to your outreach meeting. No, Paul had discovered a better
way, a powerful disciple multiplication strategy.
After three months of evangelistic meetings at the local synagogue,
Paul, as well as those who had put their faith in Jesus as a result
of his preaching, moved to the equivalent of a local community
college, the School of Tyrannus.
The educational establishment of the day probably used this school
in the early-morning hours and later in the afternoon but made it
available for others to use/rent during the hot part of the day.1 It was
most likely during this time Paul had his “discussions,” helping new
disciples grow in their relationship with Jesus and teaching them to
share the Gospel.
The movement that erupted from this School of Tyrannus spread
from Ephesus to the outer borders of the entire province. Within
these borders, the seven churches mentioned in the book of
Revelation were fanned into flame. And it was the students at the
School of Tyrannus who had, in the power of the Spirit, ignited the
first sparks.
Not only did the Good News saturate the entire region, but the
process itself transformed the Ephesian believers. Although
Revelation 2 was most likely penned a generation after Paul visited


Ephesus, the following passage gives us insight into what was hap-
pening among the Ephesian believers in those early years.
‘To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:
…I know your deeds, your hard work, and your perseverance.
I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have
tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have
found them false. You have persevered and have endured
hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had
at first.’ Revelation 2:1a, 2-4
At one point, the Ephesians’ love for God burned hot, and their
hard work for God erupted out of their deep affection for Jesus.
But somewhere along the line, that fire dwindled. In Revelation 2,
John is taking dictation from Jesus, warning them to fan that distant
ember back into a white-hot flame.
Could it be that the Ephesians were at their hottest when their
Gospel Advancing flames were at their brightest? Could it be that
the passionate, missional church they initially were had deteriorated
into a stagnant, institutionalized poser—a program-driven shell of
its former self?
It all boils down to this: When Jesus is your first love, you can’t
help but talk about Him. If you fall in love with evangelism, you’ll
eventually fizzle out. But if you fall in love with Jesus, you’ll always
evangelize! And when you evangelize, it stokes your love for and
knowledge of Jesus.

This same brand of Gospel transformation can happen in your

teenagers and throughout your community when your students fall


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passionately in love with Jesus and are equipped to tell everyone else
about Him. That’s when things go viral!

What if you, like Paul, switched your ministry strategy from pri-
marily a “synagogue” mentality (bring your friends to youth group so
I can share the Gospel with them) to a “School of Tyrannus” approach
(I’ll equip you to make disciples who make disciples)?
The strongest disciple multiplication strategy I’ve ever come across
is from Dr. Dann Spader of the ministry Sonlife. He bases his
method on the life and ministry of Jesus, and you can’t go wrong
with that! Spader identifies four phases of discipleship that we can
strive to guide people through:
1. Unbeliever
2. Believer
3. Worker
4. Disciple-maker2
To learn more about this biblically robust and culturally relevant
strategy, go to sonlife.com. It will help you launch a “School of
Tyrannus” in the context of your youth ministry and enable you to
go viral with the Gospel in ways you never imagined.

To effectively guide students through the four discipleship phases,
it’s helpful to track their development. One of the first times I saw
this done effectively was during a trip to Colombia with Compassion
International to visit our family’s sponsored child, Karla. It was one
of those experiences that mark you for a lifetime.


Thousands of churches in various countries around the world work

with Compassion to build what they call a “project.” These proj-
ects are a kind of base camp where they educate children, provide
medical help, and nurture their spiritual development. As the chil-
dren move into their teenage years, they learn skills that help them
in a trade. As we toured some of these projects, I was impressed
with their efforts and with the pastors and leaders who ran them.
But looming in the back of my mind was the fear that the spiritual
formation of these children was not a priority. In some of the proj-
ects, there were more than 200 children, which seemed overwhelm-
ing for a small staff to handle when it came to spiritual development.
So I decided to conduct my own little investigation.
I broke from the tour to talk to a project pastor who spoke fluent
English. I said: “Pastor, I’m impressed with what I see at your
project, but how do you track where all 200 of these children are at
spiritually?”
“Pick a notebook!” he answered.
“What?” I asked, not sure what he meant.
“Pick a notebook,” he repeated, this time pointing to a large book-
shelf behind me, full of black binders.
I picked one out and flipped through it. The notebook represented
one child currently active in that particular project, and it metic-
ulously recorded how that child was doing in various areas. It
had health records, school grades, and family information. It also
recorded when that child had indicated faith in Jesus as their Savior,
the date of their baptism, and how they were progressing in their
faith.
When I put it back in its place, the pastor said with a smile, “Pick
another notebook.” It provided the same set of information about a
different child.


The large bookshelf held 200 black binders representing 200 chil-
dren, all of them tracking their students’ growth on every level—
including spiritually. I couldn’t help but think: “What if youth
leaders were as meticulous in tracking the spiritual development of
the teenagers in their youth groups as this small staff is with these
200 children?”
There are multitudes of ways to accomplish this sort of tracking in a

youth group context. But here’s one approach I recommend. Create
a spreadsheet with the following five columns:
• List the names of all the teenagers attending your
youth group.
• Do your best to assess what dis-
cipleship phase you think that teenager is in
(or ask students to assess themselves; scan
here for an assessment you can use):
• Phase 1: Unbeliever
• Phase 2: Believer
• Phase 3: Worker
• Phase 4: Disciple-maker
• Identify the action step that needs to be taken to
nudge them toward the next phase.
• Identify the student/adult leader assigned to give
that teenager the nudge.
• Identify the date when the action step is completed.
Once that action step has been accomplished, insert a new row in
your spreadsheet for this student, and build out the next new action
step and time frame.

Here’s an example of what it could look like:

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An intentional ministry approach sets your students up to move
more rapidly from one discipleship phase to the next. I experienced
this with my own youth group, Christian Youth Ranch, when I was
a teenager. Our pastor, Yankee, personally advanced the Gospel, but
more than that, he discipled us teenagers and equipped us to share
our faith.
During Sunday night leadership meetings, we received training both
in becoming more like Christ and in sharing His message. During
these meetings, we would share stories about our evangelism efforts
and pray for each other’s faith-sharing. We were passionate and
purposeful about training new believers to share their faith, too,
and to make disciples who make disciples. Being part of the student
leadership team meant we were responsible for driving the process
of both evangelism and discipling.
On Thursday nights, we had our main youth group meeting, where
we could bring our peers to hear the Gospel. But the expectation
was that we’d bring Jesus up in spiritual conversations with our


friends before we invited them to the meeting, and that afterward

we’d follow up with them personally, with what I later nicknamed
“a reverse altar call.” Yankee never called teenagers forward to
receive Christ. Instead, he equipped us to have conversations with
our friends on the way out of the youth group meeting or while we
were driving back home with them. He coached us to ask simple
questions: “Did what my youth leader say during the meeting make
sense?” “Is there anything holding you back from putting your trust in
Jesus right now?”
This approach was so effective that I quickly lost track of the number
of teenagers I was able to lead to Jesus after a Youth Ranch meeting.
Then when we led someone to Jesus, we were also expected to dis-
ciple them.
In the words of the late youth ministry expert Mike Yaconelli, the
typical youth group “has fewer seniors than juniors, and fewer
juniors than sophomores.” I believe one of the reasons for this is
that we don’t give them a compelling reason to stay involved. The
older teenagers get, the busier they get, and they have to weigh their
priorities carefully. They have tests to prep for, band to practice for,
bosses to work for, and sports teams to play for. We have to give
them a reason to stay involved with youth group that outweighs
all these competing interests. When we build a Gospel Advancing,
disciple-multiplying ministry that regularly sees lives changed and
souls saved, we’re giving them that reason.

The Youth Ranch ministry movement, which originally sprang out
of southern Florida, fanned out across America, drawing thousands
into the Kingdom in the process.
It could have been the beginnings of a sweeping move of God
across the United States, but it came to a screeching halt when its
founder and leader, Ray Stanford, fell into sexual sin, and Florida

Bible College stopped producing the large numbers of Youth Ranch

leaders needed to spread the Gospel Advancing movement locally,
nationally, and globally.
It broke my heart.
I’m convinced the reason it came apart is because the movement was
often fueled out of planning instead of prayer. Intercessory prayer
was the caboose and not the engine, so this disciple multiplication
train eventually came off the tracks.
But if the movement reached thousands of teenagers in my city with
the Gospel, and tens of thousands of teenagers across the United
States, how many millions would have been reached if the Holy
Spirit and prayer—instead of just good strategy and execution—had
fueled it?
It’s time.
It’s time for an even stronger Gospel Advancing disciple multipli-
cation strategy to begin. What happened in the book of Acts can
happen again. What I experienced as a teenager at Youth Ranch can
be done even better in the power of the Spirit.
The question is: What part will you play?



¡ Conquering
Your “14er”

In Colorado, we call them “14ers”—mountain peaks that reach

14,000 feet (4,267 meters) or higher above sea level. And in
Colorado, there are 58 of them!
Conquering one of them is a challenge. Conquering all of them is a
major feat.
I’ll never forget climbing my first 14er. I was with my son, Jeremy,
who was 10 years old at the time. The mountain was Grays
Peak—one of the “easier” ones—and it extends 14,278 feet into the
Colorado sky.
We got a late start—a no-no when climbing a 14er (Colorado is
notorious for dangerous afternoon thunderstorms in the moun-
tains), so when we pulled up to the parking area close to the peak’s


base, it was already mostly full of cars. We were among the last
people to attempt the climb that day.
As we parked, I was a bit shaken by how big the mountain appeared.
I remember telling my son: “I don’t know if we can do this, Jeremy.
It’s way bigger than I thought.”
Talk about a confidence-builder.
But we decided to go for it anyway. And it was much harder than I
had anticipated. The hike to the base (about 3 miles/4.8 kilometers)
wasn’t too bad—but then the real trek began.
Step by step, we climbed the mountain. Bit by bit, our pace slowed.
Soon after beginning the ascent, both of us got splitting headaches.
This is normal when climbing mountains in Colorado. The oxygen
deprivation at high altitudes can affect the body and the brain in
weird ways, especially if you’re not used to it. It can make you slug-
gish and nauseated, or cause even more serious problems. Although
Jeremy and I were both born and raised in Colorado, we were still
at almost twice the elevation of where we live in the Denver area.
Halfway into the climb, our thighs and lungs were burning. Jeremy
told me he was feeling sick to his stomach.
But we pressed on, determined to get to the top.
Three-quarters of the way up, we decided to count out 50 steps
before we took a short rest. Eventually, that turned into 40 steps and
rest, and finally, to 25 steps and rest.
At this point, Jeremy wanted to turn back. But we had come too far
to quit.
By now, people who had already summited were walking past us in
droves down the mountain, while we slogged up. All the while, I was
keeping an eye on the skies for storms.


Finally, the summit was within reach. Heads pounding and bodies
aching, we scrambled toward the peak, using our hands as well as
our feet to make our way up the last several yards.
I’ll never forget the satisfying feeling of conquering this 14er. I
soaked it in as I took a 360-degree video of the beautiful scenery
below us. Then we started hustling back down the mountain.
By the time we made it to our vehicle, seven-plus hours later,
we were exhilarated and exhausted. Jeremy’s words to me at that
moment are seared in my memory. “Dad,” he said, “thanks for not
letting me give up.”

A bold vision is your personal ministry 14er—the mountain you
want to climb when it comes to advancing the Gospel in and through
your teenagers. The best bold visions are specific, measurable goals
so audacious that if God doesn’t show up in a big way, you’ll never
accomplish it!
And why should we strive for a bold vision? Because Jesus Himself
called us to. Let’s revisit His charge to His followers after His
resurrection:
Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus
had told them to go. When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but
some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in
Heaven and on Earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey
everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always,
to the very end of the age.’ Matthew 28:16-20
After His resurrection, Jesus told His disciples to meet Him back in
Galilee on “the mountain.” Nobody knows exactly which mountain


He was referring to, but if I were a betting man, I’d put my money
on Mt. Arbel.
When Jesus said those familiar words—“teaching them to obey
everything I have commanded you”—the view from Mt. Arbel would
have served as a kind of whiteboard, helping them remember the
lessons Jesus had taught them. They would recall the lesson of faith
when He calmed the water and the lesson of reaching the unreach-
able when they traveled to the pagan-filled “other side” of Galilee.
All of these locations can be clearly seen from the heights of Mt.
Arbel—and from most of the other mountains in the area.
From whichever mountain it was, Jesus gave His disciples another
mountain to climb—one bigger than Arbel, bigger than Grays Peak,
even bigger than Mt. Everest.
It was the mountainous challenge to “go and make disciples of all
nations.” That word “nations” literally means “people groups.” This
means that the goal of every disciple of Jesus should be to make
disciples who make disciples, until every people group, tribe, and
nation has disciple-multipliers who are reproducing disciples who
can saturate their corner of the world with the message of hope.
I’m sure the hearts of the disciples burned that day as Jesus gave
them their bold vision. My heart burned as God gave me mine a
number of years ago, as I stood atop Mt. Arbel during a trip to Israel
that included 185 other ministry leaders from 53 countries. It was
there God called Dare 2 Share Ministries to “go global” and gave us
our bold vision, which we would eventually phrase like this:
Every teen, everywhere, hearing the Gospel from a friend.
There are 1 billion teenagers on the planet, most of whom haven’t
found and desperately need the hope of salvation through Jesus
Christ.


To put that number into perspective, imagine a long line of teen-

agers, chest to back, heel to toe. This single-file line would circle
the world, not once, not twice, but 7.5 times to get to the number
1 billion.
That’s a lot of teenagers! That’s a bold vision!

Jesus reiterated His bold vision for the disciples in Acts 1:8, imme-
diately before He ascended into Heaven:
you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth.’
If we extend this to ourselves, as Jesus’s modern-day disciples, we
see Him giving us a bold vision for here (the city/community where
we live), there (our own version of Samaria, or people in our city or
region we don’t normally associate with), and everywhere (across
the globe).

Jerusalem and Judea were the stomping grounds of the early disci-
ples, so Jesus was commanding them to tell the Good News to their
neighbors, friends, and families. Basically, Jesus is telling them:
“Start here, and move outward.”
What applied to the early disciples applies to us today. We, too, are
to start by saturating our circle of friends, families, neighbors, and
others within our reach with the Gospel.
My “Jerusalem” is Arvada, a northwestern suburb of Denver,
Colorado. Although I was raised in the city of Denver, I soon after
moved to the Arvada area. This is where I planted a church and
where I’ve led Dare 2 Share from for the past 30 or so years.


When my friend Rick Long and I first planted Grace Church in

Arvada, I decided I needed to map out my Jerusalem—the geo-
graphic area I wanted to saturate with the Gospel message. So I
charted out the main streets to the north, south, east, and west of
where our church was meeting at the time, and I began to plot my
strategy.
What was my plan to conquer the mountain of Arvada with the
Gospel? It was to go door to door, until I literally talked to everyone
in the city about Jesus personally. If you look closely at the following
map of my Jerusalem—which is still pasted into the front of my old
preaching Bible—you’ll see the lines marking the streets I walked
down as I went door to door.

I was going to single-handedly Gospelize the city of Arvada. Or so I

thought. Over those months of door-to-door work, I developed an
appreciation for how hard it is for those young Mormon mission-
aries. Doors slammed in my face, dogs chased me away, and curse
words spewed in my general direction.


Finally, it began to dawn on me that I couldn’t scale this mountain

alone. I realized that if we could train and equip the people at our
church to share the Gospel within their own spheres of influence,
and mobilize them to make disciples who make disciples, then there
was a chance it could actually happen.
That’s a big part of how the idea behind Dare 2 Share was born.
I began to understand that, to truly reach a city, people had to be
mobilized to seek and save the lost for the cause of Christ.
What’s true in Arvada is also true in New York, Kansas City, Buenos
Aires, Rome, Johannesburg, Hong Kong, Sydney—everywhere,
including your city, your own personal Jerusalem.
My question to you is: Have you identified the geographic area
you’re striving to reach for the cause of Christ—your ministry’s
“Cause Turf ”? This could be the neighborhoods or districts around
your church or perhaps the schools your students represent. Take a
moment now to ask God what your Cause Turf should be.
As you consider the scope of your vision for advancing the Gospel
through your youth ministry efforts, I challenge you to be bold. As
I said before, a truly bold vision has to be so big that there’s no way
you can do it without God’s help. Your mountain should be so huge
that you need to recruit other like-minded youth leaders to join you
(turn to chapter 11 for ideas on how to do that).
Today, Grace Church is a congregation of 3,000-plus members.

I stepped out of Grace’s pulpit a number of years ago to move
into full-time ministry with Dare 2 Share, but my co-pastor and
co-conspirator for the Cause, Rick Long, has carried on the vision
with excellence. More than 60% of Grace Church’s members came
to Christ as a result of people within the church reaching their


friends, neighbors, classmates, and coworkers. They’re still scaling

the mountain and are well on their way to the summit.

Teaching teens to reach out to others in their immediate sphere
should be step one of their discipling process. But it’s only the begin-
ning of the story.
In Jesus’s time, the Samaritans were considered compromised half-
breeds. Being half-Jew and half-Gentile was worse than being a
pure-blooded Gentile. That’s why it was shocking to the Samaritan
woman that Jesus would even acknowledge her presence, let alone
ask her for a drink.
But it’s often in areas just outside our comfort zone where God does
His best work. In Acts 1–7, the disciples ministered mostly in and
around Jerusalem. But in Acts 8, a persecution, led by Saul and the
Sanhedrin, broke out against the believers. They fled Jerusalem,
scattering throughout Judea and Samaria and sharing the Gospel
everywhere they went, with great effect. For example, the disciple
Philip’s preaching in one Samarian city led to these results:
But when they believed Philip as he proclaimed the Good News of the
Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized,
both men and women. Acts 8:12
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I was raised in a “Samaritan” part of town—a neighborhood with

high crime and low income, a place people tended to avoid, if they
could. But when Yankee crossed the boundary from the safety of
suburban Arvada to the danger of the city to reach my family, every-
thing changed for us.
As you identify your Cause Turf, I encourage you to highlight areas
where you wouldn’t normally go—perhaps those that have a dif-
ferent socioeconomic, racial, or cultural makeup than your church
does. In doing so, you’ll be reflecting God’s desire for a body that
includes people from every walk of life.
How does this principle translate to Christian teenagers on their
school campus? They need to be encouraged to reach out to not just
their peers who are like them, but also the ones who aren’t. This may
mean that at least one person in their Cause Circle is someone who
is broken, hurting, or difficult to love.

The last part of Jesus’s mandate was to go to “the ends of the earth.”
That means we should strive to develop globally minded teenagers
who have a passion to reach the lost everywhere.
Here are just a few practical ideas of how to do that:
• Take your teenagers on a short-term missions trip, ideally one
that meets both physical and spiritual needs of those they’re
serving. Get them to feed the poor with bread and the Bread of
Life. Have them pass out water for the body and Living Water
for the soul.
• Share inspiring stories of how missionaries, both past and
present, have advanced the Good News of Jesus in other
countries.


• Bring missionaries into your youth group to share stories, and

do a Q&A time with your teenagers so they get a real sense of
the power and impact of missions work.
• Raise ongoing money to support missions.
• Do a yearly youth group series on global evangelism.
• Bring your teenagers to Lead THE Cause, a weeklong crash
course in evangelism, intercessory prayer, and leadership train-
ing, combined with urban missions. The teens who attend will
get a heart for reaching the lost “here, there, and everywhere.”
(Visit dare2share.org/events/ltc/ for more information.)

Think of your Cause Turf, pray, and write out a specific bold vision,
starting in your Jerusalem. Here are a few bold visions from youth
and nonprofit leaders around the world:
A new salvation at every high school represented in the student
ministry. Students bring the Gospel to their homes. Every student
shares the Gospel this year. Building Gospel Advancing leaders within
our students. —Lee Banton, Reston Bible Church in Reston,
Virginia, USA
To establish a Gospel Advancing movement in Africa that reaches
all countries in Africa by 2026 with 5,000,000 prayers for the lost,
1,500,000 Gospel conversations, and 500,000 salvations, through a
sustainable prayer network across these countries and innovative care
programs. —Joe Bonga, International Christian Youthworks,
Kenya
Every Elevate student falls in love with Jesus and shares God’s love, so
every student in Roswell hears the Gospel. —Nathan Smith, First
Baptist Church in Roswell, New Mexico, USA


Contend for the Great Commission in the homeland and beyond. For
every young person to honor God, win lives, build lives, and make a
difference. —Brian Mark Lopez of NextGen Chi Alpha, Baguio
City, Philippines

Recently I was in Egypt, along with a handful of our Dare 2 Share
team, meeting with some key leaders of Egypt’s Gospel Advancing
youth movement. They’re part of a network of 500 churches, and
their goal is to see “every teen, everywhere in Egypt, hear the Gospel
from a friend.”
Toward the end of our time together, the leaders took us to see the
pyramids just outside the massive city of Cairo (population: 20+
million). Of course we did the typical sightseeing stuff, including
camel riding, but one of my favorite parts of the day was sitting
down at a breakfast table with these leaders.

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We talked about the 7 Values and the bold vision of their Gospel
Advancing movement. I’d been praying for God to give me a clear
illustration of this bold vision, and as we ate, God answered my
prayer in a surprisingly simple way. I asked my Egyptian friends
to take a look at the Great Pyramid that filled the large window in
front of us.
I said: “Imagine that the bottom part of that pyramid represents
100% of the teenagers in Egypt. This includes the millions upon
millions of teenagers in Cairo who don’t yet know Jesus.
“Now imagine,” I continued, “that the middle section of the pyramid
is the 10%. These are the 10% of the Christian teenagers in Egypt
who, if inspired, equipped, and mobilized, can reach 100% of those
teenagers in Egypt with the Gospel.”
The leaders were nodding, getting excited about the illustration.
“Now the top of the pyramid represents the 1%. These are the youth
leaders in your network of 500 churches who will equip and mobi-
lize the 10% of these Christian teens to reach the 100% with the
Gospel.”
But I wasn’t finished yet. “The tip-top of the pyramid has a flat,
30-foot-by-30-foot space where, many believe, was a structure that
brought the pyramid to a sharp point.” I had done my research.
“That tip is the .01%. These are the country leaders who will find
the community leaders (the 1%) who will mobilize the Christian
teenagers (the 10%) to reach every teen, everywhere, in Egypt with
the Gospel (the 100%).”
This simple illustration applies not just to Egypt but to the whole
world. It demonstrates our bold vision at Dare 2 Share: We want to
find the key country, denominational, and network leaders who will
find the passionate youth leaders to mobilize the on-fire teenagers
to reach every teen, everywhere, with the Gospel.


Where do you fit on the pyramid?

Regardless of where you land on the pyramid, it’s impossible to
achieve your bold vision in your own strength. Instead, the power
comes from the Holy Spirit, who lives within you. Jesus promised in
Acts 1:8: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on
you.” The Spirit dwelling within you fuels you to accomplish your
bold vision.
I learned a great illustration from my good friend and fellow Gospel
Advancing preacher Zane Black (wearelovinlife.com). He uses the
illustration of a work glove, which in and of itself, can do nothing.
It can’t actually work. But once a hand goes in the glove, that work
glove can do anything the hand can.
In the same way, apart from Christ we can do nothing (John 15:5).
But once He fills us with His Spirit, we can do everything He can
(John 14:12).
That’s why I love the words of Paul in Colossians 1:28-29:
So we tell others about Christ, warning everyone and teaching
everyone with all the wisdom God has given us. We want to present


them to God, perfect in their relationship to Christ. That’s why I work

and struggle so hard, depending on Christ’s mighty power that works
within me. (NLT)
It’s not easy. You still must “work and struggle” hard. Many cir-
cumstances can make you want to give up—whether the demands,
challenges, and headaches of ministry, or perhaps a slower-than-ex-
pected pace of seeing results from your Gospel Advancing efforts.
But even in the hard times, you can depend on Christ’s mighty
power, through His Holy Spirit surging through your spiritual veins,
as you seek to conquer this mountain.

Not long after our 14er expedition, I took my son Jeremy on a hike
with one of his friends. Jeremy was keeping pace, but his little buddy
was lagging behind. It’s not that the kid was out of shape—he just
didn’t have the mental fortitude to finish the hike, even though we
were scaling one of the smaller hills close to town, not a full-fledged,
Colorado-sized mountain.
As we walked, I could hear them bantering back and forth. I heard
his friend say: “Can we just stop? I’m getting tired. I want to quit.”
To which my son said: “No. In our family, we don’t give up.”
I was beaming with daddy-pride as we pressed on. Here was my son,
who just weeks earlier was gasping for air and begging me to stop,
embracing the benefits and blessings of refusing to quit.
In the same way, I challenge you to not give up. Prayerfully identify
your own bold vision for your youth ministry, and then keep press-
ing up that mountain.
We are all part of a heavenly family, a brotherhood and sisterhood of
the redeemed. And in our family, we don’t give up!



£ Counting What
Really Counts

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that
counts can be counted. —William Bruce Cameron¹
What are outcomes? They’re what “comes out” of all our ministry
efforts. Sadly, what comes out of far too many youth ministry efforts
are apathetic teenagers with a few fun memories the youth leader
managed to create along the way.
But that’s a far cry from the outcomes most of us want to come out
of our ministry efforts, right? Imagine seeing teenagers who are
wholeheartedly pursuing Jesus—young people who are actively
reaching their peers with the Gospel and graduating seniors who
keep their faith long after they move their tassels from right to left.


We’d like to see the types of outcomes evident in Acts 11:19-23:

Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke
out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus,
and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. Some of them,
however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began
to speak to Greeks also, telling them the Good News about the Lord
Jesus. The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people
believed and turned to the Lord.
News of this reached the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent
Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw what the grace of
God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to
the Lord with all their hearts.
In this passage, a handful of traveling preachers went rogue and trav-
eled to Antioch to preach the Gospel to the Greeks. This was a big
deal, because up until then the disciples focused almost exclusively
on reaching Jews and the relatively small number of Gentiles who
had converted to Judaism (sometimes referred to as “God-fearing
Gentiles”). But in this passage, these men from Cyprus and Cyrene
started sharing the Gospel with non-Jewish-in-every-way Greeks.
When the news of this unprecedented evangelistic activity among
the Gentiles hit Jerusalem, the disciples there dispatched Barnabas,
sending him 300 miles northward to Antioch to check things out.
At this time, it appears that some Jewish believers were still suspi-
cious of Gentile converts to the faith. But when Barnabas came to
Antioch and met with these Greek believers, he “saw what the grace
of God had done” and “was glad.”
What did he see? He saw outcomes in line with a great number of
people trusting in Christ. Scripture doesn’t tell us exactly what he
witnessed. Perhaps he saw an evangelistic fervor that comes from
being filled with the Holy Spirit—like the believers in Acts 4:31 who
went out “and spoke the word of God boldly.” Or maybe he witnessed
a unity that only the impact of the Gospel could explain—like the


believers in Acts 4:32 who were “one in heart and mind.” Or maybe
he saw a selflessness that only being transformed into a new cre-
ation through Christ could accomplish—like the believers in Acts
2:45 who sold their possessions “to give to anyone who had need.”
Whatever he saw, these outcomes were enough to convince Barnabas
that these Gentiles were now 100% genuine Christians. In fact, it’s
not the believers in Jerusalem who were first labeled “Christians,”
which means “followers of Christ,” by the unbelievers around them.
According to Acts 11:26:“The disciples were called Christians first at
Antioch.” So we can conclude that the dramatic outcomes Barnabas
saw were also clearly evident to the unbelievers in and around
Antioch.
¢

What evidence of biblical outcomes would Barnabas find if he
visited your youth group? Would your teenagers’ attitudes and
actions convince Barnabas they’ve experienced a true and deep
encounter with Jesus?
Just as the unbelievers nicknamed these Antioch-based believ-
ers “Christians,” do the unbelievers at your teenagers’ schools see
enough evidence of the grace of God in the lives of your students
that they could be nicknamed “followers of Christ”? Is your group
growing because they’re sharing the Gospel with those around
them?
The idea of measuring outcomes may seem more apt for a secular
business enterprise than for a youth group, but I believe knowing
what you’re aiming for and measuring your progress toward it can
be a ministry game changer. Here’s how.

Consider the following classic “outcomes” analysis:
   


Think of it like this:

represent the time, energy, and resources you invest in
something.
represent what you do as a result of those inputs.
are the immediate, short-term results of those
activities.
are the long-term impact.
represents the transformation that ultimately
takes place in and around you as a result of those outcomes.
Let’s use the illustration of exercising as an example. Nearly 30 years
ago, I was completely out of shape. Although I was only 29 years
old, I walked with a pronounced limp—sadly, due to a dancing inci-
dent (go ahead and mock me but it’s true)—and had ballooned to a
squishy 223 pounds. My low point was when my wife told me that I
had my grandma’s legs, and while I loved my pistol-toting grandma,
this was definitely not a compliment.
Finally, my bodybuilding, Jesus-loving buddy Donnie stepped in.
“Enough is enough, fatty,” he said. “You’re going to the gym with
me.”
So, the inputs began. I committed to a monthly gym fee and marked
out time on my calendar for working out. I also made a plan to
switch to a high-protein/low-carbohydrate diet.
Then came the activities. I had gym and kitchen activities. Donnie
led the gym activities, and I led the kitchen activities by disciplining
myself to eat lots and lots of meat and no bread.
I went from 223 to 180 pounds in a matter of months. That was
the immediate output. But a lower weight, while good, was not
the outcome I really wanted. What I was really seeking was better


health. And I decided the high-protein/low-carb diet wasn’t a great

long-term contribution to a healthy lifestyle.
So I began to focus on eating healthier foods and embedding exercise
into my life. In the intervening years, I’ve generally maintained this
healthy-lifestyle approach, and the outcome is that I feel good and
have avoided any major health problems. I have the energy I need to
lead a ministry, travel around the world training youth leaders and
teenagers, write books, and hike the mountains of Colorado with
my family.


My hope is that the ultimate impact of all this working out and
healthy eating is a long and fruitful ministry, both personally and
professionally. It’s hard to advance the Kingdom if you die prema-
turely from a heart attack.
So how does this same principle apply to youth ministry?

Just as my inputs were setting aside time on my calendar to exercise
and budgeting money for healthy food, your inputs are the time,
manpower, and resources you plan to invest in your youth minis-
try—think calendars, volunteers, and budgets.
Your activities are the programs that will bring healthy outputs to
your ministry—outputs such as the number of teens who indicate
faith in Jesus, are baptized, are actively sharing their faith, have spir-
itual disciplines as a part of their daily routine, have joined your
student leadership team, and so on.
If I ask a youth leader how things are going, they generally go
straight to outputs, saying something like:
“It’s great! We had 100 teenagers show up last week!”
But the goal should be to move on to outcomes, such as:
“Our growth has been steady, primarily due to teens reaching
their friends for Christ.”
“We have 10 more qualified student leaders actually leading
the way for evangelism than we did last year at this time.”
“We grew from 10% of our teenagers having daily quiet times
with God to 50% in the last 12 months.”
“Our small groups have doubled because teenagers are bring-
ing their friends every week and engaging in great spiritual
conversations.”


And what could be some of the ultimate impacts you may see as
a result of working for these outcomes over a sustained period of
time? Like me (hopefully) having a long and fruitful life, your youth
ministry should strive for impacts such as these:
“Over the long haul, we’re seeing that our graduating teenag-
ers are committed to Jesus.”
“Our teenagers’ faith is causing the Gospel to spread and
transform our community.”
Of course, we can’t make any of this happen on our own, but we can
take Jesus at His word:
‘I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in
you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.’
John 15:5

And what kind of fruit will Jesus produce in us when we stay con-
nected to Him by faith and prayer? He tells us in John 15:16:
‘You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you
might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever
you ask in my name the Father will give you.’
Consider that phrase: “fruit that will last.” Think of it as the outcome
and ultimate impact that Jesus will produce in you and through you,
as you stay connected to Him and allow Him to direct you.
Paul seconds this notion in 1 Corinthians 15:10:
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace to me was not
without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but
the grace of God that was with me.
Finding the sweet spot between God’s grace in you and hard work
by you is the key. As you proactively yield to Him, then He actively
yields fruit through you. And He produces “fruit that will last.”


This lasting fruit comes in two different forms—qualitative and

quantitative.
£

How would you describe the character quality of the teenagers in
your youth ministry? Do they know what they believe and why they
believe it? Are they hitting spiritual-maturation markers?
Of course, we need to guard against legalism here. Spiritual maturity
is not a checklist of dos and don’ts. But there should be an upward
trajectory of spiritual growth evident in their lives.
The writer of Hebrews gave a scathing review of how the scattered
Jewish believers didn’t have the outcomes expected of them, given
how long they’d been believers:
You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching
others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things
about God’s Word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat
solid food. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t
know how to do what is right. Solid food is for those who are mature,
who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between
right and wrong. Hebrews 5:12-14 (NLT)
From this passage, I believe there are at least four spiritual-matura-
tion markers that will help you assess the teen disciples coming out
of your youth ministry. Let’s take a look at each.
¤ ¥ ¦

You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching
others.
Whether in a one-on-one setting or in a group, spiritually maturing
teenagers should be able to teach on some level. For example, at
some point every Christian teenager in your group should be able to
explain—or “teach”— to others the basic message of the Gospel, as
well as what it looks like to grow in a relationship with Jesus.


¤¥ ¤ ¦

You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food.
If you give a 1-month-old baby a T-bone steak, it’s not gonna go
well. But if an 18-year-old is still using baby formula as his only
source of nutrition, something is also radically wrong.
Your teenagers need to master the basics and then learn to wrestle
through deeper, meaty, theological truths. A good sign this wres-
tling has begun is when they ask questions. You can trigger spiritual
growth by skillfully drawing out their questions and helping them
find answers.
¤
¤¥ ¥ ¤

Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the
skill…
Teenagers who’ve hit this spiritual marker are building spiritual dis-
ciplines into their lives and actively seeking to live out their faith.
What percentage of your teenagers are, on their own, regularly
reading their Bibles, praying, and yielding themselves to God? How
many know how to do those things? Don’t assume they know. Rather,
start with the basics, like any good coach, and build from there.
§ ¤ ¤ ¤

…have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong.
Are your teenagers able to discern between right and wrong in the
lyrics of a song, in the worldview of a movie, or in the moral values
of an app or game? You can teach them to imagine Jesus sitting right
there with them as they listen or watch (because He is!).
Evidence of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) in students’ lives
is another good measure of their ability to choose right over wrong.


£

Let’s revisit the following passage from Acts 2:42-47, and as you
read it, watch for specific inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes:
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship,
to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe
at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the
believers were together and had everything in common. They sold
property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day
they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke
bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,
praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord
added to their number daily those who were being saved.
First, the inputs and activities: They devoted themselves to teaching,
fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer. The outputs? “Everyone
was filled with awe,” and they met together “with glad and sincere
hearts.” All this led to a powerful outcome: “And the Lord added to
their number daily those who were being saved.”
Throughout the book of Acts—and much of church history, for that
matter—one of the most powerful outcomes of a truly Gospelized
ministry is new believers. At Dare 2 Share, we refer to this as new
conversion growth (NCG).
What percentage of your teenagers have come to Christ as a direct
result of your youth ministry? Is it 1%, 5%, 10%, or more?
As I mentioned in chapter 3, we commissioned a research project
a number of years ago, and through it we found a core of youth
leaders who actually attained a 25% NCG rate per year! That is
phenomenal. But unfortunately, that’s far from the norm. Christian
author Dr. Dann Spader contends that 10% NCG is the minimum
standard of evangelistic health2, making it a good initial percentage
to work toward.


In addition to NCG, other qualitative outcomes you could measure

include numbers of:
• Gospel conversations students have.
• Teenagers in the group who can clearly explain the Gospel.
• Students discipling other students.
• Baptisms.
Speaking of baptisms, if I were a youth leader or pastor again, I
would print up nice invitations for new believers to invite all of their
unsaved family members and friends to come see him or her get
baptized. At that baptism ceremony, I would make sure there was
a clear testimony, Gospel message, and invitation to trust Christ—
which could lead to even greater qualitative outcomes!

The lesson about the importance of ultimate impact was painfully
reinforced for me several years ago, when Dare 2 Share got the
results back from that research study we’d commissioned.
My initial reaction was to yell: “You mean we paid thousands of
dollars to find out that we’re awful?”
On the bright side, the study showed that our conferences were
great at inspiring teenagers with unprecedented evangelistic passion.
Immediately after attending our events, 76% of teenagers were
sharing their faith.


But the statistic that discouraged me was that six months after the
event, the percentage of teenagers who were sharing their faith
dropped to 34%.
It felt like a bomb had blown up right over my head. I don’t get
depressed much, but for the next three days, I felt like quitting. I was
as depressed as I’d been in decades.
When I finally got our researcher, Jim Wert, on the phone, he assured
me that, although there was a huge drop in evangelistic activity six
months after the conference, 34% of a youth group sharing their
faith is actually not too shabby. He also said, “This survey that you
thought was going to be a marketing and fundraising tool is, instead,
going to be a model-shifter.”
Jim then asked me what I thought the implications of the research
were on a ministry level. My response was, “Well, obviously youth
leaders aren’t fully getting what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to
help them make evangelism a year-round priority. We’re trying to get
them to drive the discipleship process by challenging their teenagers
to risk everything and engage their peers with the Gospel. Clearly,
we’ve failed to give them enough training to make this happen.”
And thus began the shift. We started to change our focus as a min-
istry from primarily training teenagers to share their faith to pri-
marily equipping youth leaders to inspire, equip, and unleash their
teenagers year-round to advance the Gospel and make disciples.
Although we’re continually refining this approach, we’ve taken
some huge strides in providing deeper, more robust training for
youth leaders to lead the charge. This book is part of that switch.
Our weeklong summer training event, Lead THE Cause, and our
annual four-day Gospel Advancing Summit for committed youth
leaders are part of the switch. Making all of our digital curriculum
available for free is part of that switch. So are our online youth leader
training platform, our free Life in 6 Words faith-sharing app, and the


rallying of denominations and other para-church ministries to join

the Gospel Advancing movement.
And the ultimate goal of all of it is to achieve our bold vision of
every teen, everywhere, hearing the Gospel from a friend.
How will we measure it? We want to recruit 1 million Gospel
Advancing leaders worldwide, who will each mobilize 10 teenagers
to share Jesus with 100 of their peers during their middle school
to high school years—one Gospel conversation every three weeks
over the course of six years. Yes, it’s ambitious, but not impossible,
through the power of the Holy Spirit!
And guess what the total of all those numbers equals?
1 million leaders training 10 teenagers each to reach 100 fellow
students = 1 billion teenagers hearing the Gospel from a friend
At the time of this writing, we have 12,000 Gospel Advancing
leaders around the world. We have a long way to go, but we won’t
stop until we get there!
¤

I’m now grateful for that painful, expensive “bomb” that exploded
when we got the results of our research study. From the shrapnel,
God is building something better.
And that something starts with helping you Gospelize your youth
ministry and begin to measure the things that matter.
It may be painful at first, but it’s worth it!


¥£

¤


¥ Program Your
Priorities

A few years ago, I met a hardworking ministry couple, Jason and

Laura Loewen, who were serving as the youth leaders at Walloon
Lake Community Church in Michigan. They’d met on a missions
trip in South Africa, and the rest was history. They finished their
time at Moody Bible Institute, got married, and dove into youth
ministry—Jason full-time and Laura, well, pretty much full-time as
well, but without getting paid.
Before long, they were running themselves ragged, dashing from
one youth event to the next to the next, without much fruit to show
for it. They felt overcommitted and maxed out.
Sound familiar?


In their words, they had “far too much on [their] plates and were
headed for burnout.”
But among their chaotic list of activities was a trip to a Dare 2 Share
conference. During one of the conference’s youth leader training
sessions, Jason had a light-bulb moment. I was talking about focus-
ing on the priorities that mattered most, when Jason asked himself:
“What if we scratched the stuff that isn’t producing much fruit and
focused on a few things that have real potential for spiritual change
in the lives of our teenagers?”
So that’s exactly what Jason and Laura began to do. They stream-
lined. They cut. For every event, program, outreach, camp, retreat,
and conference, they asked: “How is this going to draw the students
closer to Jesus and help them live on mission with the Gospel?”
Laura wrote to us at Dare 2 Share about the impact of this laser-like
focus. Here’s how she put it:
By focusing more on the cross and equipping our teens…we’ve seen
students not only get saved, but also be discipled long after the Dare 2
Share conference was done. The adults at our church have all been
incredibly challenged by our youth ministry, asking themselves: “If
these teens can have a vibrant relationship with the Lord and reach
out to their friends, what the heck are we doing?”
For Jason and Laura, it wasn’t just about bringing teenagers to a
Dare 2 Share event, but also about infusing a Gospel Advancing phi-
losophy deep into the heart of their ministry. They began to inten-
tionally drive these values into their youth ministry programming
year-round. And the results were phenomenal.
Several months after attending Lead THE Cause, our weeklong
summer intensive for students, Jason wrote me:
The eight students we took to Lead THE Cause became the backbone
of our Wednesday night outreach program. They provide incredible
leadership for our worship, greeting, games, teaching, and weekly


evangelism challenge. At Lead THE Cause, we committed to pursuing

40% new conversion growth, which meant we’d need to see 16 students
give their lives to the Lord and become involved in the youth program.
By spring, we saw 20 students give their lives to the Lord and get
involved in the youth ministry.
Soon after, this philosophy began to impact the entire church, as
the senior pastor adopted these same values church-wide. But it all
started with a dedicated youth ministry couple willing to lead THE
Cause of Christ by programming their priorities into their weekly,
monthly, and annual calendar.
Sure, there have been battles, frustrations, failures, and fallout. But
the Kingdom of God has advanced in Walloon Lake, Michigan,
because of this sold-out youth ministry couple who were willing to
risk their old model to try something different and dangerous. That
something is a spicy, new Gospelized paradigm that’s 2,000 years old.
That something can change the way you do youth ministry forever.
¨
So how do you keep Gospel Advancing values central to your pro-
gramming? Acts 6:1-7 offers some guidance:
of food. So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, ‘It
would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the Word of God in
order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from
among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We
will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to
prayer and the ministry of the Word.’
This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man
full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor,

Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism.

They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their
hands on them.
So the Word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem
increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to
the faith.
This passage clarifies three truths about programming your youth
ministries:
1. Your programs reflect your priorities.
2. Genuine problems can complicate your priorities.
3. You must constantly protect your priorities.
Let’s explore each of these important truths.
¦ ¤ ¦

‘We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our
attention to prayer and the ministry of the Word.’ Acts 6:3b-4
As the leaders of the church, the apostles knew—and stuck to—their
top priorities: “prayer and the ministry of the Word.” Together they
interceded on behalf of this fast-growing, Jerusalem-based mega-
church (according to Acts 4:4, the number of male converts alone
was 5,000!). In their ministry of God’s Word, they taught theological
truth to those who had become believers (Acts 2:42) and shared the
Gospel with the unreached (Acts 5:41-42).
In other words, they had an upward, inward, and outward focus.
They focused upwardly on God through prayer, inwardly on build-
ing up the believers through teaching, and outwardly on reaching
the lost through evangelism.
You can incorporate these same three priorities into your pro-
gramming. There’s something about putting each of them on your


program rundown—the order of “service” for your youth meeting—

that solidifies them. Whether it’s typed, scribbled, or kept safe in
your great, big brain, this order of service helps you keep the most
important things in focus.
It reminds me of Billy Graham’s familiar quote: “Give me five minutes
with a person’s checkbook, and I will tell you where their heart is.” ¹ In
the same way, I can tell more about a youth leader’s true priorities by
what fills his or her rundown and ministry calendar than from any
pithy mission statement on a wall or a website.
What do you have on your rundown sheet for your next youth
meeting?
□ Games? (Check!)
□ Worship? (Check!)
□ Fellowship time? (Check!)
□ Announcements? (Check!)
□ Teaching time? (Check!)
□ Intercessory prayer? (Hmmm…)
□ Sharing the Gospel? (Hmmm…)
□ Students’ stories of Gospel conversations? (Hmmm…)
□ What about casting a bold vision? (Uh oh!)
If you want to make prayer, disciple-making, and evangelism greater
ministry priorities, start by creating more time for them in your
ongoing programs. This is also true of calendaring your events.
Whatever you put on your calendar, you prioritize.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself before you put an event on
your ministry calendar:
• Will this meeting help my students fall more in love with Jesus?

• Will this event equip and mobilize students to share the

Gospel?
• What purpose does this fun event have, beyond bonding us
together as a group?
• How can we give this time together a Gospel Advancing focus?
• How will this camp or retreat help my teenagers to grow spirit-
ually and evangelistically?
• Will this mission trip stretch my teenagers to not just serve,
but to also share the Good News of Jesus?
Of course, all this talk of focusing doesn’t mean we won’t have fun.
Youth ministry is—and should be—fun! But if it’s only fun, we’re
missing a huge opportunity. That’s because there’s nothing in minis-
try more thrilling than seeing a teenager being used by God to reach
a peer with the message of Jesus or a roomful of teenagers calling
out to God on behalf of their unreached peers.
So the all-nighter, the missions trip, and the retreat could (and
should) be put on the calendar, if you’re willing to Gospelize them!

of food. Acts 6:1
This was a genuine problem. There was a not-so-subtle form
of favoritism playing out with those who led the food pantry of
“Jerusalem Community Church.” The Hebraic widows, whose
primary language was Hebrew, were considering themselves supe-
rior to the Hellenistic Jewish widows, whose primary language was
Greek—and the Hellenistic widows were paying the price.


This problem could have derailed the work of God in and through
the early church in Jerusalem, if the disciples had gotten distracted.
But instead of trying to personally fix the problem by handing out
the food themselves, they delegated the responsibility.
The apostles didn’t wait for the problem to go away. They didn’t stop
up their ears and sing a hymn. No, they recognized the very real
problem and let the people appoint a task force to fix it.
In the same way, there are real problems in youth ministry. Our
groups are full of broken teenagers—some addicted to drugs or
porn; others struggling with anxiety, depression, school or family
challenges, or LGBTQ+ issues; and nearly all wrestling with ques-
tions about identity and acceptance. We should prayerfully and
carefully raise up other leaders from among the congregation to
help us address these big challenges.
But we can’t lose sight of the fact that, as youth leaders, we’re respon-
sible for “prayer and the ministry of the Word.” Our primary job is
to help our ministries keep an upward, inward, and outward focus.
¦¦ ¦

‘It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the Word of God
in order to wait on tables.’ Acts 6:2b
It’s not right for you to forsake your priorities in order to set up the
youth room or make posters or the like. Not that you’re above those
tasks or that you never do them, but you shouldn’t let them distract
from your primary focus.
As the leader, you’re the one responsible for keeping your youth
ministry headed toward Gospel Advancement. Your “disciple ship”
can easily get stuck in some random harbor. As the God-appointed
captain of the ship, you must keep your eyes on Jesus Christ, your
true North Star, and He will bring you to your Gospel Advancing
destination.


OK, that’s literally all the seafaring analogies I can come up with—
thank the Lord!
But my point is serious. You, as the youth leader, are the one
who must lead your students and adult volunteers toward Gospel
Advancement, both in and through your students. You are the one
who should drive the 7 Values of Gospel Advancing deep into the
heart of your youth ministry strategy.
To do so requires a Gospel focus in your ongoing programs—weekly,
monthly, and annual alike.

© ¦ ¤ª¦ ¦¦ª
§
© ¥ ¤ª
¨

Here are three simple, biblical ideas you can implement right away
to give your regular meetings a Gospel Advancing focus:
¥

I’ll give you four good reasons why:
Just
because students attend regularly doesn’t mean they’re saved. Every
time they hear the message clearly, it’s an opportunity for them to
respond personally.
When your students
hear you explain the simple message of the Gospel week after week,
they’re actually being trained to share it themselves.


When I was pastoring Grace Church, one of our members told me he

was sharing the Gospel with a friend. I asked him where he’d learned
to explain it. His response surprised and encouraged me. He said:
“Greg, for years I’ve been hearing you give the Gospel week after week
in our church services. How could I not know how to explain it?”
If
your teenagers know sharing the Gospel is a nonnegotiable for you,
they can bring their unreached friends to youth group, confident
they’ll hear the best news on the planet.
Sometimes I hear youth leaders say they
don’t want to give the Gospel every week because they don’t want
their teenagers to get sick of hearing it. But we need to repeatedly
hear the Gospel, because we consistently forget the Gospel!
It’s the message that transforms us and our teenagers on every
level, again and again and again.
Because redemption is the theme of Scripture, any lesson can tran-

sition into the Gospel. It simply requires a salvation segue from
the topic or passage into the message of grace. Here are a couple of
examples of how this works:
• “One thing that can really help
people’s self-image is when they find out someone has sacri-
ficed something for them. Personally, I’ve definitely felt more
valued when this has happened to me, especially if the sacrifice
cost them a lot. Did you know that the God of the Universe
made the ultimate sacrifice for you and for me? Here’s how it
happened…”
• “It’s easy to become fearful about the
bad things that might happen to us. But an amazing thing I’ve
discovered is that, while I don’t have a lot of control over what


happens in this life, I do have a choice about what happens in

the afterlife—and so do you. Here’s how it works…”
I encourage you to try this with the next lesson you teach, even if
it’s a prewritten curriculum: Practice finding a connection to the
Gospel. I promise you there is one!
As teens hear your salvation segues each week, it will help them
learn how to think about virtually every conversation topic as an
opportunity to point people toward Jesus.
Each time you present the Gospel, it’s important to include an invi-
tation to respond. Not providing students an opportunity to put
their trust in Christ is almost like telling them they’ve just won the
latest, greatest smartphone and then not letting them in on how to
claim their prize. When you share the Gospel, you give students the
greatest news of their lives, so you should also give them a chance to
act on it. You can invite them to raise their hand, fill out a card, or
show some other outward indication of their commitment, so you
can follow up with new believers.
¥ ¤ ¥¤

On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and
reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them.
When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to
God. Acts 4:23-24a
On arriving there, they gathered the church together and reported all
that God had done through them and how He had opened a door of
faith to the Gentiles. Acts 14:27
When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and
the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had
done through them. Acts 15:4


Why do we like the book of Acts? Because it creates a historical grid

within which we can see the progression of the church and blah,
blah, blah? No! We love the book of Acts because of the stories in
it. We’re story-driven people, and the book of Acts tells us stories.
We need more stories in youth group, small groups, and Sunday
school—real-life stories, from real-life teenagers, sharing the real-
life Gospel conversations they’re having with their peers.
Some youth leaders call it “Take 5 for THE Cause” or “Pause for
THE Cause” or simply “Open Mic,” but whatever you call it, this
designated time for teenagers to share their stories helps them
encourage, inspire, and challenge one another.
Many youth leaders simply ask (from up front) for stories—good,
bad, or ugly—about opportunities students had to pray for, care for,
and/or share the Gospel with people. Others do it in small group
time or by playing pretaped videos of teenagers sharing Gospel
Advancement stories. Choose whatever fits your situation best—
just do something to make Gospel storytelling a priority.
¥

I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession, and
thanksgiving be made for all people. 1 Timothy 2:1
Paul is reminding Timothy to program prayer first. We’ve already
talked extensively about this in chapter 4, but prayer is so essential
that it bears mentioning again.
Famous missionary Hudson Taylor once reported:
Since the days of Pentecost, has the whole church ever put aside every
other work and waited upon Him for ten days, that the Spirit’s power
might be manifested? We give too much attention to method and
machinery and resources, and too little to the source of power.2
Make room for the power of God in your programs by setting aside
a specific time in your gathering for intercessory prayer. It helps


students stay engaged and enthusiastic if you mix up the method

you use to pray for their unsaved friends. Ideas include prayer jour-
naling, prayer walks, prayer walls, and student-led prayer times.

If you think of your weekly programs as a class, monthly out-
reaches are like a lab—a hands-on opportunity for students to put
what they’ve been learning into action and see how it works in
real life. They challenge students to rely on the Holy Spirit and to
seek answers to questions that come up as they share their faith.
Outreaches also provide plenty of fodder for your weekly “Take 5
for THE Cause” story times.
Monthly outreaches can take two main forms:
If you go this route, structure it so
students are sharing the Gospel themselves—perhaps through stu-
dent-led small group discussion times after your talk or by having
students share the Gospel from the front.
This could be a service project (such
as cleaning up trash at a local park or a door-to-door canned food
drive) that also provides opportunities to share the Gospel. Or it
could be teams of students going out to engage people in conver-
sations at a public place, using the Life in 6 Words app to start the
discussions.
¦ §

¡

Yearly, intensive Gospel Advancing events can do for your teenag-
ers what vacations do for tourists all over the world: change their
perspective and renew their motivation. It doesn’t mean you have


to travel far—or even travel at all. But whether it’s a missions trip or
a camp or conference that trains and unleashes them to share the
Good News, scheduling an event that gets students out of their daily
schedule and comfort zone and helps them focus on deepening and
sharing their relationship with Christ can greatly accelerate their
growth.
I encourage you to start planning one today!

¤

¢

¢


The ideas we’ve shared in this chapter are designed to fit well within
the common structure of modern-day youth groups. They’ve been
tested by many Gospel Advancing leaders and found to be effective.
But there’s no reason you need to stay within the common struc-
ture. As you listen to the Holy Spirit, you may very well find He’s
leading you down a more unconventional path. That’s exactly what
happened with Jason and Laura Loewen, the couple I shared about
at the beginning of this chapter.
A few years after their time in Walloon Lake, the Lord called them
to plant a church in a different city in Michigan. When they were
first getting settled, a bullying incident at their son’s school led to
Jason volunteering as a recess aide. Little did they know, that act
would soon shape who they are as a church, leading them to a bold
vision of blessing their neighbors as they follow Jesus.
That vision has inspired an outward focus when it comes to pro-
gramming. Instead of sponsoring outreach events, the church
mobilizes members to volunteer at school and community events.
Church members commit to praying for, encouraging, and buying
small gifts for school staff members. They share the Gospel person-
ally with coworkers and neighbors. In addition, the church meets on
Thursday nights instead of Sunday mornings because many people
in the area work on Sunday mornings. They also network with area
churches and ministries (Young Life, for example), giving their time
and even money to help other ministries bless the community as
well.
This strategy has served to quickly advance the Gospel, with about
40% of the church’s growth coming from new conversions. That
means the whole church has front-row seats to witness radical life
change, which inspires them to continue praying for, caring for, and
sharing the Good News of Jesus with those around them.


Light bulbs disperse soft light in every direction, but only for a short
distance. Lasers shine in only a single direction, but theoretically,
one beam can travel infinitely. And lasers are powerful enough to
cut steel.
In the same way, your ministry is either a light bulb or a laser.
After His resurrection, Jesus gave His disciples a laser-like focus to
“go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). The book of
Acts is the working out of this mission in tangible ways. The apos-
tles relentlessly programmed their priorities at every level. They
delegated other pressing issues for qualified leaders to figure out,
and focused on Gospel Advancement—both internally, into the
hearts of their people and their own hearts, and externally, out into
the world.
There are many nice, 60-watt ministries that do nice, 60-watt activ-
ities and get nice, 60-watt results. These ministries shine some light,
but usually it can’t be seen outside their church youth gathering.
But laser-focused youth ministries have a single obsession. They
love Jesus and won’t be satisfied until every teenager has encoun-
tered Him. They use their laser to cut out the lesser things from
their programming and calendar.
Time to break out the laser.


£
¤


Start a Gospelized
Network
Morgan Marshall is a youth leader at the church I’m a member

of—Storyline Church in Arvada, Colorado. When Morgan was in
middle school, she attended a Dare 2 Share training event, which
equipped her to share the Gospel. All throughout her teen and
college years, she actively evangelized.
When she became the student minister at Storyline, she learned the
7 Gospel Advancing Values and started living them out personally
and programming them into her youth ministry. She trained the
teenagers in her group in Gospel urgency, fluency, and strategy,
and implemented regular outings to share the Gospel. Morgan
challenged teens to reach their friends for Jesus, and they took the
challenge!
Morgan also began praying that God would give her a bold
vision for her group. She started by researching how many teens
live in Arvada and found it was 14,000—a number significant to
Coloradans because of the state’s 58 “14ers,” or mountain peaks that
reach 14,000 feet or higher.


She immediately concluded that this vision to reach all the students
in Arvada with the Gospel would be her group’s 14er to “climb.”
She began to mobilize her teenagers to reach the goal but soon real-
ized her group couldn’t do it alone. So now she’s building a Gospel
Advancing network of youth leaders in Arvada, who will work
together to climb this 14er and make sure every teen in the city
hears the Gospel from a friend.
It’s exciting to see Morgan and this Gospel Advancing network
growing in Arvada!
May Morgan’s realization about the need to partner with others to
reach her bold vision be your realization as well.
Push back from this book for a few minutes to identify—through

school enrollment numbers and home-schooling estimates—the
approximate number of teenagers in your city (or region, if you’re
in a rural area). (Thank the Lord for search engines!) Write the
number here:
“The number of teenagers in my city (region) is _________.”
Whatever that number is, it’s likely far larger than what your youth
room can hold.
The point of this exercise is simple: You can’t accomplish the vision
alone—nor should you try.
Instead, take a cue from Jesus’s prayer for His disciples in John 17,
just before He went to the cross.
‘Sanctify them by the truth; your Word is truth. As you sent me into
the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself,
that they too may be truly sanctified. My prayer is not for them alone.
I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that
all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.


May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have
sent me.’ John 17:17-21
In these verses, Jesus outlines three powerful truths that provide a
strong foundation for any network. The passage suggests that great
networks are based on the truth, built for the mission, and borrowed
from the Trinity.

‘Sanctify them by the truth; your Word is truth.’ John 17:17
There was a fear in the church I grew up in that if we partnered
with other churches we would end up compromising our theolog-
ical convictions. That attitude made us weak when it came to the
doctrine of biblical unity.
That said, the fear of doctrinal drift is legitimate. Today, a trend
toward “progressive Christianity,” as well as loose views of Scripture
and salvation through Christ’s death on the cross, make it crucial
that members of a network agree on basic, essential truths about
the faith.
For eight years of my life, I was in the construction business. I wit-
nessed many new homes being built from the ground up. During
that time, I coined the saying: “If your foundation is cracked, your
house is jacked!”
You can build a beautiful home with an amazing design, but if the
foundation is cracked or compromised, the whole house is in jeopardy.
Jesus put it this way in Matthew 7:24-27:
‘Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them
into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The
rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat
against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on
the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not


put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on
sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and
beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.’
In the same way, there are five foundational truths we must build
our networks upon so they won’t fall “with a great crash.”
To ensure your network aligns on these core truths, I suggest asking
each member to assent to doctrinal statements such as the ones
outlined below, either through verbal agreement at a meeting or by
signing a document that states them and also includes a commit-
ment to not derail unity by debating less-essential theological issues.

¦
We believe in one God, eternally existing in three Persons: the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He is eternally self-existent, sovereign,
righteous, compassionate, holy, loving, and so much more!
Supporting verses: Deuteronomy 6:4, Matthew 3:16-17, Galatians
1:1, Ephesians 4:6, Romans 9:5, Colossians 2:9, John 1:1, Acts 5:3-4,
Exodus 3:14, Isaiah 6:3, 1 John 4:8
¦
Jesus Christ is the second Person of the Trinity. He has always been
fully God and became fully God and fully human when He was
conceived in Mary’s womb by the power of the Holy Spirit. He lived
the perfect life we could never live and died the horrible death we
deserved. He rose physically from the dead, victorious over sin and
Satan. Forty days after His resurrection, He ascended physically into
the heavens. He is interceding for us at the right hand of God the


Father. He will come back to establish His Kingdom on Earth and rule
and reign forever with those who have trusted in Him.
Notice there’s no mention of when Jesus is returning (pre-, mid-, or
post-tribulation), of the millennium, or of other side issues.
Supporting verses: Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23, 1 Timothy 3:16, John
1:1-14, Philippians 2:6, 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, Romans 8:34
¦

The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity, who was fully active
in the creation of the world and is fully active in the regeneration
of those who put their faith in Jesus. He indwells believers at the
moment of salvation and is with them continuously until the day
of redemption. He empowers believers to exhibit “love, joy, peace,
forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and
self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). The Holy Spirit gives spiritual gifts
to believers that allow them to serve others, and He empowers them to
clearly and confidently share the Gospel with unbelievers.
I specifically suggest that networks avoid discussing “sign gifts”
(such as miracles, visions, speaking in and interpreting tongues, and
the like) or the cessation of them.
Wherever you stand on these issues, all of us can learn from Jesus’s
response to the disciples in Luke 10:17-20:
The seventy-two returned with joy and said, ‘Lord, even the demons
submit to us in your name.’ He replied, ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning
from Heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and
scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will
harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but
rejoice that your names are written in Heaven.’
In essence, Jesus is reminding us to focus more on the steak (sal-
vation: “your names are written in Heaven”) than the sizzle (mir-
acles: “even the demons submit to us in your name”). We praise


God for miracles but primarily rejoice in the biggest miracle of all:
salvation!
Supporting verses: Genesis 1:2, John 14:26, Acts 1:8, Acts 5:3-4,
1 Corinthians 12:4-13, 2 Corinthians 3:17-18, Ephesians 1:13-14,
1 John 2:20

Scripture was written by men but inspired by God. This means that
every word, passage, and chapter of the Holy Scriptures, though
penned by humans and retaining the writing style and personality


of the human authors, was inspired by God Himself. Therefore, the

Bible, in its original manuscripts, is inerrant. The human authors
came from various backgrounds and lived in many different places
and time periods, but the Holy Spirit guided each author as he wrote.
God’s word is reliable and authoritative, not only in matters of faith
and practice, but on every matter it touches.
God’s Word is inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:15-16). Which means
it’s inerrant (Proverbs 30:5). Which means it’s in charge (Matthew
5:17-19).
This is a critical issue today. In a world where, as in the time of Judges,
everyone does what is right in their own eyes (Judges 21:25) and
defines truth by what they can find on Google, it’s vital that we look
to God’s Word as our plumb line for truth and that we submit to it.
Supporting verses: Psalm 19:7-11, Psalm 119, Matthew 5:17-19, Luke
24:44-46, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, Hebrews 4:12-13, 2 Peter 1:20-21

od created us to be with Him.
Genesis 1–2
ur sins separate us from God.
Genesis 3
ins cannot be removed by good deeds.
Genesis 4 – Malachi 4
aying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again.
Matthew – Luke
veryone who trusts in Him alone has eternal life.
John
ife with Jesus starts now and lasts forever.
Acts – Revelation


This acrostic can be an easy way for your network to agree on what
the Gospel is. It tells the whole story of creation and its redemption,
from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, and clearly outlines the simple
Gospel message, which changes for eternity those who receive it by
faith.
When I explain these five truths to youth leaders and pastors, I

often hold my hand up and say, “If we agree on these five truths,
then we can put our hands in the middle.” Then I put my hand down
as if it’s in the center of a huddle full of teammates and continue. “If
we agree on these five things, we refuse to get distracted by lesser
things, for the sake of the ‘one thing’: the advancement of the Gospel
to and through the next generation.”

‘As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. …
Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so
that the world may believe that you have sent me.’ John 17:18, 21b
When I was 15, our church’s youth ministry was huge. We had to
clear out all the chairs to cram 800 teenagers into a room that seated
500. That left us no room to grow, so one day I asked our pastor,
Yankee, if we could train other churches in the area how to share
their faith and mobilize their teenagers to lead the way.
He declined, preferring to focus on his own church, so I decided to
take on the challenge myself.
Like Morgan, I knew that the only way to reach every teen in our
city was by getting other churches on board with the mission.
I started with Community Baptist Church, just a few miles down
the road. With adrenaline-fueled boldness, I picked up the phone
and dialed their number.


The conversation went something like this:

Youth pastor: Hello, this is Clay.
Me: Hello, my name is Greg Stier, and I go to Christian Youth Ranch
just up the road. Have you heard of it?
Clay: Of course I have. That youth group is huge. How can I help
you, Greg?
Me: Well, the reason we were able to grow so big is because all of us
have been trained to share the Gospel with our friends and class-
mates. I’d like to train your youth group to share their faith too.
Arvada is far too big for one youth group to reach.
Clay: So, let me get this straight. You go to another youth group, and
you want to come train my teenagers how to share our faith so our
youth group can grow too?
Me: Yes, that’s pretty much it.
Clay: May I ask how old you are?
Me: I’m 15.
I could almost hear him smiling on the other end of the phone.
Clay: What are you doing this Wednesday night?
Me: I’m riding my bike to your youth group and training them all
how to share the Gospel.
And I did. I actually made a lifelong friend that night. His name is
Lane Palmer, and he now trains teenagers in Bible, worldview, apol-
ogetics, and evangelism full-time at Valor Christian High School in
Highlands Ranch, Colorado.
I consider that night, 41 years ago, the unofficial start of Dare 2
Share.
Since then, I’ve done my best to unify churches and ministries around
mobilizing young people to share the Gospel with their peers.

That mission—equipping and mobilizing students to reach the rest

of the teens in their community with the Gospel—is what defines
a Gospel Advancing network and sets it apart from other kinds of
youth leader networks.
There’s something about seeking to accomplish a common mission
(advancing the Gospel) while fighting a common enemy (the Devil
and his demons) that brings a deeper, stronger level of unity than
just meeting to build relationships.
Ask any soldier who’s seen action in a war, and they’ll testify to
this truth. My Uncle Dave is a literal war hero. He has five bullet
wounds, one scar from a bayonet, and 40 medals and commenda-
tions to prove it. If he talks about the war with you, he’ll speak with
hallowed reverence of the soldiers he fought alongside. Regardless
of their color or creed, they were a brotherhood of blood forever,
because they had shed it together for their common mission on the
battlefield.
There’s no deeper brotherhood or sisterhood than the unity that
comes from fighting for lost souls together as youth leaders, striving
to reach every last teenager in our cities with the message of hope.
¦¤¥
I once heard my friend and fellow Gospel Advancing leader Andrew
Held say that if your youth group can accomplish your vision by
itself, then your vision is far too small.
Luke 5:6-7 tells us that the early disciples “caught such a large number
of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in
the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both
boats…”
The point of a network is to “work the net” together. There’s no way
for one youth group to pull in all the “fish” by themselves. That’s
what a Gospel Advancing network is about—all hands on deck!


‘My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will
believe in me through their message, that all of them may be
one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they
also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent
me.’ John 17:20-21
There’s something divinely enchanting and mystically wondrous
about true biblical unity. When believers from different racial,
socio-economic, and denominational backgrounds come together for
a common mission, based on common truths and a common love for
Jesus, it’s a glimpse into the unity among the members of the Trinity.
It’s a unity borrowed from the Trinity. These three unique persons—
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—working in perfect synergy is a
picture of the brand of unity we as believers, churches, and minis-
tries can, and should, experience with each other. We’re unique but
united, distinct but the same, multifaceted but singularly devoted.
Recently, during our full-week student training called Lead THE
Cause, we used an illustration to help teenagers understand the
concept of the Trinity and what it means for them personally. To
start, I had a teenager paint a triangle representing the Trinity on a
piece of plexiglass as I was preaching. This is what she painted:


We then chose another teen to help us demonstrate the unity of

the Trinity and the invitation we have to be “not members of ” but
“invited into” the fellowship and unity each member experiences
with each other member.
I asked that teen, representing the audience, to give me her left hand,
and I painted it red, to represent Christ’s blood. Then I pressed her
hand into the Trinity triangle.
What was the point of this exercise? To show teenagers that, through
the shed blood of Christ, we’re invited into the fellowship, unity,
and synergy of the Trinity! The result was powerful. Hundreds of
teenagers realized they’re not alone—they belong to a fellowship:
the fellowship of the Trinity and the fellowship of the universal
Church, believers across all times, nations, and denominations,
united through the blood of Christ.
Teens realized they were not alone—and neither are you!
Through the blood of Christ we’re invited into a fellowship of unity
with the Trinity and each other. A Gospel Advancing network
reflects this biblical brand of unity to a watching, cynical world and
becomes a magnet to draw others in.
And, if you think about it, the Trinity is the ultimate Gospel
Advancing network. This network invites us in to advance the
Gospel with them. This network leads us to invite others in so that,
together, we can reach every teen, everywhere, with the hope of
Christ.

So how do you go about building a Gospel Advancing network of
youth leaders?
You use the same basic strategy as you do for relational evangelism:
You pray, care, and share.


Pray passionately for God to raise up the right youth leaders.

Intercede for the churches and youth leaders in your community,
asking God to open doors for you to connect with them personally.
As God raises them up, then care for them. Get to know their min-
istry heart and vision, their hurts and hang-ups. Care for them in
genuine, practical ways. Call them, text them, encourage them.
Finally, share the vision of every teen, everywhere (in your com-
munity), hearing the Gospel from a friend. If that resonates with
them, then share with them three numbers that will help align your
network around the same vision, values, and core theology.
The numbers are: 1-7-5.
Every teen, everywhere in our city/community,
hearing the Gospel from a friend.
Rallying around the Gospel Advancing values
explained in chapters 4–10 of this book will keep you all on
the same page philosophically.
These foundational truths (shared in this chapter)
ensure we’re not uniting with leaders who aren’t fully in line
with the historic Christian faith.
Networks that thrive have a singular vision that excites them, 7
Values that ignite them, and 5 truths that unite them!

Recently I was invited to speak to Lighthouses of the Valley (LOV),
a network of pastors and church leaders in California’s Coachella
Valley. This is the same valley, about an hour’s drive directly east
of Los Angeles, where every spring one of the world’s largest and
most famous music festivals takes place. Hundreds of thousands of
people gather there to rock out to world-class musicians—amidst a
lot of partying, alcohol, and drugs.


In the midst of the mayhem, LOV has been meeting for years,
praying for their valley to experience revival. They’ve brought in
evangelists, done events together, and relentlessly asked God to
move in their churches and communities.
When the network’s founder, Dr. Paul Cedar, called me and invited
me to speak, I briefly explained the 7 Values of a Gospel Advancing
ministry and told him I wanted to train his pastors in them.
Later he told me that when he hung up the phone, he began to weep.
He said: “This is what the valley has been waiting for. We’ve far too
often looked to programs, outreach events, and speakers to help us
experience a sweeping move of God, but these Gospel Advancing
values are what we need. They’re rooted in Scripture and timeless.”
When I came and trained the network of 62 pastors, church leaders,
and youth leaders, you could tell from square one that they were
all-in. Their years of praying together and building a Trinitarian
brand of unity had broken up any hardened ground, so the Gospel
Advancing seeds took root quickly.
Afterward, I met with the seven or so leaders on the network’s exec-
utive team, and they asked me what their next move should be.
I responded quickly: “Well, first of all, don’t just start another
program. You and the executive team start praying for your lost
friends, family, and neighbors (Value #1), and then start relation-
ally sharing the Gospel (Value #2). In the process, you’ll be fully
embracing and modeling Gospel Advancement, not only for your
churches but also for the other members of the network.”
I continued: “In the meantime, let Jason [the leader of the youth
leaders’ network] unleash the youth leaders in the valley to lead the
way and set the pace for all the churches, because teenagers tend to
come to Christ quicker and spread the Gospel faster than adults.
We can see this revival start in our youth rooms and spread to our
church auditoriums.”


“Count me in!” Jason exclaimed. “Count the youth leaders’ network

in.”
I turned back to the other pastors. “Along the way, we’ll get you the
coaching and resources you need and figure out how to unleash
these values deeper and deeper into all the churches here.”
Now plans are in the making for an area-wide effort to get every
adult and teen trained in evangelism, so they can reach everyone
in the valley—and everyone who visits the valley for the annual
Coachella concert.
Maybe soon, this valley that’s been known for the world’s biggest
music festival will be known as the epicenter of the world’s biggest
revival.
And it will have all started with a Gospel Advancing network!



Beware the
Party Poopers!
I remember my excitement a number of years ago when a restaurant

chain I loved opened a new location close to my house.
I strode in and ordered a half-chicken and two sides, with a Diet
Coke. The manager rang it up on the register and said, “That will be
no charge, sir.”
“What?” I asked. “What do you mean no charge?”
“Well,” he explained, “since it’s our grand opening, we’re offering all
food free today.”
“It’s free? Totally free?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re not kidding?”
“No, sir.” He was starting to get a little frustrated with my disbelief,
so he said it again. “All your food is free.”
“Could I add a brownie to my order?”
“Of course, sir.”


“And it’s free too?”

“Completely.”
I was in heaven. Before me was a tray full of delicious food—com-
pletely free.
I sat down and quickly devoured the steaming-hot chicken, mashed
potatoes, and brownie. I gulped down my last swig of Diet Coke,
completely satisfied. Well, not completely. I had to get a refill of my
drink before I left. And you guessed it—free refills!
As I walked to the parking lot with my large drink in hand, I saw
some people headed into the restaurant.
“Did you know all their food is completely free today?” I asked.
They looked surprised.
“Free?” they asked. I recounted the conversation I’d had with the
manager, and they excitedly headed in to get their free food.
I got in my car but decided that instead of just pulling out and going
home, I’d drive through the parking lot of the grocery store behind
the restaurant and let the shoppers there know about the free food.
Like a crazy man, I drove up to various people, pointed to the
restaurant, and yelled: “Hey, there’s free food there today!” I scared
a few people in the process, but I couldn’t help myself. The food was
free, and I wanted everyone to know about it!
If I feel that way about free food, how much more excited should
I—and all of us—be about the free gift of salvation? The apostle
Paul put it this way in Romans 3:22-24:
We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus
Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter
who we are.
For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious
standard. Yet God, in His grace, freely makes us right in His


sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when He freed us from

the penalty for our sins. (NLT)
The Good News is so good that we have to tell people! I saw this
personally and powerfully when my family came to faith in Christ.
They “drove through the parking lot,” so to speak, to tell anyone
and everyone the Good News of Jesus. They told friends, coworkers,
neighbors, and strangers. They couldn’t help themselves. They had
tasted grace, and they had to get that message out to everyone.
That’s what we see happening in the early church, between Acts 1
and Acts 14. The church exploded, spreading from Jerusalem to
Samaria and beyond. Paul and Barnabas had gone on their first
missionary journey, and their message was well received. Everyone,
everywhere, was buzzing about the Good News of this free gift of
God through Jesus Christ.

But then came the party poopers—no, not from outside the church,
but from within.
While Paul and Barnabas were at Antioch of Syria, some men
from Judea arrived and began to teach the believers: ‘Unless
you are circumcised as required by the law of Moses, you
cannot be saved.’ Acts 15:1 (NLT)
The believers were used to attacks from the outside by unsaved
Jewish leaders. But this attack came from believers within the
church who’d made the long trek to Antioch to pick a fight with
Paul and Barnabas.
The Christian legalists in Judea had heard that Gentiles were coming
to faith in Christ in droves in Antioch and that these new converts
were not at all like the many God-fearing Gentiles who’d been will-
ingly circumcised according to the law. For these legalists, it was a
matter of national pride that salvation came through the Jews. And


if Gentiles could come straight to God as they were, it felt like a

slight against their Jewish heritage.
So the law-loving legalists decided to make a road trip, in order
to educate these naïve believers that it just wasn’t that easy. These
Gentiles must be circumcised and keep the law—in addition to
believing in Jesus, of course—if they truly wanted to be saved.
This attack brought their missionary movement to a complete halt.
No longer could Paul and Barnabas just head out on another mis-
sionary journey. Instead, they had to take time away from spreading
the Gospel to travel 300 miles to Jerusalem to work this whole sit-
uation out.
What does this have to do with you and your youth ministry? As
my old pastor used to say: “If Satan can’t attack the messenger,
he’ll attack the message.” In other words, if Satan can’t destroy you
personally through things like burnout, moral failure, or a broken
marriage, he’ll seek to attack your message. He knows that if he can
get you—or any leader in your network—preaching a lesser Gospel,
it won’t spread as fast, because a works-based Gospel message isn’t
good news at all! It’s just another performance-driven message,
from another performance-worshipping religion.
I’ve seen it in far too many youth ministries, and the scenario typ-
ically unfolds like the following real-life example: A powerhouse
youth leader was preaching the message of grace and advancing the
Gospel in powerful ways in his city.
But then the senior pastor started questioning whether these were
genuine conversions. Like the legalistic believers who attacked the
message of Paul and Barnabas, this pastor chipped away at the grace
message that was causing the youth group to thrive, and he sought
to add conditions. He verbally attacked this youth leader’s message
as being incomplete. He made it clear that simple faith in Jesus


wasn’t enough, and that these teenagers had to go all-in to serve

Jesus to be truly saved.
He tamped down the movement and brought the grace party to a
halt. The confrontation shook the youth leader to his core.
¢

How can you identify party poopers in your own church? They can
be tricky to spot, but they’re the ones who fill the minds of once-
joyous believers with rules and requirements about what it “really”
means to become a Christian. Ask them how a person is saved and
they’ll say, “By grace, of course.” And then they’ll roll out a scroll
that’s full of checklists to prove your salvation, complete with pre-
requisites you must abide by to receive this “free gift” of grace.
The apostle Paul had strong words for the legalistic Judaizers of his
time who wanted the Gentiles to accept God’s grace through faith
but also be circumcised and keep the law of Moses. Paul bluntly
wrote about them in Galatians 5:12: “As for those agitators, I wish
they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!”
Wow.
Today, nobody—as far as I know—is seeking to add circumcision to
the free gift of God’s grace as a requirement for salvation. In our day,
a far more subtle movement has crept into the church. Twenty-first
century Pharisees have replaced circumcision and keeping of the law
with an “evangelicalized” list of dos and don’ts.
These pious-sounding party poopers cause Christians to doubt
their salvation and land on the never-ending treadmill of trying to
prove, keep, and/or earn their salvation.
«¤
How do you guard against the legalistic pressures of our day? You
prayerfully keep your eyes peeled and your spirit attuned to anyone


or anything that distorts Jesus’s free grace. With this in mind, here
are eight ways to recognize when someone is being legalistic:
1. They cheapen grace by focusing on what we must do, rather
than on what Christ has done.
2. They always have a big but: “Yeah, we’re saved by faith alone,
but ____________ (fill in the blank).
3. They’re “fruit inspectors,” hypothesizing about how much

spiritual fruit a person must produce in order to truly be saved.
4. They focus on things like turning from sin, trying harder, and
crying about failures, instead of on salvation by grace alone,
through faith alone in Christ alone.
5. Their “gospel” could never be falsely accused of being a license

to sin—as Paul’s was in Romans 3:8.
6. They scare others with assertions that if you preach too much
grace, people will run amok.
7. They confuse passages that talk about sanctification—how

God grows righteousness in us after we’ve been saved—with
those about justification—how Christ gives us right-standing
with God when we’re saved.
8. They use the phrase “you mean to tell me….” Then they create
worst-case salvation scenarios about those who claim to be
Christians but abuse the grace of God. “You mean to tell me
that someone can be saved and still…?”
When you encounter someone struggling with any of these eight

things, make every effort to remind them of the true message of the
Gospel and the free grace that comes along with it—because grace
that isn’t free is no grace at all.


A generation ago, Welsh preacher Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it this

way:
There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching
the New Testament Gospel of salvation than this: that some
people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean
that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by
grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can
go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound
all the more to the glory of grace. … If my preaching and
presentation of the Gospel of salvation does not expose it to that
misunderstanding, then it is not the Gospel.¹
Boom!
I also like the way Paul said it in Romans 11:6: “And if by grace,
then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be
grace.” Salvation is either by grace, or it’s by works. It can’t be both.
If we’re not careful, though, we can muddy this truth in the way we
talk to students about salvation. It’s easy to slip into using famil-
iar but inaccurate terms—such as “make Christ Lord of your life”
or “turn from your sin and accept Christ”—that imply we have to
do something other than simply have faith in Christ and what He
did on the cross—how He took the punishment we deserve for our
sin—to receive the free gift of salvation.
When we put salvation in those terms, we’re giving students a chal-
lenge they can’t meet. It’s impossible to fully “make Christ Lord”
or “turn from our sin,” until after we’ve been saved, when the Holy
Spirit indwells us, growing in us the willingness and power to do so.
Because here’s the crazy thing about grace: Once you receive it
through faith, it begins to transform you. You become a new cre-
ation (2 Corinthians 5:17), and Christ starts to change your desires.
Sure, we can abuse grace, and, if we’re honest, we often do. But when


we let grace do its work, it does exactly what Paul describes in Titus
2:12: “It teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions,
and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age.”
God’s grace is not a license to sin, but rather a reason to serve Jesus
with reckless abandon—not because we have to, but because we
get to.
If we resist, He persists. If we fail, He forgives. If we lose our faith,
He remains faithful (2 Timothy 2:13). That makes me want to serve
Him all the more. Sorry, legalists, but grace is a better fuel.

Let’s turn back to Barnabas and Paul. How did they handle this con-
tentious situation? Acts 15:2, 4-11 describes it this way:
Paul and Barnabas disagreed with them, arguing vehemently.
Finally, the church decided to send Paul and Barnabas to
Jerusalem, accompanied by some local believers, to talk to the
apostles and elders about this question. … When they arrived
in Jerusalem, Barnabas and Paul were welcomed by the whole
church, including the apostles and elders. They reported
everything God had done through them.
But then some of the believers who belonged to the sect of the
Pharisees stood up and insisted, ‘The Gentile converts must be
circumcised and required to follow the law of Moses.’
So the apostles and elders met together to resolve this issue. At
the meeting, after a long discussion, Peter stood and addressed
them as follows: ‘Brothers, you all know that God chose me
from among you some time ago to preach to the Gentiles so
that they could hear the Good News and believe. God knows
people’s hearts, and He confirmed that He accepts Gentiles by
giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He did to us. He made no
distinction between us and them, for He cleansed their hearts


through faith. So why are you now challenging God by burdening

the Gentile believers with a yoke that neither we nor our
ancestors were able to bear? We believe that we are all saved the
same way, by the undeserved grace of the Lord Jesus.’ (NLT)
Paul and Barnabas were willing to fight for the Gospel message.
They knew that there’s a time to do battle, and that time is whenever
anything or anyone threatens the message of salvation by grace.
So Paul and Barnabas made their way to Jerusalem and gave a
report of how the Gentiles had been radically saved—without being
circumcised—and that’s when some stood up and insisted: “‘The
Gentile converts must be circumcised and required to follow the law
of Moses.’”
How did Peter respond? First, it’s important to note that they had
“a long discussion” together. There was a genuine effort to come to
a meeting of the minds. But Peter firmly, while relationally calling
them “brothers,” reminded them that the way of the law is impossi-
ble by asking: “‘So why are you now challenging God by burdening the
Gentile believers with a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors were
able to bear?’”
If we go the way of the law, we have to go the whole way, perfectly, all
of the time! But Peter knew God has provided a better way through
Christ, so he was willing to stand up to fellow believers to protect
the purity of the Gospel of grace—and you should be too.
¨ ¤

£

Several years ago, I noticed two gang members in the food court of
a local mall. When I saw them, God moved in my heart to go start
up a conversation.


Both of these gang members were wearing the color red—they were
members of the Bloods—and both of them were way bigger than I
was. One of the guys looked like he could have played linebacker
in the National Football League, and he was the one interested in
talking when I steered the conversation toward Jesus.
He was riveted to every word I said. When I explained the Gospel,
he was ready to respond. The end of the conversation went some-
thing like this:
“Does that make sense?”
“Yes.”
“Then would you like to put your faith in Jesus right now to forgive
you for all your sins and receive the free gift of eternal life?”
“Yes.”
Then I quizzed him to make sure he understood the Gospel. “So if I
see you 10 years from now and ask if you have eternal life, what are
you going to say?”
“Yes, I do.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Jesus died for my sins, and I trust in Him, not my good
deeds, to save me,” was his spot-on response.
But I knew God had placed me there in the middle of the food
court as something more than a ticket puncher for a one-way trip
to Heaven. I knew God had way more for this guy, because life with
Jesus starts when we say “yes” to faith in Him, not after we die and
go to Heaven.
I wanted him to know the futility of the gangster life, but I wanted
to explain it in a way that would help him know that serving Jesus
should happen because we feel grateful, not guilty.


It was then that God gave me an illustration.

I asked him a hypothetical question: “What if I walked up to you
with a big bag full of cash. Let’s say it contained $1 million, and
I came offered it to you free of charge, with no strings attached.
Would you take it?”
He thought for a second or two and said, “Yes, I would.”
“After you took it, would you slap me in the face, push me to the
ground, kick me, spit on me, and then walk away with the bag?”
“No, I’d buy you a hamburger or something” was his hilarious
response.
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I’d be grateful for the free gift.”
“Jesus just walked right into this food court, and through me,
offered you something way more valuable than $1 million. He gave
you eternal life. He gave you hope. He gave you forgiveness of sins.
Are you going to take His free gift, spit in His face, and walk away?
Or are you going to serve Him?”
“I’m gonna serve Him,” he said, with a look of excitement spreading
across his face.
“Why? Because you have to, in order to be a Christian?”
“No. Because I’m grateful for His free gift.”
“What does this mean for your gang life?”
“It’s over.”
In that one moment, in the middle of a food court, that gang
member understood that serving Jesus is not something you have
to do to earn, keep, or prove your salvation. It’s something you get to
do out of sheer gratefulness for your salvation.


Grace transforms. If we don’t see that transformation initially, we
should never revert to preaching the law. Instead, we must preach
God’s grace even more.
I love the words of Charles Spurgeon on this topic:
When I thought that God was hard, I found it easy to sin.
But when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with
compassion, I smote upon my breast to think that I could have
rebelled against One who loved me so and sought my good.²
The grace of God transforms us—and our teenagers—from the
inside out! We need to preach this message of God’s grace again
and again to our Christian teenagers so they walk in it, and to our
unreached teens so they embrace it.
When we do, the party’s just getting started! We can’t wait to rush to
the parking lot and tell everybody. Why?
It’s free!



Apostolic
Resolve
In 1992, British sprinter Derek Redmond was set to race in the

Olympics, which were being held in Barcelona that year. Derek
was not just a good runner but a great one. Although he’d struggled
with injuries throughout his career, he was healthy heading into the
Barcelona games.
In the 400-meter semifinals, Derek started well. But in the middle
of the race, his hamstring snapped. He stumbled to a halt, and then
fell to the ground.
All the runners sprinted past him as he knelt on the ground, grimac-
ing in agony. In that moment, he—and everyone watching—knew
he wasn’t going to win the race.
But he decided to finish it anyway. Mustering his strength, he
pushed up from the track and began to limp toward the finish line,
cringing in pain with each step.
His father, Jim Redmond, who’d been watching the event from the
upper stands of the huge stadium, ran down the stairs and made his


way to the track. He cruised past the security guards and rushed
onto the track to get to his son.
When Jim reached Derek, he put his arm around him to help him
hobble toward the finish line. Olympic officials tried to stop them
and escort them off the track, but Jim Redmond yelled at them and
waved them away. Nothing and nobody would get in their way.
Derek collapsed into his father’s arms and wept. Then father and
son, arms around each other, completed the lap together.
The crowd of 65,000 spectators rose to give Derek and his father a
standing ovation.
In the same way, many of you reading these words have collapsed in
the race. Something has snapped. Whether because of secret sin or
deep hurt or growing disillusionment or ministry burnout, you’ve
fallen to the track and, like Derek Redmond, are deciding whether
to get up and try to finish the race.
The same resolve Derek showed that day is inside you, waiting to be
tapped into. It’s the reservoir of resolve available to you through the
indwelling Holy Spirit. Push up from the ground, and turn toward
the finish line. You may limp in pain every step of the way, but keep
limping. You may grimace in agony with every move, but keep
moving.
Why? Because your Heavenly Father is looking down from the
upper stands of Heaven, and He will rush to your side. He’ll wrap
his arms around you and strengthen you to finish the race. And
when you do, all of Heaven will erupt in a cheer, applauding your
heroic effort, your refusal to give up, and your passion to finish the
race!

I do all this for the sake of the Gospel, that I may share in its
blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run,


but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the
prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict
training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we
do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not
run like someone running aimlessly. I do not fight like a boxer
beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my
slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be
disqualified for the prize. 1 Corinthians 9:23-27
This passage refers to the original Olympic games, held annually in
ancient Greece. The games took place in the heat of the summer (a
downtime in their agricultural society), which added to the pain of
the athletes’ physical exertion. Also, those who broke the rules of
the games were beaten publicly. The original Olympic games were
so intense that some athletes died while competing.
So when Paul refers to running to win and not fighting “like a boxer
beating the air,” he’s talking about the pain-filled, spiritual Olympics
we, as believers, compete in. We’re in a race with Satan for lost souls.
We’re in a fistfight with the powers of the underworld for the next
generation.
And it’s an agonizing fight.
What was Paul’s attitude toward all the pain and agony he would
suffer? He had what I call “apostolic resolve,” and he displayed it by
his willingness to run the race to win, despite any obstacle.
How did he build such apostolic resolve?
We get a glimpse in Acts 20:18-24. Aware that he was headed to
Jerusalem, where he knew he’d face hardships and possible death,
he said goodbye to the beloved elders of Ephesus, many of whom
he’d likely trained at the School of Tyrannus (see page 87). Acts
20:18-24 describes Paul’s goodbye like this:
When they arrived, he said to them: ‘You know how I lived
the whole time I was with you, from the first day I came into


the province of Asia. I served the Lord with great humility and
with tears and in the midst of severe testing by the plots of my
Jewish opponents. You know that I have not hesitated to preach
anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you
publicly and from house to house. I have declared to both Jews
and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have
faith in our Lord Jesus.
And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not
knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in
every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships
are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me;
my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord
Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of
God’s grace.’
Paul’s apostolic resolve shines through loud and clear. So let’s
examine a few insights from this power passage that can help you
stay rooted in Christ with this same unshakeable determination.
¤¥¦¢ ¢¥¤

In his farewell words, Paul addresses the hardships of ministry: “I
served the Lord with great humility and with tears and in the midst of
severe testing by the plots of my Jewish opponents.”
Quite honestly, most of us don’t know what severe testing really is.
It’s what modern-day Christians in Syria suffer as Islamic extrem-
ists hunt them down, because they claim the name of Christ. It’s
what North Korean Christians experience, locked away in prisons
for years and tortured for putting their faith in Jesus instead of Kim
Jong-un. It’s what Paul endured again and again in his ministry that
spanned three decades.
In 2 Corinthians 11:24-26, he runs through his litany of trials:
Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.
Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with


stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a

day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have
been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger
from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the
city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger
from false believers.
How did God use all of this suffering in Paul’s life? He used it to
form and forge him into the image of His Son. He used it all to
scrape away the self-dependence and make him super-dependent
on Christ. In fact, in the very next chapter, Paul gives us “the secret”
to his success: It was failure!
Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was
given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.
Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.
But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power
is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more
gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on
me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in
insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I
am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:7b-10
What hardships are you going through right now? Maybe it’s a
budget hardship—personally or in your ministry. Or maybe it’s a
struggle with a fellow staff member who doesn’t see eye-to-eye with
you. It could be a secret battle with a lurid temptation, or a not-so-
secret struggle with one of the leaders at your church.
Whatever the struggle, hardship, temptation, or trial you’re going
through, don’t give up. Keep moving forward in the power of Christ,
with humility and tears!
God wants to use those trials to make you super-dependent on
Him. As you learn to trust in Him, He’ll forge you and form you
into the image of His Son, the true Rock. He’ll make you fit for the
bold vision He’s put in your heart. Listen to these timeless words


from Oswald Chambers about how our visions and our hardships
collide in the valley:
We always have visions before a thing is made real. … God
gives us the vision; then He takes us down to the valley to
pound us into the shape of the vision. It is in the valley that so
many of us faint and give way. Every vision will be made real
if we have patience. … God has to take us into the fires and
floods to batter us into shape, until we get to the place where
He can trust us with the veritable reality. … Don’t lose heart in
the process.1
¤ ¦¢ ¦¢¥

¤¦ ¦
In Acts 20:20, Paul declares: “You know that I have not hesitated
to preach anything that would be helpful to you.” Paul preached the
whole counsel of God to the Ephesian believers. He gave them
everything they needed to grow in their faith and to go with their
faith to the ends of the earth. Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians should
be your prayer for your teenagers:
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that
you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of
His glorious inheritance in His holy people, and His incomparably
great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty
strength He exerted when He raised Christ from the dead and seated
Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms. Ephesians 1:18-20
Paul wanted these believers to realize they had an everlasting hope
focused on the person of Christ, a glorious inheritance purchased
by the blood of Christ, and an unstoppable power made available
through the resurrection of Christ.
As you seek to infuse the whole counsel of God into the souls of
your teenagers, it will transform them from the inside out. It will


give them ever-increasing confidence to Gospelize their peers, just

as the Ephesians did in Acts 19:10 at the School of Tyrannus.
To do this, study the Word through the lens of the Gospel, because
it was written through that same lens. And preach it! Deliver its
life-transforming message week in and week out, challenging and
equipping your teenagers to dive deep into its riches.

Paul was determined to complete the work Jesus had given him:
However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim
is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has
given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.
Acts 20:24
God has given you a mission, your specific piece of advancing THE
Cause of Christ in your own community. I encourage you to iden-
tify it, relentlessly pray over it, and do everything you can in the
power of Christ to accomplish it. There’s a generation of teenagers
in your midst who are on the highway to Hell, and you and I have
the message that can rescue them from it! Don’t lose sight of this
vital mission.
Have you ever heard the soldier’s slogan “improvise, adapt, and
overcome”?2
As we’ve explored the book of Acts together across these 13 chap-
ters, we’ve seen the church constantly doing just that. Again and
again, they improvised, adapted, and overcame.
These Spirit-fueled followers of Jesus started in the temple but soon
dispersed to house churches. Before long, local elders eclipsed the
Jerusalem apostles, as the church grew and expanded across Judea
and beyond. When persecution hit the church in Jerusalem, the


believers scattered and used it as an opportunity to preach the Word

wherever they went.
When Gentiles flocked to the church of Antioch, the legalists from
Judea arose and pushed against this message of grace. But the church
adjusted again. They clarified and codified the Gospel message,
corrected the legalists, and re-sent missionaries out to make sure
everyone knew the true message of grace.
Along the way, letters were written and circulated from church to
church—each one dealing with various areas of theology and prac-
tice. Between them, a canon of Scripture evolved, containing the
New Covenant in the form of 27 shockingly practical and powerful
books.
Paul improvised, adapted, and overcame, as well. When thrown in
prison, he didn’t sit idly by, waiting for a better outcome. He wrote
letters, which were included in the canon. When he was forced out
of the synagogue in Ephesus, he moved to the School of Tyrannus,
and he adjusted his strategy from adding disciples to multiplying
disciples.
The church was launched with an Acts 2 bang, and it kept moving
and adjusting and evolving, until it had saturated much of the
known world with the Good News of Jesus. This unconquerable
force, these blessed people, this community of love and truth, has
been the rod in the hands of Christ for the last 2,000 years to batter
the gates of Hell and rescue souls headed to a dark eternity.
And now it’s your turn to improvise, adapt, and overcome. So
take the 7 Values of a Gospel Advancing ministry that we’ve high-
lighted in this book, and find your own best recipe for building a
Gospelized youth ministry that fits your context. Make the Gospel
central to everything you do, and you’ll end up with a spicy dish that
gets people so excited they want to share it with others.


¤

Dare 2 Share has a ministry partner we’ll call Jacob. He’s a Kenyan
national, and he uses Dare 2 Share training material across Africa to
mobilize teenagers for the Gospel. His job often has him traveling
to dangerous places where sharing the Gospel is illegal, but Jacob is
both determined and strategically shrewd.
Jacob traveled to a very dangerous place in East Africa called
Zanzibar, an island known for persecuting Christians. He flew there
to meet with Christian teenagers and equip them to share their faith
using the Life in 6 Words app. Jacob was nervous, because it’s against
the law in Zanzibar for Christians to share the Gospel with Muslims
and seek to convert them.
When he first arrived on the island, he got lost, so he asked a teenage
girl he met, named Aisha, for directions to the address he had. Aisha
was a charming and kind-hearted Muslim girl who knew exactly
where it was, and she offered to take him there.
Along the way, she asked Jacob what the meeting was about. He
hesitated for a moment, knowing that if he shared too much it could
get him in trouble. After all, he was there to train Christian teens to
share their faith. He told Aisha it was a gathering of Christian young
people who were excited about God. When she asked if she could
attend the meeting, he got even more nervous. But she was so kind
and sincere that he gave in and told her she was welcome.
When Aisha walked into the meeting, she was blown away by the
energy and excitement in that roomful of Christians, as Jacob intro-
duced her around.
After the meeting started, Jacob had the young people download
the Life in 6 Words app onto their phones and showed them how


to use it. He told them that if they could swipe and read they could
share the Gospel.
Jacob instructed all the teenagers to break up into pairs and start
practicing sharing the Gospel using the app. Aisha was in one of
the practice groups, and the Christian teenager with her took her
through the app and shared the Gospel in the process, role-playing
a Gospel conversation.
After the Christian teen had swiped through all the G.O.S.P.E.L.
slides, the final slide popped up. It read: “Are you ready to place
your faith in Jesus?” The girl showed it to Aisha, who said she was
ready and pushed the button.
The girl didn’t know if Aisha was role-playing or serious so she
asked, “Did you really just now put your faith in Jesus?” With a huge
smile on her face, Aisha affirmed she had indeed trusted in Jesus.
Jacob went over the Gospel with her again to make sure she had
truly understood the message, and she had! In that moment of faith,
Aisha’s life was radically transformed. She had never known that
God loves her. She had always seen Allah as a demanding god who
was hard—even impossible—to please. But now she knew Jesus.
Now she knew that “God so loved the world that He gave His one
and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have
eternal life” (John 3:16). Now she knew love and hope and peace.
Aisha became unstoppable. Using all that she’d learned from the
meeting, she started boldly sharing the Gospel. Evangelism is a
capital offense in Zanzibar, but Aisha didn’t care. She just had to get
the Good News to her friends.
Some of them believed in Jesus but others refused, calling her a
kafir, an Arabic word meaning “infidel” or “deserter” in Arabic.
Within a day, Aisha was arrested and taken to the Sharia court. She
was given 24 hours to renounce her faith in Christ.


But she refused.

So the Muslim authorities asked her if she had any last requests.
She had only one. She asked for permission to write a goodbye letter
to her friends and classmates. The Muslim authorities consented.
That was a mistake. Because in that letter, she wrote about how Jesus
had radically transformed her life. She shared how she heard the
Good News that Jesus loved her and that it changed everything for
her. She shared the message of the Gospel that she learned from the
Life in 6 Words app. She begged her friends and classmates to believe
in Jesus and get rescued from the hopelessness they were steeped in
without Him.
As that letter circulated, first among her friends, then among her
classmates, and finally among the community, many people came to
Christ. Some fled the country. Others were persecuted. But all who
trusted in Christ were transformed.
Revival broke out in Zanzibar because of one teen who was radically
transformed by the Gospel and then showed apostolic resolve to
advance it to her friends.
A mere 24 hours after being sentenced, Aisha—this brand-new
believer—was brought to the town square. The people of the town
gathered around her, picked up big rocks, and stoned her to death.
Aisha died. She died as a modern-day martyr. She died with the
same holy resolve as Stephen, the first martyr of the church.
And her death accelerated the revival even farther across Zanzibar.
Aisha was willing to risk everything to reach her peers. What are
you willing to risk to mobilize a generation?
Are you willing to risk fighting against the status quo of youth min-
istry? Are you willing to risk the apathy and inertia of teenagers who
may seem uninterested? Are you willing to tear down strongholds


and pray until mountains are moved to clear the way for a Gospel
Advancing movement? Are you willing to lead the way for your
teenagers and adults?
Aisha died. Will you die to yourself, to your model, and to tradition,
so that you can mobilize your teens to reach every teen possible
with the hope of Jesus?
It’s time to show apostolic resolve—like Aisha, like the apostle Paul.
Don’t just stand there—Gospelize!
¤


¦¡


¹ Spurgeon, Charles Haddon, Sermon 114: “Preaching for the
Poor,” Spurgeon’s Sermons Volume 03:1857 (Grand Rapids, MI:
Christian Classics Ethereal Library, Public Domain), 81.
² As reported in Simply by Grace: An Introduction to God’s
Life-Changing Gift, Charles C. Bing, (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel
Publications, 2009), 11.

¹ Timothy Keller, tweet from @timkellernyc, July 29, 2013.

¹ Goodreads, “Goodreads.com,” Robert Frost Quotes, goodreads.
com/author/quotes/7715.Robert_Frost.
§
¹ Spader, Dann, 4 Chair Discipling (Chicago: Moody Publishers,
2014), 26.
¬
¹ Green, Michael, Evangelism in the Early Church (Grand Rapids,
MI: Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004), 321.
² Mercer, Tom, 8 to 15, The World Is Smaller Than You Think
(Oikos Books, 2013), Kindle digital file.


3
Spurgeon, Charles, Lectures to My Students (Lynchburg, VA: Old-
Time Gospel Hour, 1875), 36.
®
¹ Ray Vander Laan, “Rabbi and Talmidim,” That the World May
Know Ministries, Holland, MI, thattheworldmayknow.com/
rabbi-and-talmidim.
² Gladwell, Malcolm, The Tipping Point (Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 2006), Kindle digital file.
³ “Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread
of Ideas,” RPI News, Rensselaer, July 25, 2011, http://news.rpi.edu/
update.do?artcenterkey=2902.
¯
¹ Ray Vander Laan, “Province of Asia Minor,” That the World
May Know Ministries, Holland, MI, thattheworldmayknow.com/
province-of-asia-minor.
² Spader, Dann, 4 Chair Discipling (Chicago: Moody Publishers,
2014), 103.
«
¹ Gray, Derwin L., “#Ferguson: Why We Need More Multi-Ethnic
Churches,” ChristianPost.com, CP Opinion, August 15, 2014,
m.christianpost.com/news/ferguson-why-we-need-more-multi-
ethnic-churches-124895/.
°
¹ Cameron, William Bruce, “Informal Sociology: A Casual
Introduction to Sociological Thinking,” 1963, 13.
² Spader, Dann, 4 Chair Discipling (Chicago: Moody Publishers,
2014), 103.


±
¹ Think Exist, “Thinkexist.com,” Billy Graham Quotes, thinkexist.
com/quotation/give_me_five_minutes_with_a_person-s_
checkbook/332189.html.
² Taylor, J. Hudson, “The Source of Power for Christian Missions,”
The Missionary Review of the World, v. LIII (New York: Missionary
Review Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), p. 516.

¹ Lloyd-Jones, Martin, Romans: The New Man, An Exposition of
Chapter 6 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1973), 8-9.
² Spurgeon, Charles, “Repentance after Conversion,” Sermon 2419,
June 12, 1887.

¹ Chambers, Oswald, “Vision and Reality,” My Utmost for His
Highest Daily Devotionals, http://utmost.org/classic/vision-and-
reality-classic/.
² Santamaria, Jason A., Vincent Martino, and Eric K. Clemons, The
Marine Corps Way: Using Maneuver Warfare to Lead a Winning
Organization (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004), 149.


Greg Stier is a champion for unleashing this

generation with the Gospel. As the founder
and visionary of Dare 2 Share Ministries, he is
driven to help the Church activate Christian
teenagers to reach their friends. In the last
30 years, Greg has trained millions of youth
leaders and students how to relationally
engage their world with the Good News of
Jesus. A much sought-after speaker, Greg is
a former pastor, church planter, youth leader, as well as the author
of numerous books, including Unlikely Fighter: The Story of How a
Fatherless Street Kid Overcame Violence, Chaos, and Confusion to
Become a Radical Christ Follower. Greg is married to Debbie, his
amazing wife of 32 years, and has two adult children, Jeremy and
Kailey, who love Jesus and are both radicals like Jesus!


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“Greg Stier takes his infectious heart and razor-sharp mind and

pours it into Gospelize Your Youth Ministry in a way that is both

“This book is a necessary disruption to how we do youth ministry.

“If we don’t make disciples, we’ve missed the assignment! Gospelize

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A D2S Publishing book

Editors: Kellee Katagi, Carrie Evans, Jane Dratz

Printed in the United States of America

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revitalize a key component of what we did both in the United States

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Jesus, so it seems, was a youth leader. He banked on his band of

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‘Yes, He does,’ he replied.

My own life is a testimony of the radical power of the Gospel—and

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Watching the simple Gospel message transform my tougher-than-

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We’ll hear real-life stories from youth leaders worldwide whose

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Jesus starts floating upward, upward, upward. He goes higher and

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•   the impact of the Gospel continued to increase and

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So what does it look like to Gospelize a youth ministry? One way to

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Gospel spice reminds us as believers why we’re here to begin with.

In more straightforward terms, to Gospelize your youth ministry

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The book of Acts is a wild, 28-chapter ride, complete with riots,

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• the impact of the Gospel continued to increase and

to

After identifying these 7 Values in our survey results,

They programmed evangelism, because part of the