Good morning/afternoon, I m glad you chose to worship with us this morning/ evening. My name is Dustyn Vanzant, I m the student pastor here at

Transcription

1 Good morning/afternoon, I m glad you chose to worship with us this morning/ evening. My name is Dustyn Vanzant, I m the student pastor here at Heritage Church. Last week Pastor Jim began a series called Embrace the Generations which expands upon the intentional emphasis from the Connect2020 initiative. He highlighted our duty to provide a secure place for children, to learn from their example and to remove hindrances we might have in place for the Gospel. This week I have been given the task to talk about students. Now I know as soon you hear Middle school, high school or college, some of you get hives. In fact as I ve gotten to know people here at Heritage, some of you have opened up to me a little. You work with middle school?! I ll pray for you. I could never do what you do! Now these comments are usually based out of some experience in our lives. For some it s because you remember how difficult this time was in your own life. Middle School was awkward, High school was terrible and college was too long. You remember those times and think how difficult it would have been for an adult to be able to speak into your life. For others, you ve had children and remember the fights to keep our kids on the straight and narrow. The relationship and communication between you and your student was like two trains meeting on the tracks in a head on collision. You remember those times, and wonder how to communicate to students in any way that would get through. There s another group that thinks, What is wrong with this generation! They re acting crazy! I mean check this out: People are Awesome 2014 Now for some of us that get your blood pumping! It makes me want to do some parkour. Maybe backflip off the stage. Nah I won t

2 do that right now. But let s be honest many of you out there watched that and winced, right? You were worried. They came so close to disaster many times in the video. I mean what are they thinking? Those videos were of people who finished the trick well, but there are hundreds more videos of people where their efforts didn t end so well. In some ways don t you watch this video and wonder what they re thinking? Why would they do something like that? Didn t their parents raise them better? Their bodies are a temple! Aren t they worried about hurting, or maiming, or killing themselves?! They re flirting with disaster. As I remember back to when I was a student, I remember the times where I was so close to disaster myself. Now there were times I did the extreme stuff like in the video (rock climbing, climbing active volcanos, white water rafting, spelunking, etc.) But there were also those times where I flirted with disaster in other ways. I flirted with disaster in my grades. I literally passed 12 th grade English by a point. I could do the work, but often times I found myself more interested in other things. I flirted with disaster in who I hung around with. My friends weren t always the greatest influences on me. For some it just wasn t a party for them unless beer and pot were involved. I flirted with disaster with my girlfriends. I often chose poorly in who to date. I flirted with disaster with my body. I mentioned some of the climbing and exploring I did just a minute ago. Believe me there were a couple times where I flirted with the edge and won. I flirted with disaster with my parents. There were a lot of slammed doors in my house. It was my form of non-verbal communication.

3 There were some narrow escapes. I m sure if you think about to your time as a student you would probably come up with several of your own as well. You see this age range everything is changing. Your physical development leads you to adulthood. You graduate high school. Start down a path toward a career whether that s through college, or starting a job after graduation. You ve developed some long term relationships, with close friends, and maybe even found a spouse. This is an amazing time of growth and development, with the potential to alter your life forever. It often can feel like the longest, most difficult time in your life. There s a sense that you ve become an adult but not yet. You can take care of yourself, but don t want to. You connect to friends, but feel alone. You re feeling the pressure of figuring out your future but don t want to schedule your tomorrow. In today s culture there is always more competing for student s minds, energy and time everyday. More sports, more extracurricular activities, more video games, more technology, more pressure to succeed. There is more competition for student s hearts than ever before. Not only is there competition for their hearts, but there is a push to get them to the next stage. Students push to be older. If you re Jewish you can t wait until your Bar Mitzvah and you ll finally be considered an adult {Pic 1}. Every Latina can t wait for their Quinceanera {Pic 2}, their 15 birthday, which is when they are considered adults. We dream about being 16 and able to drive on our own {Pic 3}. Or at 18 and considered an adult. And then the 21 st birthday where we are legal for alcohol {Pic 4}. Constantly looking for the next stage in life. As adults we don t help this either do we? So what are you going to be when you grow up? What college have you chosen? When are

4 you going to get married? When are you going to have kids? When are you going to have more kids? We really do ask a lot of questions about their plans for the next phase. Their next stage. I wonder how often we encourage people to enjoy the stage they re in. What would it look like to embrace being a student, in this time, in this place? Is there a way to enjoy what you ve got right now, and not worry about, dream about, plan for, the next stage of life? You know, often times we forget Jesus probably had some of these same issues. So often we picture Jesus as this little 7 pound 7 ounce baby in a manger. Or we picture a bloodied beaten Jesus on a cross, and rightfully so, as those are two of the most visual reminders of Christ. We forget about the middle. Jesus was a baby, so He had to grow just like us, right? He felt the strain of getting homework done. He desired to see his parents proud of his accomplishments. He felt the tugging of culture on his heart toward shiny things too! Jesus was a student. I want us to engage a passage in the gospel of Luke today, Luke chapter 2. Now I m going to come out and say it, there isn t a lot of information about Jesus student years. We have his birth, followed by a story of Jesus going missing from His parents and being found in a synagogue. Then we have Jesus as a full grown man. But there s one verse in Luke chapter 2 we need to zero in on. Luke 2:52, it says, And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. And now you have Jesus adolescence. To be honest I struggled coming up here with such a little verse. I mean one verse, Pastor Jim always has an entire passage. This verse isn t even that powerful. It has very little bling. Definitely no swag. This verse is no John 3:16. It s no Romans 3:23 or even James 2:17. This verse is barely more than filler for the rest of Luke s Gospel right? A transition to get to the good stuff.

5 In fact this verse could be considered a metaphor for how we often times look at adolescence, right? A transition to the good stuff. I think there s more to it than that. There s a growth process here that the writer is wanting the reader to see. It s easy to get frustrated with this age, view ourselves as out of touch, or even prematurely push students to the next phase in life. But I think this verse challenges us to something more. The book of Luke starts this verse with wisdom. It says that Jesus grew in wisdom. Now wisdom would be describing growth of intellect as well as developing the use of your knowledge and experiences to make good decisions. It s not something you re told, it s something you experience and live. Wisdom is talked about often in the Bible. In fact there s an entire book of the Bible (Proverbs) that just has wise sayings lined up all in a row. Wise sayings like Proverbs 3:21-23: Proverbs 3: My son, do not let wisdom and understanding out of your sight, preserve sound judgment and discretion; 22 they will be life for you, an ornament to grace your neck. 23 Then you will go on your way in safety, and your foot will not stumble. This passage is a father telling his son to never look away from wisdom. Don t let it out of your sight. Use your knowledge and life experiences to walk safely through life. Let your wisdom be evident to others like a necklace. It s a father saying son, use what you ve got and let others see your wisdom too. Live it out in the world around you. I began thinking, what wisdom do I have, if any? What wise saying do I have to give? What would I write in my book of Proverbs? So I wrote Dustyn s top five proverbs for today s student. Now before I get started, I didn t include a personal relationship with Jesus as one of the sayings. I think it s the wisest thing I could tell someone to have, however I thought including it on this list would put it on the level of these thoughts. I didn t like that

6 So with no further ado, get your pens ready, here are my top five proverbs for students (in no particular order): 1. Love s not automatic, it s a choice. So often we get sucked in and think a feeling we have will always be there, but often it isn t. Your parents, your girlfriend/boyfriend, your spouse at some point will be difficult to love. If you don t chose to love them, your relationship with them will most likely not survive. 2. Hard work does not equal success. Just because you work hard on a project doesn t mean it s going to succeed as you want it to. People often times put more work into something then success they receive out of it. But I ve got to tell you lasting success, success that is meaningful to you, always came about by hard work. 3. The more effort it takes to prove you are something, the less likelihood you are what you are trying to be. Funny people don t make announcements about their funniness, they re just funny. 4. There s going to be days when you feel lost, or hurt, or sad, and that s ok. Often times our society has taught us to be emotionally detached from everything happening around us. Stop Crying! You re too emotional! Suck it up be a man! There will be days when you feel lost. You re going to get hurt. Things are going to happen that make you sad, and it s ok to react. It s ok to cry. It s ok to be emotional when things don t turn out how you thought they should. 5. We have to persevere through normalcy. We live in a world that is all about drama, yet a lot of life is repetition. We can t live the life of Jack Bauer everyday. We don t wake up

7 with the drama of living in Kardashian house every morning. Much of life is finding the joy, the love and the peace in a normal day. Alright those are Dustyn s wise thoughts, please use them as you see fit. But at the end of the day, as we grow, we need to develop wisdom. If you don t know how to develop wisdom, you say man I m not really growing in wisdom. James tells to ask God for it. Check this out, James 1:5 says, 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. Unfortunately we aren t born with wisdom. We have to develop it over the course of our lives through learning, life experience, and making mistakes. This is where it gets messy. You ve got to make some mistakes in order to grow in wisdom. Now obviously we would prefer to make minor mistakes, or learn from someone else s failure. But wisdom comes from experiencing the sting of defeat and the emptiness of failure. Those guys doing the extreme sports probably all have stories about when things didn t go correctly. Pogo sticks take practice, Bikes take a while to learn to ride, Parachutes don t always open. But they grew wiser in how to ride, and jump, and how to control their bodies through those tricks. You begin to understand how to move your body, how to make the surf board ride the wave, and how to use the walls to your advantage. This is why Luke includes stature in this passage. Jesus grew in stature. He learned what his body could do and couldn t do. Which is exactly what we all do right? We flex in the mirror. We jump and try to touch the basketball rim. We stay up late even when we don t need to. We test our balance on the curb walking in to the grocery store. We play sports.

8 We notice our bodies, and how they are growing. Some of us become fascinated with them. We begin trying to direct the growth don t we? We work out, lift weights. We put on makeup and high heels. We cut our hair, pop our zits and make sure our smell doesn t overpower others. All of these things help us feel more comfortable in our own skin. Often times we don t know what to think as we change during this time, and anything that gives some extra confidence helps. Cause at the end of the day we want people to like us, even when we don t like ourselves. We are born with a sense that we want people to like us. We desire to be pat on the back, be shown love, to be favored. Which is why the author then mentions that Jesus grew in favor with God. I ve been mulling over what this means for quite some time. This idea of God s growing favor is a difficult concept to really understand. Throw in that we re talking about Jesus here, who we believe to be God. And now we have God growing in favor with God. It just sounds odd. I feel like the place to start unraveling this question is at the beginning. Growing in favor with God starts with a relationship with Him. Our acceptance of Jesus payment of sins is the precursor to God s favor. Last week Pastor Jim showed some stats, adults who found faith were more likely to find it in grade school. But the second most likely time? Middle and high school, at about 30%. About a third of all adult Christians found their faith as a student. Now there is a secondary underlining direction that s happening here. What we see leading up to this verse is a child Jesus who interacts with the Biblical text. Who isn t afraid to ask difficult questions, questions ahead of his age and maturity. It says this in Luke 2:46-47: 46 After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them

9 questions. 47 Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. Luke 2:46-47 Jesus asked questions. He asked deep penetrating questions that surprised and confounded the adults around him. How often has that happened in our own lives? Our children, our students, ask lots of questions. They re always wanting to know how things work. Why we believe what we believe. Often times we don t know how to answer them, do we? This is where things start to break down isn t it? When I don t know the answer to the question. I don t want to look stupid. I don t want to hurt their faith. I don t have time to answer these questions. Or worse, these are questions that you ve had for quite some time, and have never taken the time to figure them out. Now your son, your daughter, is poking in these areas that you aren t ready for. WHAT DO WE DO NOW? So we go to the church right? Surely the Church will be a safe place to ask questions. Let s see what they ll say. Often times, however, the church has been elusive when it comes to answering questions, hasn t it? Churches often like telling people how they should live life but it s rare to find one that speaks life and grace into the deep questions of life. The Church might say sure bring your questions, but often times when you start asking deep meaningful questions the Church gets uneasy. We can be good at cliché responses, but light on necessary answers sometimes. Well that s why God is God and I am not. I guess we ll have to ask God when we get to heaven. God has a purpose for everything! In general we push questions to the side. We relegate them as unneeded. And we label the asker as a troublemaker. I am just as guilty as everyone in this way. I haven t always responded to questions as I should. I freeze when asked something I

10 haven t thought about. I don t have all of my own questions answered. We need to keep pressing though. Students need a safe place to ask questions and find answers. If your son or daughter asks a question that you don t know the answer to, that s a great place to begin studying together. Find a website, find a book, find a pastor, find some way to engage that question. Pray for the answer. One book I ve found helpful, that engages questions, and even brings up questions you ve never thought of is Faith Unraveled by Rachel Heald Evans. It s a difficult book. It s going to stretch you if you read it. But I think it helps us start asking questions and begin deeper discussions. It s in these times, when we ask difficult questions and seek the answers, we begin to grow in the favor of God. That s what He s looking for, someone who engages their faith. Someone who asks the hard questions and isn t satisfied with pat answers. People who grow in faith in spite of their doubts and questions. You know, when you are working to find answers, often times you are actively engaging other people too. Our faith journey, our wrestling engages others. Which is why Luke ends the verse with Jesus grew in Favor with people. Jesus engaged others with his questions and His answers. This is social growth. It s our learning to challenge others to love more and care deeper. It s learning to use our influence to encourage others to live better. To give and receive from each other. One of the greatest ways for a student to grow in favor with people is to interact with adults more. It s easy for students to be insulated with their peer group and only interact with a parent or teacher in a school. As a church we should be pushing students and adults into situations to interact with one another. Because of the type of community a church is, this should be the easiest space to move students and adults together.

11 As I think about the future and how we can influence students to have more favor with people. A place where students grow in wisdom and stature and favor with God. If we were to envision a place like that, what would the students be doing? What actions would be happening around us? When I think about this, I think of three things happening: - Adventure I want our students to experience life. To have incredible experiences that they can figure out who they are and what their passions are. To go places and see things that they never thought possible, and maybe that their parents never thought possible too. o This adventure might look like our summer mission trip to Guatemala. If you haven t heard we re taking a group of students on a mission trip to Guatemala. We re going to be going to a jungle school and interacting with kids and students from neighboring villages. This is going to be a powerful experience for our students and they will come back knowing more about themselves than ever before. o This adventure could also look like high school and college graduates taking a year off after graduation and going overseas before starting their next stage of life. Heritage has an amazing missions department with great connections across the planet. Imagine emerging our students in a new culture and challenging them to bring Jesus to people in new and innovative ways. - Boldness I want our students to learn boldness. I want them to hear the cries of their lost friends and do something about it. I want them to share their faith and live it out on a daily basis. o Boldness looks like learning to share your faith with your friends and family. In March the youth group is attending Dare 2 Share in Columbus. It s an awesome experience that teaches students how to share their faith, and puts them in situations to engage others in spiritual discussion.

12 - Community I want our students to experience real community. Students need a place where they can ask tough questions and engage others in discussions that lead them deeper. We will provide avenues for the students to find community. o In a few weeks we ll be starting TURN our transition program for middle school students to enter high school. It s a place where they can ask their difficult questions and find Biblical teaching. They find community together as a class that moves through life together and helps transition into high school. Our student ministry at Heritage is committed to growing our students through adventure, boldness and community. So the next question is, are you? Are you willing to take the time and invest in the growth of our students? Maybe you re wondering what that would look like here at Heritage. Well I have some thoughts It would look like: - Students having an adult outside of their parents interacting with them weekly. Not in some program, or event. But an adult giving them a call. Asking them to grab a Coke after school. Going to their sporting event and cheering for them. An adult actively engaging them through the week. - Renew our language and thinking about students. Students aren t our future, they re our today. You show me a growing vibrant church and I ll show you a growing vibrant student population highly involved within it. You want to see revival in our nation? It starts in our student population. The way we think, the culture that we produce, effects the growth of our student population. - Using your talents and abilities to engage students on their turf. Taking your hobbies, talents, or abilities and providing an avenue for students to learn. The how and when of engaging is negotiable but the constant is having an adult walk through life with them. Someone who listens, responds, challenges, and

13 invests in them. That s what Connect2020 and Embracing the Generations is all about. Last summer two guys came to us and said hey we like to play Golf, is there anyway we could invite students out, play a round of golf together and do a Bible study. God and Golf was born. There are so many untapped gifts and abilities here at Heritage, it ignites me to see the impact we could have in our city. We are poised to completely remake the culture of Westerville and by extension Columbus. Right now in our high school youth group alone there are 14 different schools represented. Plus all the middle schools associated, plus all of the college campuses these students attend. When our students make their faith their own. When they have adults that pouring into them. When they get it watch out. Watch out Westerville! Revivals start in the hearts and minds of our young people. Will you join us and engage students? Will you use the gifts, talents, and abilities God has given you to literally change our city? Last week you saw a video called one of the five, centered on helping in the children s department. Here is the next installment of the video: ONE OF THE FIVE VIDEO Now, I don t have a team of cute little kids to pass out cards. Our campaign asking to be one of the five isn t a gimmick. It isn t a ploy. We honestly need men and women to step up and give their time and effort to connect with students. I invite you to respond on your steps card if you feel God calling you to invest more in students this year. What I do want to do this evening/morning is take some time and fill out the steps card with you this morning/evening. I don t want you to fill this out like you usually do, I want you to think of this as a time to pledge support and effort to create a better youth ministry at Heritage. To create space for students to grow in their faith. So go

14 ahead and pull out your steps card from your bulletin. Which I am going to do here as well. And fill it out with me. Name. Contact info. Mark the box for youth ministry. In just a few moments we ll be passing the offering baskets around. Now around here this is where our regular attenders and members give financially to what s going on here at Heritage. I invite you to put your completed steps card in the basket. Let s see what God can do with His people taking a step toward our youth. Let s pray