Confession #1  ”If we have a few more young people then we will really have a youth group”

One of the hardest things on any relationship is unmet expectations. Marriages, friendships, businesses, and ministries suffer from it.  Over the least few years I have been guilty of saying and thinking something that is very damaging to the ministry I lead. “If we have a few more young people then we would really feel like we have a youth group!?” 

Since we started as a church plant and not a church split disguised as a church plant we started from scratch. In the Sundays leading up to our launch we had two girls in our youth meeting. Oh man, it was awesome we were called the OG Army and it was my wife, myself, and two sisters. I love those girls and they are both faithfully serving God.. but we did not feel like we were meeting any kind of definition for the word army.

It was during those beginning days when I began to make this mistake. I would think Jesus had his inner circle of 3 so I need 3. Then when we got 3 I thought we need 12 to be like Jesus and his disciples. The journey from 3 to 12 took much longer and took more effort then I would have ever imagined. Then when we got to 12 I felt like we needed 120 to be like the upper room. When we got to 120.. well I do not know we are not there yet.

Steps that led to these unmet expectations

One day I received a call my my mentor, missions team leader Austin Gardner asking me if I would pray about joining him as he planted a church in Alparetta, GA. I was more excited then I can describe. The chance to work with him on a daily basis, to plant a church, lead a youth group was more then I could handle. I moved to the city as quickly as I could, started visiting schools, and began to have big dreams for the youth of the community. I knew we would have a church where discipleship and leader training would be in it’s DNA.

I grew up only seeing two types of youth ministry, extremely big and extremely small. I developed the idea that God only used the big and God was waiting for the small to get big before He could use them. I did not apply that idea to myself. I knew I was young, growing, and need more time to grow but God was able to use my life. I just did not recognize that to be true in the life of our youth ministry.

Over time my dreams started to be less about God’s glory, the teenagers of north Atlanta, and became about me becoming someone great. It was during this time that I began to add things to what I expected to see in the youth ministry. I did not picture myself at my kitchen table discipling a couple of guys but saw myself teaching to thousands. This led me to begin desiring things God did not have in planned for me.

Disclaimer

I am all about goal, dreams, vision, planning, and plodding. However, the thoughts I had were not motivated by those things in the purest form. I had thoughts like, “I deserve better”, “I am working to hard to have such little impact”, “Just a few more then we will become significant.” I began to look through the students and only imagine what we could become.

Road to Recovery

Realizing that God has already been better to me then I will ever deserve I confessed to God my sin. I had selfish ambitions that I called a vision. It became about making something out of my life and not about His glory. I love my teenagers more then I can express. I do not need one more to feel like a “real youth group”. Our teens our going to turn this would upside down for Christ. We have many more days of growth and work to go.. but God has given me one of the greatest gifts. Young people to train, inspire, and lead in the cause of world evangelism.

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