Let’s Have a Warm GCYM Welcome for Trent Lewis

It was nearly a year ago now that the three of us that have comprised the GCYM team started this website. We weren’t really sure what would come of it when we decided to give it a shot. We just knew that we loved the gospel-centered movement, we loved youth ministry, we loved each other, and we wanted a place where those three loves could find some kind of mutual expression.

Thus God-Centered Youth Ministry, and thus the thinking, talking, tweeting, writing, and recording that have come with it. And just as we had hoped, we have loved doing it.

We have loved doing it because, more than anything else, GCYM has been a place for the three of us to encourage and challenge one another in our youth ministry roles. We say it a lot, but it’s really true: all the work of a youth ministry website and podcast has been a great excuse for us to take time to develop our own thinking and practice in our ministries. Each of us can point to clear ways that this project has mattered for our real life ministries.

And that’s exactly why we’re excited to introduce you to a new member of the team: Trent Lewis. Trent’s connections to the GCYM crew precede the website, but they’ve only strengthened since its inception. As we’ve all gotten to know each other more and more over the last year, well, it’s just been a total love fest. Or something.

That’s because Trent has a lot going for him. On the one hand, he is a uniquely gifted pastor: we just haven’t met many dudes who can think about church structures and team health much better than him. What’s more, his 16 years of youth ministry experience (in just about every role you can come up with) and current role as a youth pastor’s boss and guy-responsible-for-the-discipleship-of-everyone-who-might-be-considered-young make him the senior member of the team.

As our site continues to take shape, we want to keep producing content that we’re proud of and that we really think will help youth pastors. But the reality is that none of us does this full time. Heck: none of us does this even part time, really, since it’s not like we’re making any money from this thing. So it can be hard to find the time to produce enough quality content to continue to be helpful.

So rather than just throw in the towel and be stuck writing either worse or less material, we figured the smart money was in adding another quality contributor. Our commitment to you is to keep producing content that will equip you to be God-centered, gospel-saturated, theologically-driven youth pastors. We fully expect Trent to do just that.

In just a few minutes, Trent’s first post on the site will be his introduction to you in his own words. As you start getting to know him, we think you’ll feel the same way about him we do.

Welcome, Trent. And thanks for being a part of the team.

Reason #483 to Preach the Cross: To Show Your Students What God Is Like

The gospel-centered movement is pretty constantly beating the “preach the cross” drum. I’m not going to try to defend that sentence, because I don’t think I need to. “Cross-centered” and “gospel-centered” are everywhere, and at GCYM, we think that’s a good thing.

We should constantly preach the cross because the Bible says stuff like, “I determined to know nothing among you except for Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Also because our students need to know the fullness of their forgiveness. Also because we want to make disciples who pursue Jesus, not just moral performance.

Those are great reasons to preach the cross. They are probably also the reasons we think about most often. This post is about yet another reason we should preach the cross, one which perhaps we think about less often: we should preach the cross because the cross shows us what God is like.

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Obviously, we want our students to know what God is like. So our usual approach to teaching them this is to line up a preaching series or a Bible study where we teach the attributes of God by teaching propositional definitions: God’s “omnipotence,” for example, is His “ability to do all that he pleases.” Term. Definition. Verses. Illustration. Application point. Next attribute.

Theological propositions fell out of style there for a bit, but I’m not anti-propositional in the slightest. I learned the attributes of God in this way, I teach them this way, and I would encourage any other youth pastor to teach them this way. While you’re at it, buy your students Erik Thoennes’s Life’s Biggest Questions (or ESV Study Bibles) and A. W. Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy.

But while you do all that, notice this also: the Bible’s primary way of showing us what God is like is by interpreting events rather than laying out context-less propositions. And the climactic event of God’s revelation of Himself in Scripture is the cross. Put another way, one of God’s great purposes in the cross is to show us what kind of God He is.

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There are a lot of Biblical texts that make this point, but John’s Gospel is what got me thinking about it. It is in John’s Gospel that Jesus repeatedly refers to the cross as the place where he is glorified (12:23; 13:31; et. al.).

So what does it mean for Jesus to be “glorified” then? I like Piper’s (completely propositional) definition of God’s glory: God’s glory is “the beauty of God’s manifold perfections.” That is, everything good about God (His “perfections”), taken all together (“manifold”), on display for us to delight in (because they are “beautiful”).

While neither Jesus nor John likely had that exact definition of “glory/glorify” in their minds when they said and wrote those things, it seems fair to say that Jesus is “glorified” on the cross in John in part because it is there that we see the fullest picture of what kind of Messiah He is. As we look upon the cross, therefore, we don’t just see an event; we see a person.

That is why when we see the bloodied body of Jesus of Nazareth lifted up on the cross, our response isn’t horror, but worship. Why is it worship? Because we know that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God, and that therefore the bloodied body is the ultimate display of the fullness of God’s extraordinary, incomprehensible, beautiful-beyond-all-words love for sinners. So much so, in fact, that any time Christians say that “God is love” or that “God loves us,” well, we just can’t help but to talk (and sing!) about the cross.

And that is the key idea I am trying to express: the attribute (God’s “love”) is expressed in the interpreted event (the New Testament accounts and explanations of the cross). Of course, it doesn’t only tell us about His love, either. It also tells us about His wrath, justice, wisdom, independence, omniscience, mercy, grace, Trinitarian nature, and so on.

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So what’s my point for youth ministry? It’s this: when we stop giving our students a regular diet of cross-centered preaching and teaching, we don’t just leave them starving for grace. We leave them starving for God.

If we mostly preach topical, felt-need based Biblical counsel (“How To Stay Pure In A Pornified Culture”) or Old Testament “moral-of-the-story” lessons (“How to Slay the Goliaths in Your Life”) or Gospel stories where Jesus is mostly our example to follow (“Learning to Love Like Jesus”), well, then, we end up telling our students about everything but God Himself. I bet most of our advice is decent. But it won’t give our students God. And nothing can satisfy the heart of a junior high or high school student besides God Himself.

So there it is: one more reason to constantly preach the cross. Let’s help our students grow in their discipleship to Jesus by showing them a God whose nature and character are such that He really is worthy of their worship.And let’s do that by preaching the cross.

GCYM Conversations: Cameron Cole, Chief Everything of Rooted

Five months ago, Lindquist, Kyle and I went to Atlanta to attend the Rooted conference. That was our first full-scale exposure to Rooted, and since then, well, we’ve been unabashed Rooted fan boys. We loved everything about the conference, just as we’ve also loved the Rooted blog while we count down the days until next year’s conference. It’s no stretch to say that Rooted is the premier gospel-centered youth ministry organization out there right now.

Which is why I couldn’t be more excited about having Cameron Cole as my guest on this episode of GCYM Conversations. Cameron and I first discussed taking time to do a podcast back in Atlanta, but we just couldn’t find time to do it. And while I’m a little ashamed it’s taken us this long to get the founder and Big Cheese of Rooted on since, I’m also just glad it finally happened. So here we are, talking about Rooted’s past and future and all things gospel-centered youth ministry.

The GCYM crew all love Cameron, and we’re confident you’ll feel the same way. We’re also confident that this won’t be the last time you hear from him on our site. Take a listen, then go follow Rooted and prioritize getting to the conference this next year (and hey, if you listen to this podcast, you’ll hear Cameron divulge who the keynote speaker will be, which privileged knowledge you can hold over the heads of your youth ministry friends, and what’s better than that?).

As always, don’t hesitate to send your questions to godcenteredyouthministry (at) gmail (dot) com, subscribe to us on iTunes, and rate and review us there as well.

Enjoy!

Download: GCYM Conversations: Cameron Cole, Chief Everything of Rooted