Monthly Archives: August 2008

Stop Looking Down on their “Youthfulness”

Here at Compass we have a very straightforward approach to youth ministry: teaching the Bible.  We teach it in a way that is relevant to the student’s lives without dumbing it down.

Now consider the images that come to your mind when you usually hear the words “youth ministry.”  I am going to guess that these two words are not synonymous with “Bible teaching” in your mental thesaurus.  Why does the image of students sticking their faces into a toilet bowl and bobbing for Snickers bars come to mind? The makeup for much of contemporary youth ministry is mostly games and activities with a little bit of Bible thrown in.  The thought is this is all the youth can handle.

- Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.

This verse says that youth is not an excuse.  Paul is writing to Timothy, who is a young pastor, and tells him not to think that it is okay to be looked down on because of his age.  Rather, Paul challenges Timothy to set the example.  He says that he should live in such a way that people look up to him, even older people.

This same principle applies to teenagers today.  We don’t need to act like we are condescending down to their level.  We need to help them live up to the standards God has set in Scripture.

In fact, throughout the Bible God loves to use young people. He gave Joseph big dreams when he was only seventeen (

).  He raised Daniel to become an exemplary young man in Babylon (

).  And consider the words King Saul said to David before he fought Goliath, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth (

).”  Yet God still used him to lead the men of Israel to victory on that day.

Similarly, God is working in the lives of many young people at our church.  Of course we have fun together, but that is not what our ministry is about.  We empower young people through the preaching of God’s Word in an age appropriate way.  Some students have radically changed by repenting of their sins and putting their faith in Christ.  Some are growing to levels of spiritual maturity.  Many are learning to serve the church and evangelize their schools. Let’s stop looking down on our youth and instead praise the Lord for how he uses them for his glory!

And let’s pray that He will do great things in our high school and junior high ministries this year as we continue to teach the Bible to our young people!