 Awesome. Hello. Everybody good? Sweet. Okay, you're making me hungry later when it's done, right? You're all leaders, man. It's so difficult to eat right before. So, okay, yeah, just a reminder. If you're familiar with Prezi, if you would, go to the App Store, download Prezi Viewer, and then you'll be able to follow along with me. Go to the Twitter page. Jeff, you do not have to follow me. This is not a shameless plug for follows. You don't have to follow. But if you click on that link right now, that will open up what you're going to see here. And you can screenshot and save these this content here. Okay? So, let me just say it helps to know who's up here in front of you. And I want to know who's out there because I think that makes a more successful session. I do this full time. I started an organization about 11 years ago called Youthology, YTH, kind of popular in the youth culture, is shortening up youth to YTH. So, I thought, you know, what better way to use that than to start my own organization called youthology.com, the study of youth, theology, the study of God, biology, right? So, the website is real simple. And if you are interested, if you even during this session, if you go to the website, YTHOLOGY.com, youthology.com, these notes are in the blog section. Okay? I know that you will ask oftentimes, hey, I'd like that information. Could you give me that? All you have to do is go to my blog. There's nothing that I'm not saying or doing here. And that's by design, that's not on the blog. So, if you go to the blog on the drop down, go into the search bar and put in trends. Okay? You'll see this content. All of my content that I take from sessions, if it's not on the blog, I put it on the blog. So, I'll get the recorded session of this, and I try to sync them. I've been doing that for 14 years. So, those of you that blog know what I'm talking about. Every week I blog. And I've been doing that for 14 years. So, oftentimes it'll be like, hey, man, where can I get that? You went over seven of those or five. What was the source again? If you go to the blog, all of this will be backed up right there. Okay? So, anyway. So, how about you? How many of you are full-time youth pastors or youth leaders? Raise your hand if you're a full-time youth pastor or youth leader. Good. Good. Senior leadership. Senior pastors. Lead pastors. Yeah. Yeah. Or next gen. Maybe you're over a whole department. Good. Good. And then volunteers, the rest of us volunteers. Now, volunteers, I want you to stand real quick. And you'll see why I'm doing this. I want the volunteers to stand. Other than giving them a shout out, right? I want you to look across the room because 80%, the statistics say 78 to 82%. So, I'm going to put it right in the middle. 80% of youth leaders in America are volunteer. Only 20%. Only two out of 10 churches in America have a paid youth pastor. Isn't that insanity? I mean, we don't think that way because we're in a larger setting, right? And those of you that have multiple, that's why you're here because you're not working somewhere if you're a paid. But if you look around, these are the people. If we don't raise the level of youth ministry at this level, at the volunteer level, we don't raise the level of youth ministry in America. So, I just want to say thank you to you because you took time off to be here because of the things that you do and you don't get to check for it, right? And all of us who are paid to do this are so grateful for what you are doing to sacrifice your time to help us build youth ministry in America. Amen? So, thank you. You can be seated. This is my 35th year in youth ministry. I know. I started when I was like, what, five or, you know, seven or whatever. I was born in 1963, like somewhere around there. At the height of the Jesus movement. As a matter of fact, I was born in San Francisco and Lee talked about, you know, the hate Asbury. If you go to my social media in January, I was at my home. I was born on the corner of hate and Asbury. On the corner. I wasn't born three blocks off it. I was born on the corner. It's now a drug store and a clothing store in the bottom and all of that. But anyway, I was there in January. I go every January and I walk through the hate park, which is three blocks from the apartment where I was born. So this whole Jesus movement thing was born in me early. And you'll see that come out of some of the things we're going to do here this morning also as we talk about trends and building culture and that kind of thing. Okay? So this is, as I said, my 35th year in youth ministry. My, all three of my kids are in ministry. One is married with two grandkids and one on the way in LA. Some of you may have heard of Zoë Church in Chad Beach. He's the youth. My son is the youth pastor out there. Then my daughter, my middle, he's 30. My middle daughter's 27. She's married with a grandson also. And they're in New York City at a little small work called Hillsong. Yeah. And so they're working there. And then my youngest son, just as 24, so three years apart, he's in Sydney, Australia, finishing up his leadership degree at Hillsong College. All in youth ministry, my youngest pursuing young adult ministry. So I guess that just says youth ministry didn't ruin them and didn't scare them too much. My wife, some of you know my story, my wife passed away about three years ago. And so I'm processing that whole, this new season of life and I'm able now to just even pour my life more into what I'm doing. I do this full time. This is a passion of mine. I will sit with large conferences and large sessions like this. I will do this past weekend. I was in Kentucky with a church and their youth staff and I just finished a year of coaching with them. So if you are interested at all to follow up after this session on the website, okay, there's a coaching tab on the website. And you can look at that information and I would be glad to help you in any way that I can. It would be the cheapest and most valuable consulting that you've ever seen. Okay. I have zero overhead and a lot of passion. So if you're interested, I would love to help you. Okay. So let's get to this, trends in youth ministry and how to build this kind of culture. I have the advantage, disadvantage of traveling. I don't get to be in one place at a, you know, for a year or two or five years and see the fruit of the ministry anymore. That's difficult. I miss, I miss pastoring, but the one thing that it gives to me is an advantage on the condition of the church in America because I'm in the rural suburban and urban setting. I'm in the small, medium and large church. I'm in the multicultural setting, the interracial setting. I'm in a lot of different settings. I'm in the Pentecostal setting and I'm in the non Pentecostal setting. And so to be able to see youth ministry and all of those different settings is a university of education. I mean, it really is. If you think about it, to be where you're at in one setting, you get this look, right? And I know that the world is global, right? But there's nothing like being in setting to get a feel for the vibe and the culture of a place, right? And so what I'm going to do in this session is to take you through about five, six, seven, we'll see how much time we have to do this. I'm going to take you through what I see in the American church today. I think a couple of these things are global and I'll allude to that when I get there. But I want to take you to my observations of multiple settings of youth ministry and what I see going on. This is the number one question that I get asked in sessions. What we're going to do at the end of this, we're going to do a quick Q&A for 10 minutes or so and hopefully maybe define other things that you want to talk about within this content so I can, you know, place it in your setting. But when we do this, I hear this all the time, what's going on? And you take us, be a futurist, take us on a ride, put us on that 30,000 foot view and take us on a ride and show us what youth ministry is like. So that's what we're going to do, all right? And I want to start with this idea of truth. One of the things that you will see, there we go, one of the things that you will see growing in youth ministry in America is an emphasis on theology. And that's encouraging to me because we cannot raise disciples on gaga ball in nine square. Hello? Listen, I like games, but I love theology. Lee could tell you, as he mentioned earlier, I was his youth pastor, Lee could tell you we never played a game in youth ministry. We never played one game in youth ministry. But we did a lot of theology. I did not want my students to graduate after being with me for seven years, maybe through middle school or maybe just four years in high school, or if they came as juniors or seniors. I didn't want my students to come out of youth ministry and not understand the Ten Commandments. I didn't want my students to come out of ministry, come through our work and not know the Sermon on the Mount, at least where to find it, not understand the Gospels, to not have heard some of the greatest stories ever told in the Gospels. I didn't want my kids to graduate out of our youth ministry and to not have heard about the difference between the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit. And so we spent more time in theology than we would spend in games. I mean, think about that, because we can teach students how to pray and play, right? I know most of us would rather teach them how to play. And we spend more time playing sometimes in youth ministry than we do praying in youth ministry. And so I see this increase of theology in a major way, like on a broad spectrum, okay? If we could put, you know, on one side play and on another side pray, we would see all of the dots on play, we would see this tipping point, like if you saw the fulcrum in the middle and this were a teeter totter, it would lean to the play side, because I'm in these settings all the time. As a matter of fact, one of the things I hear often is, okay, hey, you're speaking tonight. You're going to follow the game. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, please, you know, Linda Lee, you listen to me, Linda. No, you listen to me, right? That kind of thing. They're like, no, no, no, I shut up, right? I don't want a game tonight. Just would you skip the game tonight, right? Like I'll be at Radiant Youth Wednesday. No games, no games, no games. So anyway, I don't, I don't want to have to have this, this fulcrum tilted to the play side. Now, I know kids want to play. In some conferences, okay, you're not going to hear this message. You're not. I've been to the conferences. You're not going to hear this message, what you're going to hear is programming versus presence. I'm going to, I'll try it on this side over here. I know you're right. Okay, I'm not preaching. This is a session. Never mind. I think sometimes we spend more time in programming than we do presence. And what happens is then we raise kids who love programming and not kids who love presence. And so when they're, when they have to make a decision on what is right or wrong, they're moved by their feelings instead of the hello. They're moved by, did they win a Gaga ball game? They're moved by, how did nine square go that night? They're moved by super slimy that night, right? Instead of the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount or the gifts of the spirit that are afforded to them or the fruit of the spirit in that moment when they have to choose what's right. So I see this rise in theology. One of the things that concerns me, I want you to see this, one of the things that concerns me with this teaching is this idea of the new Gen Z study. Have y'all seen the Barna Gen Z study? So Barna just did a brand new study. If you want to get it, it's just called Gen Z. It's an orange book. You can get it on their site, but I don't work for them. Okay. It's Barna.org. If you go there, order the Gen Z study. It was a two year study that David Kinneman and the team just completed. And here's some of the findings. Number one, only 4% of Gen Z has a Christian worldview. I mean, concept that. Put that in and just think about that. The generation before them, the millennials, were up in the 12, 15%. And the generation before them, Gen X was in the 20s. And as you go into the boomers and the silence, it rises into the 70% worldview. So we have consistently lost the millennial and the Gen Z set to a Christian worldview. So when we say things like a return to theology, it's almost brand new to this generation. They don't know what it means when we say things like awakenings, revival, renewal. They don't understand that because they've never lived through it. They might have heard about it, but they've never lived through something like that. Think about it. The last significant spiritual awakening in America took place in the Jesus movement. I know what you're thinking. No, no, no. What about Brownsville in Florida? That was significant regionally and locally. And some would say maybe America, you know, we heard it on the news, maybe went a little bit here and there and people made fun of it or whatever, but it didn't shift the way we think in America. It didn't shift. Time magazine didn't call it the most significant religious movement in American history like they did the Jesus revolution, the Jesus movement, the Jesus people. So when you look at the latest, the most recent significant spiritual outpouring, our young people haven't seen anything like that. And that's not good enough for me, and I know it's not good enough for you. And the only way that we can lead them back to an awakening is through a Christian worldview. And that's called theology, truth. That's why that's the first trend that I see as we're moving in this direction. So be encouraged. I want you to take a little mind poll real quick just for you. Don't stand up and shout this out, you know, nothing like that. But do you see an increase or a decrease in theology in your ministry? Do you see an increase or a decrease of theology in your ministry? I want you to gauge that. Percentage of how much time am I spending with messaging and series versus gaming and lights and programming and making sure the evening has flow and video content, right? How much time am I spending in theology? Because if we don't change theology and leadership, we are not going to be able to change theology in this culture. So creating, I like to say it this way, creating a renewal in individuals, a revival in groups, and an awakening in the mass. You see that? A renewal in the individual, a revival in the group, and an awakening in the mass. In order for that to happen, we have to get back to theology. And you'll see, you'll see one of the other trends how easy that is. Okay, let's move on and go to the second one. The second one is the sexual revolution. Wow. We have seen some revolutions in America. We've gone through, some say four or five, I've read writers that say we've only been through three. So it just depends. I'm going to throw these five out here to you. I believe, and I'm not going to talk about each of these because I don't want to spend time necessarily on these, but from the 20s, the 50s, 60s, 90s, and now the 2015, let's just kind of hit that, that last one. We are in a significant sexual revolution right now where not only the family has been redefined, the individual has been redefined. Okay? Where we used to have binary terms. You know what I mean when I say binary terms, a choice of two, male and female. Genesis, the Genesis intent, always go back to first things. I have this grace on me with the gay community. And notice I said gay, not homosexual because there's a shift even in their thinking. I don't know if you've noticed or heard, but the homosexual agenda of the homosexual community is going through a shift right now where the activists and the progressives and the radicals within a homosexual group have chased out the more conservative who call themselves gay. It's true. I know a little bit of what I'm talking about. If you're into government, some of you know Richard Grinnell. He's the ambassador to Germany. He's my younger brother. And he's the highest ranking gay Republican in the movement. And he was just appointed in the past year to the ambassador's ship in Germany. And he is leading, one of the leading voices to this split in the homosexual community. There are part of the homosexual community who don't think he's activist enough, who don't believe that he is aggressive and progressive enough for them. And so all the rest of them who kind of fit that category, who attend our churches, who want a voice and don't want to be activists and radicalists, have kind of appealed to him and there's this split. He is considered one of the top 50 followers on Twitter on the planet, on the planet, not America, on the planet. If you follow and read through, you will see the division of the homosexual and the gay community. This is the, hear me, it is the perfect time for the church to rise in both truth and grace. Do you understand this? It is the perfect time when this division hits to rise in both truth and grace. So when I hear these kind of things, I want you to, I want you to see specifics. I don't want to just talk in generalities. These are just some of the new terms that are out there. We've moved from a binary to a non-binary situation with sexuality. Really, to be honest, it started with this ESPNW interview with Brittany Greiner. I don't know if any of you saw that, but about five years ago, the former Baylor women's basketball player, Brittany Greiner, who now is in the WNBA, did an interview with ESPNW, the women's, the magazine. You can, you can Google this, you can watch it. Because it's on Google, it doesn't mean it's true, but you can watch the video. Okay. And she made the statement for the first time five years ago, and the statement was this. She was asked the question, so tell us, Brittany, are you male or female? And she kind of leaned her head back and she answered the question this way. She said, well, you know, that's the problem that I have. I was raised evangelical, you know, my father disowned me when I turned homosexual at the time, the term she used. But why do we have to be male or female? Can't we just own the middle? And if you'll Google owning the middle, they entitled the ESPN, the magazine interview front page owning the middle. And we started to move from a binary to a non-binary setting where it's not now male and female, it's all of these kind of things. And so put your mind around just some of these thoughts. And we don't have the time to hit the definitions for these, but these are only, I came up with over 30. I think there might, I don't know, maybe 12 or 15 there. I don't know, maybe, maybe, maybe more. To include all of them, you'd have to update it tomorrow. It is the perfect time for identity work. It's a perfect time for identity work. A girl, middle school girl walks up to me just a few months ago. I had just made one statement, same-sex attraction is not sin, right? Same-sex attraction is not sin. And this, that one phrase just stayed with this middle school girl. And at the end of this, this evening, the youth, her youth leader brought her over and she's in tears and called me down and we're talking. And she said, say it again, say it again. And I'm like, sweetheart, what? She said that thing you said about being gay. And I said, you got to remind me. She's like the attraction thing. And I'm like, oh yeah. And so I just looked at her and she stared me right in the eye. And I said, sweetheart, same-sex attraction is not sin. And she embraced me right there in front of her youth pastor and told me her story. Just a few months before that, she was with all of her girlfriends and they were on the bed texting, you know, they're on the bed texting and they're watching a movie. And she had this thought in her mind. What would it be like if I kissed Melissa? And then she kind of dismissed it, right? But she couldn't get it out of her mind because she's sitting next to Melissa and there's five of them on the bed or six of them on the bed, right? And she had this thought. And so Monday, the weekend goes, Monday, she goes to school and she talks to Melissa and she says, this was really weird, man. At the party the other day, you know, we were just hanging out and texting on the bed. I had this thought. It would be crazy to just kiss Melissa. And Melissa said to her, you know, I was thinking the same thing with the girls. We must be homosexual. And for weeks and months, just that statement because of the attraction began to mess with the identity of one of our kids and our youth groups, identity work. And one freeing statement, just because you're attracted doesn't mean you're free this middle school girl. So they're taught all these kind of things in school. This is common language in schools today. The kids have heard these, I bring this up in students who are in sessions will be like, oh yeah, oh yeah, have you ever heard about the one intersex? Have you heard about the intersex one? There's all kinds of new age things that are the perfect setup for a youth ministry to do identity work and take students back to Genesis chapter one. Because hear me, listen, everything that has come after scripture, listen, everything that comes after scripture is culture. And culture bows to scripture just because it's prevalent doesn't make it truthful. Just because it's popular doesn't make it truthful. And so to get that in your in students heads today, we take them back to Genesis. I mean, don't even visit other places, start right there. God created them male and female and said, multiply the earth, subdue the earth, govern the earth, begin your family, right? So any other feelings, the Canadian doctors who found a third way, you can Google that and read that article too. Just three years ago said they think they found a way to create a third kind. Okay, God. So when we see these kinds of trends taking place, this is the perfect time for the church to rise. Let me tell you why. When you see these next few and these two, the reason why I say it's time for the church to rise is really simple. In 1 Chronicles, chapter 32, they are listing the tribes of Israel. And as they go through the tribes, they describe the characteristic traits of the tribes of Israel. And one of those tribes was Issachar. You know where I'm going now, some of you. And it said of the sons of Issachar that they understood the times and they knew what to do. And of their captains, there were over 200. It's an insight into the characteristic traits of the tribe of Issachar. In other words, they were God's sociologists. There were God's sociologists. Every, hear me, every youth leader should be a professional, a veteran at sociology, understanding trends in people groups and subgroups, understanding kinds and types. Because this is what we work in. When you look at our target, it is a subgroup of the whole of America. Jaques, Brainiacs, right? And the spectrum in between. And you have all of these tribes, groups, circles, possees, you know, whatever the, you know, squads. You have all of these present from the Jaques to the Brainiacs alternative. It's all of these different kinds. And if we're not understanding of each of these kinds of things that are going on, we're going to miss an opportunity to reach into that subgroup and speak contextually. You understand me? Speak in context in their language. I believe, hear me, if a missionary came to America and saw the way we do youth ministry, they would scratch their head and say, I don't, I don't, I don't get it. How come you're not on campus? Why are you not at the donut shop? Why are you not at the coffee shop? How come you didn't go to the game Friday night? Why are you not at the dual meet where eight schools were just there on Saturday? Oh, oh, oh, you're inviting them to come on Wednesday night. Oh, okay. I get it. Neutral site ministry. Okay. That's why, hear me, that's why America is struggling in youth ministry because we don't understand neutral site ministry where we go into their setting and we bring the, see, we have raised a group of teenagers in America who would rather go to church than be the church because everything we do spiritual is done at the church and it's not done in context. Right? So that's why we're doing these trends. Okay. Next, let's look at worship. One of the things that I see growing in young people in America is worship, but not necessarily of God. Right? Read, read this. We don't have to teach this generation how to worship. They already know how to worship. They worshiped themselves, their bae or their bestie. Right? It's like, oh, I love you. I love you too. I love, they already know how to worship their icons. They know how to worship YouTube. They know how to worship social media. They know how to worship him and her and self. We don't have to teach this generation how to worship. We have to teach this generation how to worship God. That's the challenge in youth ministry. Our challenge is not, you guys need to learn how to worship. No, they're all like, uh, we're pretty good at that. We already know how to do that. So how do we do that? I want to give you, um, I want to give you six ways to increase worship in the setting where you're at. Okay. Number one, space and time in your programming. You need to allow for plenty. I don't, I'm not going to say what it is, but plenty, generous time in worship. Wednesday night, Friday night, Sunday, whatever you guys meet, whatever that setting is, you need to allow for and program for a generous amount of worship. Now I understand not everybody has full teams that you can put up there that are attractive, that can set the mood. I get that. Not everybody in your setting is going to look like it did this morning, but hear me. It doesn't have to. Not with these kids. And let me tell you how easy it is to produce, okay, sound and sight for these kids. For those of you that are struggling with worship, create a playlist on YouTube. I was just at a youth, winter youth retreat out in California in the mountains up there. And it was several youth groups that came together and God had put it on the heart of the main youth pastor who was planning this thing to not bring live worship. And so they hundreds of kids, okay, lighting, huge screen, all that stuff, but all they had was one of the key worship leaders, a young adult who's on acoustic guitar and about four or five other people singing. That's it. No other instruments. And what they did is they cut a playlist out of YouTube of the top songs that there were every youth group was already singing. And they let the groups know and I'm telling you, there was zero, hear me, there was zero loss of intensity, presence, because at the end of a clip, all the students knew was verse, course, course, bridge, right? They all knew that stuff. They knew the progression. But at the end, they still had the one acoustic, right? And he would just say, listen, lift, lift it. And it was still, right? And then bam, the next song would roll in off that like effortless. And here's the intro and they can see, you know, united or they can see Corey doing reckless look. And all of the sudden, these students now who many of them were from some of the smaller youth groups who never get this, unless they go to camper convention, realize, you know what, we can have this every week because they already have playlists on their phone and listening to it in their bedroom. So why not infuse our youth ministry with playlists just to give the team a rest? I know it sounds manufactured, doesn't it? It does. I get that. But if you do it right, it won't be manufactured. Okay. Number two, spotlight fine arts and students. One of the things that I've had a blast watching students do is spoken word. Students love spoken word or drama solos or group human videos, right? Where they, you know, all the human video work. These kids have dramatic, lesbian and theatrical skills that we haven't used. And so just to increase the worship in a youth ministry, don't get stuck on a fast song and two slow songs. How about between the fast song when you start, you throw a kid up and he does this spoken word that they just wrote and then you roll in off that spoken word into worship, the creativity, right? I know some of you are like, man, we're past that. We got three teams working. I get that. I know that. Okay. But not everybody's there yet. And I think that those of you hear me just like the retreat that I was just in. I think those of you who have all the live stuff and you have the professional leader or whatever need to get away from that sometimes and go into acoustic mode and go into fine arts mode. A girl who just finished first in Oregon for fine arts painting painted a picture of my Angelo and this was a picture of healing of racism. And when I walked by the room there where all this art was held, there were more hear me, there were more students looking at that painting than there were students out by the food trucks. And there were hundreds of students walking through this room where all of their friends art is on display. Kids are drawn to art. So using their gifts, right? Number three, change our music as leaders. I think the reason why some of our students don't worship is because we don't. We might sing, but we're not worshipers, worshipers. And part of the reason is because of the music you're listening to. But I've talked about it in the last session. I will put nothing before my eyes. Don't keep me from your presence. And I think one of the things that has become an idolatry in youth ministry is our music. I am very careful to what I listen to. And I get all truth is God's truth. Okay? I love me some chain smokers. I mean, not a chain smoker, but some of the depth of their writing. When you look at your consumption of music and the students hear you, social media, message, quoting, what are you reinforcing in their mind? So as leaders, we have to purify our, our own self so that we can be true worshipers in front of these students. Okay. Mindful, how many of you feel freedom, complete freedom whenever you have youth service? When's the next Sunday night? You know, right? Whenever you you complete freedom as the leader to worship, to bow down, to dance, or are you caught by, I don't know, the kids going to like this and, you know, we got to move on to the next thing. The one thing that I think we have to return to worship setting in youth ministry is mystery. Mystery. The kids don't know what's coming next. Are they going to pray next? Are they going to preach next? Are we going to do another song? Are we going back? Are they going to call everyone forward who has mystery in worship? So we're not just going through the motions. You got that? Four. Pop-up nights of worship. Man, where you just say, at the end of every series we do, we're doing live worship tonight. We're not doing anything else. When you come on Wednesday night, all we're doing is worship. And that might be tactile worship, where at the end of the first song or two songs or whatever, we put some music on and they go over to a table, a sand table, and they write their sin in the sand table and then erase it. Right? Try that. Students will flock to the sand table or they go to candles and they light them, you know, for a friend they're praying for or whatever. All these kinds of tactile worship pop-up nights. Five. Neutral site worship. I mentioned that earlier. Sometimes the reason why our students don't worship is because they think they go to church to worship. Instead of going to church worshiping, I'm about to do not say that. Do not say that because I'm feeling like it. It's a moment right there. Sometimes what all we've done is said, you can come here, you can come here and hide from all, hide from the culture, hide from reality and worship God under this, right? Nobody will see you and then go be whoever you want to be. That's what we've done. Listen, we don't mean to do that, but outreaches are held at the church. What? That is not missiology. Everything we do is done at the church, so it's reinforcing to our youth ministry, it's reinforcing to our students that they are codependent on the church. I don't want to raise codependent students who the only time they worship, the only time they share their faith, the only time they act spiritual is if they're at home at the church, but not at home, right? With their parents, not at work, not on the team, and certainly not at school. And we're the ones that have supported that. So taking the youth ministry, we did every quarter, we moved our youth ministry to a school, we moved it to the beach, we moved it to the mall, or we went to the airport. I can remember taking our youth ministry to what used to be called Kent County Airport, Ford now or whatever it's called, and we would go to a hangar there. There was a hangar there that could seat several hundred, and we would just take our students and say, you know what? We want you to understand that you don't just worship here at church, right? So that's what I mean by the neutral site. And then theology and increase of God, the study of God will increase worship. I want to ask you a question. As a leader, do you use the same language describing God? Have you used the same language as you describe God? God, you're powerful. God, you're great. You so love it, right? And we have these three, four, five phrases. Every year I ask God to give me a characteristic trait of him that I can study. And this year, do you know what he asked me? He asked me to study his trait of terror. I never said, God, you're terrible. You're terrible. I mean, I've heard, you know, and we might have gone, but I've never focused on that. And since January, I have focused on the terribleness of God. And it has increased my purity, hear me, and my worship, that God is jealous, angry for me. So, okay, we got to keep, what time is it? Okay, it is not. Is it 15? Oh no. Okay. Okay. This is what I call racism. It's not a new term. I mean, I didn't make it up. It's been around, but I see this huge increase run away from racism. Now, hear me. I know this is a mostly white crowd and I'm the white dude saying this, okay? I did not just say there isn't racism in America. I didn't say that. I'm not that foolish. But let me tell you where I believe it exists mostly. And that is in adults who have been hurt by it for decades, who will not let this younger generation unremember. While this generate, you know, if you're a teenager or a young adult in here, you know what I'm talking about. Some of you, even who are older, white people or whatever, you don't even recognize it because of your privilege. I get that. But young people that are in these sessions, when I go to this, they come up after, they're like, you are so freaking right. All we hear is the anger of my uncle or the anger of my mom and dad. And they never let me stop thinking about what happened back then. Again, please, I didn't say there wasn't racism. What I'm saying is, what do we want not? Because we're gonna get what we celebrate. And if you look, just go back into my social media. I post every line or two pictures of young people across this nation. They don't care about racism. If you're a teenager or young adult in here, you know what I'm saying. Because you have friends on your team. You have friends in school, friends in your youth ministry. It used to be said that the church was the place where we were most segregated. That's not happening anymore. Not where I'm going. So I don't know who's saying that still today. I've heard their voices and I could give you their names. But I have so tweeted against this and so marked out against this and blogged against this. And I wish it wasn't just the white boy. I wish some of my friends and my black friends know what I'm talking about too, because I have these discussions all the time. I wish we could get a whole new generation listening to young people on this idea of racism. Because they want to heal and an older generation won't let them. Some key words. Look at this first. 50% of Gen Z are non-white. Highest generational percentage who have multiple race relations. And we don't want to talk about that. Hear me? The more you hang around young people, the more encouraged you are that racism is growing in America. We just don't celebrate that enough. You don't hear it on the news, but it's beautiful. Oh, we got to quit. We got to quit family. I didn't even get to family. Maybe I'll do, I'm doing this session again, right? We're repeating it. So, wow, we could go to family. We aren't just raising a fatherless generation anymore. We're raising a fatherless, motherless, and siblingless generation. And that should change the way we do youth ministry. So, maybe I'll start with that one. I don't know, because you probably won't be back anyway. You got other things to do. But again, that content, the content is there. If you go to the post, the content is there on that one. Okay. How can I help you in, we have 11 minutes and we have to be done. Yes. Can you get a, you got a mic? Good. Because we're recording this. We want to hear the question too. It could be something on the lines of these trends or maybe something totally off base. I know it's in the book, but if you want to talk about something else, we could do that. All right. So, and I know how these go. You're like forming your opinion. Should we do this or not? There won't be enough time once we get going. So, jump in right now. Thank you. Okay. I was raised in the church. I did all the way through middle school, my freshman year, and then my sophomore, end of my freshman year, sophomore and junior year of high school, I fell away from God completely. I was totally away from God. We got into the party scene, everything that came with that, ran away from home, really, really rough life, and then came back to Christ on a night when he interrupted me at a party. I was stone drunk, smoking marijuana, and God showed up at a party, not at church, not at a convention. There was no band. And that night, I was never, May, 1980, or at the end of my junior year, I was never the same again. I never cussed again, never smoked again, never drank again, all the stuff that came with the parties, overnight it was gone in just a powerful conversion. So, yeah. And what I see, maybe underlying the question, what I see happening today, and I know we talked about all fire this morning, what I see happening today is a return to a seriousness in youth, a presence-based youth ministry and not a program-based youth ministry. And it's attracting these kids because of the next trait. I didn't even get to this, supernatural, the supernatural, listen, our students are familiar with the supernatural and the youth ministry is foreign to it. There are no less, I counted them last night. I did this last night, I've been saying 13 or 14, but last night I went through, there are no less than 18 supernatural shows and movies out today. I counted 18 of them last night. So, if we're not touching on the supernatural, that's the whole presence and program. Okay, go, next question. H&M. They're like $10, they're like $9.99, man. They might rip apart if I pull them, but you know, rip. So, as it says there, I believe love is the greatest evangelistic tool that we could offer this generation because of that. They are, hear me, they are loved, conditionally. They're loved conditionally at the school. You better do this or you're not gonna, they're loved conditionally on their teams. If you're good enough, you'll play. They're loved conditionally at home in too many cases. If the youth ministry, if youth ministry in America will love students unconditionally, listen, if we will love students truly unconditionally, God will send us more. When is the last time you cried for a teenager? I don't mean cried because of a teenager, right? They're driving me nuts, you know, no. When is the last time you cried for or with a teenager? So, empathy is part, we have to model as youth leaders, okay? In one of my blogs, I give seven ways to build family and youth ministry. So, if you just go to the blog, put in family, you'll see it. Seven ways to build family and youth ministry. And I'm giving you a couple of them already, unconditional love, modeling it at the married level or if you're not married at the single level, right? Bringing them into your home and showing them this is how, you may have been raised by auntie or uncle or grandma and grandpa or a guardian, but this is how we work. This is what it looks like. Last night, I'm in dinner after closing out this coaching session for the last year in Kentucky, in this Kentucky church. Sorry, I'm going so fast. And we're out to dinner and one of the youth leaders says to me, says, hey, can I just say something before we all leave? I have two adopted in my family and the hardest thing for me, they're both nine and 11, so they're older. And this is what she said. The hardest thing for me is unlearning everything that they had learned before. Isn't that a powerful statement? And so, almost one of the ways that we can as a youth ministry is to help them unlearn conditional love and bring to them unconditional love. I'm not supposed to say this, so I'm telling you this. I'm not supposed to say this, but I tell youth leaders all the time, please hug the kids. Please hug the kids. Now, I know the difference between making out with the kids and hugging the kids, and so do they. And sometimes it's the side hug, because you know that she's got a crush on you, right? And sometimes, my wife was really good with that. She'd be like, just shake her hand. Just, okay, just shake her hand right there. That one, don't ever talk to her again. I'll take, I'll deal with that, right? Jane was very, was very protective. She was wise. But if you love a teenager today, God will send you another one because they are missing unconditional love. Does that help? I know we could go more. We could, we could do a session on empathy. We could. Yeah, one in the center here. While you're going over there, one more thing I would add too is to train your youth leaders to not sit together or stand on the back up against the wall, right? As sheriffs, don't do that. Sit with the kids, man. Yeah. Now we're for real. Now we're for real. I wish we could give this mic over to some of the leads in here who would maybe not be in that setting because they're here, but the way that I like to answer this is two ways. Number one, if you're a volunteer, you don't have a choice. You're going to have to work and you have to create the chemistry. And part of that chemistry comes through communication. You as a young person, as Paul said in Ephesians chapter six, have to obey because it will be well with you. And that is a promise. That's what Paul said. If you obey your elders, it will be well with you. And that is a promise. It will be actually be long. You have greater longevity. So I want to put that not just in the parental sense, but in the staff setting. So honor, just bring more honor to them. Bring more, pull out the strength of the relationship. Right? I know this because if you're there as a volunteer, you're not going anywhere else. You're stuck, you know, or whatever. No, you're serving, you're faithful, longevity. But if you're in a paid situation, if you can't hear me, if you cannot honor, then leave and leave by honoring on the exit and shutting your mouth afterwards. Or God will never, he will never bless your ministry. We've seen that over and over again. So I'm 133 where there is an honor and listen, you guys know there's so little honor in this generation. They don't honor it much. And so if you, if you're in a paid setting, and I'm not sure what your setting is, but if you're in a paid setting, then you're going to have to leave because it's one vision of, there's a plurality of leadership and there's a singular vision. And it's not the youth vision. So I know that's like really to the point of asking that, maybe some more specifics. Okay, I just did a blog on this about a month ago, two months ago, February, when the question came up in a Q&A in Kansas City, we were doing a live session. And the question, this question came up and I answered it and did a blog. There's actually, if you go to YouTube, I'm on YouTube and we, I post videos on YouTube of these blogs also. So, and we did one, we answered that. What do you do if there's no chemistry in the lead position? So go listen to that too. I'm not trying to get out of it. There's just so much more to go. Does that help? Follow up, follow up, push back. Yep, yep. Because you have the thing, you have philosophies and you have methodologies that you want to use it. If they don't embrace, like I'm, I am coaching with another church and the lead says we're splitting junior high and senior high and the, and the two staff members don't want to because they want the energy there and they're like, so they appealed. I told them, appeal to the pastor. Could we do the services together and the discipleship and events separate? And he said, no to that. So at least they appealed and now they have a decision to make. If I want to keep working for this under this, and I love this place that I'm going to submit, if not, then I'm going to, I'm going to bow out and say, Hey man, somebody else could do a much better job for you. It's a kingdom. This is the kingdom. It's not a contract. It's a kingdom. I got in trouble saying that probably with the, okay. We have one minute. Can we do one more or no? I'll do that. I would rather do that. Will you stand? Will you stand? Spirit of God, spirit of God, I pray that you would place in every leader a love for you and a love for your teenagers. Deep love for you and a deep love for teenagers. We can solve every problem in ministry with those two things. A deep love for you and a deep love for your kids. Amen. Because you know Jesus love teenagers, man. Right?