My wife Jenene and I love working with and hanging out with ministry leaders and watching their ministries develop. Recently, I have discovered a new passion for our youth and God has touched my heart in a way that I would never have imagined.
In the past when I thought about making a difference in the world I felt somewhat unattached to our youth and didn’t much have much interest in working with kids. It feels like I grew out of touch despite the fact that we have five adult kids and five grandchildren. But in one weekend, my world got rocked, everything changed and I had a major breakthrough about the future and what’s possible as we usher in a new generation of young leaders. I now can see that future generations are going to depend on us collaborating in unique ways to raise up a generation in a time such as this.
After spending time with a bunch of kids that are living in a single parent environment I began to see opportunities that I was blind to in the past. Life circumstances can create leaders or followers and we encourage leadership.
One of our ministry partners, Shoulder to Shoulder is opening charter schools that help children that nobody else wants to educate. These kids are not only smart but gaining confidence in their future. College is now real for them because they’re getting the attention, education and mentoring to see a different possibility for their future.
I am also experiencing a new brand of students that are coming out of college with teaching credentials. They’re willing to take a pay cut in order to help kids that are stuck in a pretty tough family environment. There’s a lot of evidence that God is moving on the hearts of young leaders.
Coach Roz, another one of our friends and he has an after school coaching ministry and works with kids in seven different schools. He helps them get in touch with Jesus by coaching and mentoring them on their character. It works.
One of our other friends has a ministry for college kids that are stuck living a vicious lifestyle of sex, drugs and alcohol. The theme of this ministry is to give them the lounge experience without the drugs and alcohol. This ministry gives the 18 and over group the fun community experience without peer pressure.
All of these leaders are making a huge impact on people’s lives and impacting the culture. They’re focused on the individual but also on shifting the city. That’s a game worth playing and one we want to influence.
Maybe you’re like me and you missed that these young people are the next generation of leaders. It’s up to us to mentor these young ministry leaders that are out there drawing the broken and captivated into a brand new life of hope. They need our wisdom and they need the mature believers to pour into them.
My wife Jenene says, “God will use the remnant. The leaders that will rise in the next ten years will be the unlikely, invisible ones that were once seen as unloveable, throwaways, even former criminals. But Jesus will use the ones that have either played in the enemies camp or were put there by their family circumstances. Whatever the story is, they’ll become the overcomers with incredible culture-changing testimonies.”
We have a huge opportunity and we believe now is the time to act. We encourage you to see how you can mentor or coach and collaborate with these young leaders and “look for the gold in them” as my wife would say. They are the future.
