#24 Young Life

I love Young Life!  It is such a great ministry to high school kids.  I admit my exposure to various high school ministries is somewhat limited, however of the ones I have been around Young Life does the BEST job at reaching unchurched kids with the gospel. I became involved with Young Life my junior year of high school because my friends Amy and Melody had started going to Young Life Club the year before.  They had made lots of friends, had a really great time at camp and they talked about it so much that I just had to go and see what all the hype was about.

While it was a little intimidating for me at first because Young Life had a LOT of kids at Club, probably about 100 or so on a regular basis during the two years I was involved, it was also a LOT of fun!  It was confusing to me at first though.  This is what a typical club looked like, around 100 kids got together every Monday night in one of our classmate's basement, we sang a few fun secular songs, a couple of people would get called up to do some sort of funny game in front of everyone (I always found myself praying I wouldn't get called up as you never really knew what they were going to make you do,)  then a leader would give a 10 minute talk that always started with a funny story or some sort of cool object lesson that would transition to a Bible story, then I think maybe we sang another song and left.

 It was very confusing to me at first because I thought this is a ministry? They don't even really sing songs about God?  However as I got more involved I realized there was a method to the madness.  They were trying to reach to teens who did not yet know Jesus and had not been brought up in church.  Therefore they didn't sing church songs because those kids didn't know those songs and they wouldn't want to sing along, so they picked clean, fun secular songs that those kids would know and be able to get into.  I also realized there was a very strategic plan with the talks.  Every semester you started with creation and the fall of man, then moved onto Jesus' life, finally ending with the last two clubs being the sin talk followed by the cross talk.  Everyone came away from the sin talk feeling horrible because they told us about how we were all sinners and there was nothing we could do on our own to have a relationship with Christ and get to heaven.   Then the next week they would tell you the good news that Jesus died on the cross for you and if you ask him to forgive you of your sins you can have a relationship with God and spend eternity in heaven.  Now the first time I saw this done I was a little skeptical. I thought, "What??? You're not going tell them right away  about how Jesus died on the cross for them and they can be forgiven and recieve eternal life? What if they die this week before they've heard the cross talk??? This is crazy!!"  However I soon came to realize that it was actually a good thing to let the students dwell on their need for a Savior for a little while, it really made them come to terms with their hopelessness so that the next week when they heard the good news about the cross and Jesus' resurection they were ready to accept his gift of grace and forgiveness.  And of course if there was a student who was really upset and approached a leader or another student wanting to know the answer to their problem right away they would of course tell them and not necessarily make them wait until the next club to discover Jesus died  for their sins.

So while this was a very unconventional way of doing things in my very "churched" teenage mind, I came to love it because it worked.  I saw so many teenagers come to know Christ through this amazing ministry.  I also saw them grow in their faith and be discipled by the wonderful young life leaders.  Many of those I knew who came to Christ through that ministry went on in college to be young life leaders themselves and help lead other high school students to Christ and then disciple them.

My absolute favorite part of young life was the girls Friday afternoon Bible study, that I was able to attend. (I know you were probably expecting me to say Young Life camp, which was a lot fun, but crazily enough it was not my favorite part of Young Life.)    Our Young Life leader Shelia hosted the Bible study at her home and it was a highlight in my week.  We got to study the Word together and then we would usually divide up and pray for one another in groups of two or three.  I loved getting to be in Bible study with Tara, Ann, Jessica (formerly known as Jeska), Gabe, Brittany, Leslie, Jackie and so many other great girls, plus Sheila was the greatest. She always made everyone feel so welcome and loved. She was full of wisdom and knew how to get through to teenage girls.   I loved that after school Bible study so much that it inspired me to start one in my home that ran for about 3 years while Darin was the youth pastor at our church.  

I'm very thankful that there are ministries like Young Life out there reaching students for Christ. They are doing a great job of helping to expand the kingdom of God and I'm blessed that for a short time I got to be a part of the ministry at Fairfield.  They have some really awesome leaders there, the Chambers, Keiths and Simms have been laboring for many years and it has been very cool to see how God has blessed their faithfulness.  I pray He continues to pour out His most abundant blessings on them and their ministry.