 Amazing. Welcome everyone. Thank you guys for being flexible. I know we're starting a few minutes late and jumping into the break out. My name is Zach Dillon. I'm a student pastor here at Radiant Church. I'm co-leading this session with another student pastor, Pastor Preston Coles. He's currently on his face getting wrecked in the sanctuary right now. So I'm like let him lie. Let him lie. And it's good we prepped together. So he might jump in. If you see him come in like halfway through and he's like all blotchy and stuff. Give him a little bit of grace. He's just getting getting encountered by the Lord. But yeah seriously just wanted to again thank you all for coming today for this breakout session. Again we're gonna be talking about discipleship centered student ministries. Discipleship centered student ministries. Really quick raise your hand in here. I just wanted to kind of know what I'm talking about. If you work with next-gen maybe you're a that's kids, students, you're a leader, you're a volunteer, you're a pastor. Just raise your hand. Amazing. Amazing. Yeah really grateful for for you guys coming out. This really quick kind of just quick introduction of who me and Preston we're gonna imagine he's here right now are. But so we me and Preston grew up together in Colorado Springs, Colorado with David Perkins. So David Perkins was on the prayer panel yesterday. He was our youth pastor growing up and we graduated high school together in 2012 and we grew up in a praying youth group. Praying youth group. And I remember you know being at big events and big conferences and in big moments and it's kind of like the classic mid-2000s youth ministry was our youth ministry expression. Some of you know what I mean. If you don't know what I mean it means like you know we're put in a happy meal in a blender and like whoever drinks it fast but even we we did some crazy stuff. We did a made a coffin out of like see-through glass and we put a kid in there and then we poured like 20,000 crickets on top of him in like there's cockroaches and crickets crawling over him while his team did like a like a yeah like a fear factor. There was there's a fear factor night. We had a kiddie pool full of snakes that kids had to pick up with their mouths you know and like a kid got bit in the eye by a snake and so that was my my youth group experience on Wednesdays growing up but but kind of the same vein there was Pastor David came in and really brought a heart for prayer and here's the thing again I've been in youth conferences I mean six seven thousand teenagers in a room they're amazing I mean our youth group was over a thousand kids growing up like giant room full of teenagers mega church youth group but the thing that marked me and changed my life was teenagers praying in a prayer room. Teenagers praying in a prayer room. I remember I was 17 years old grew up in an again amazing youth ministry but I remember going to a prayer room that we had at our church was 24-7 prayer room and I remember meeting Jesus in a prayer room and the reason I'm standing in front of you today is not because I you know went to a cool youth conference or went to a cool youth group or really connected with a leader it's because I really connected with Jesus in a prayer room and what I want to share with you today is a little bit of our story me and Preston and kind of just in God's grace and sense of humor and putting us both here in Kalamazoo Michigan pastoring our student ministry here so I've been on staff for six and a half years working with the student ministry department Pastor Preston moved here three years ago so we've been kind of running together since that he came on summer of 2019 an amazing time to start youth ministry right you know as soon as you get a rhythm it's like oh like COVID so we got to lead through COVID together and it has been amazing amazing leading with another pastor leader who just has those roots of roots of revival of a praying youth ministry it's been such a blessing but what I want to do today is I want to share with you guys a little bit of our process that we have gone through in our student ministry here at Radiant Church and the process I believe the Lord led us through to emphasize prayer and discipleship as the core of our youth ministry so kind of so I'm gonna kind of break give you guys the timeline we're gonna talk through it and we're gonna process it together but 2019 Pastor Preston comes on I was a year a little over a year in to being a student pastor at Radiant and we previously to my time being student pastor were very event driven like we had giant events every single month it's like hey we're gonna have a theme we're gonna give away hoverboard and airpods and pizza and again Pastor Davidson we're gonna pop a bunch of balloons with our butts and you know it was very very event driven event focused and and with that right we received the benefit of having an event driven youth ministry is that kids come to your events right kids came to the events and we were running our programs and I remember a year when we shifted to that you know it's like the first one it's like a hundred kids and it's 120 and 150 and 200 and 250 300 we're like wow like God is moving but what we saw is that kids would come on Wednesday nights but then for the rest of the week we couldn't get them to engage and it's hard to remember their names and hard to get them plugged in and it was a process so so when Pastor Preston came on we sat down and really the Lord challenged us to identify our why how many of you guys heard Simon Sinek what's your why you know I'm talking about so we had a team retreat and I remember it was like one in the morning and we're just like why are we doing this why are we doing this what's our why in in the Lord really challenged us to identify a clear why first student ministry because if we were being honest and I think I would be honest in my experience is that a lot of us in next-gen ministry the why is because someone told you to do it right the why is because hey we need next-gen ministry and you're the guy you have a call of God on your life and this is going to be an amazing opportunity for you to grow and develop and love this next-generation right like a lot of for a lot of us the why is because someone like tap this on the shoulder and be like I see this in you and that's not a bad why but I believe in this next decade we need a bigger why for our ministry than just someone asked us to do it we need a bigger why for next-gen ministry then it's just what churches do right like if our why is we need a comfortable kids ministry so tithers will be comfortable we have a youth ministry that our why is we need to keep parents happy because we're telling their kids not to have sex and don't do drugs we need something bigger so we were really challenged by that and what we begin to wrestle with is what's our why what's our why for for what we're doing and everything we're doing and from that we kind of identified values and and that evolved into our mission statement our mission statement radiant students as we exist to build resilient disciples who have life-changing encounters with God who transform families and schools in our city resilient disciples who experience life-changing encounters with God who transform is this outside that music I'm like whoa like we're got the worship break out behind us or something resilient disciples life-changing encounters with God transforming families and schools in our city and that process for us of identifying that again that was the first step but it began to challenge everything else that we did once we identified our values and our mission statement what we began to do is say okay this is our mission statement does this reflect the way we spend our budget does this reflect the way we spend our time does this reflect the way we structure our ministry and so jump forward a few more months and then COVID hit and honestly for us COVID was a massive blessing in the sense that COVID was a a clear moment to reset what we were doing and come in step with the spirit right Revelation 2 and 3 again you read it in every single one of the churches Jesus speaks to says blessed as he who hears what the spirit is saying to the church the need of this hour is not next-gen ministers who see what God is doing somewhere else but hear what he's saying about where they're at right it's so easy to even come to a conference like this and I guarantee there's a lot of you guys in this room like I need to figure out what's radiant doing yeah what are they doing in their youth ministry how I'm gonna take my senior pastor wants me to come back with a new small group strategy like we need to stop copying people and hear from the Lord legit like again and there's great strategy I love strategy but if our strategy is to steal the best thing from another youth ministry like that's just we can do better than that we can do better than that and the question that we were kind of brought to was this is does our process drive our ministry or does our ministry drive our process does our process drive our ministry or does our ministry drive our process and we begin to look at our schedule look at our budget look at what we are doing and what we realized is so much of our youth ministry expression existed because that's what youth ministries do not because God called us to do it so practically practically an example of that is our junior high ministry we we looked at we were looking at what we were doing and it's like okay we're running orange curriculum three weekends services a week and we have a summer camp and we're like does that reflect our mission and our value to make radiant disciples and it's like no it doesn't like it's like teaching like moral like moralistic lessons to kids and we do one camp a year and like we did laser tag one night like is that making disciples we had a really good small group is that making disciples and no it wasn't just being honest so COVID was a was a blessing for us and so the question kind of for you guys I want to just give for you guys today even at this conference I encourage you guys to wrestle with is what is God called you to do as a youth pastor what is God called you to do as a next-gen leader specifically you specifically in your context specifically with your kids specifically in your area of leadership what is God called you to do and if it's just to build a youth ministry that's not good enough like if you're calling if you're like I'm here because I'm the youth pastor like that's not good enough it's crazy me impressed some are talking about this and it's just it's this process for us is exposed a blind spot I believe in young leaders that we talked to where we're like hey what's your mission statement what's your why in nine out of ten next-gen pastors that I asked that question to can't answer me they're like well our mission statement is we build the youth we pastor the youth it's like we need a stronger why a stronger why in a clear why a clear word from the Lord then I'm just here to hang out with teenagers on a Wednesday night because that's what my senior pastor asked me to do your question you need to ask yourselves is how can you take the mission and the vision from your house from your senior pastor and how does that contextualize to where you're at specifically specifically again we need specific mission specific values so that was Preston session I know way shorter than he would have gotten so yeah but but what I want to share with you guys now is kind of as we hit that mission statement piece kind of that conversation that took place in in our hearts and in our conversation and it really started with a book that we read called faith or exiles by David Kimman raise your hand if you've read that book so everyone needs I was gonna bring a free copy and give it to somebody but again on the floor crying last session so I forgot in my office but if you have not read faith for exiles by David Kimman you need to order it on Amazon today and get it faith for exiles is Barnett's researches study where they identify the 66% of young people are leaving the church the year after the graduate in high school 66% nearly 7 out of 10 young people are leaving the faith the year after they get out of our youth ministries yet I know this is like even we've been saying this for a few years now this data thing is 2019 but again I can only imagine what the data is now post COVID and when it came out you know I heard it a lot lots of people were saying it but I feel like we haven't been talking about it as much this past season youth pastors and leaders we have to look at the numbers and realize that 70% of our kids if from what we've been doing are leaving the faith after they get out of our youth ministries 70% of the kids that show up to your Cinco de Mayo taco party right 70% of the kids that come to your firework extravaganza I did I did youth pastor sorry I'm it's a little loose but he wanted to do youth nights in the summer called hot summer nights I'm like bro I'm like you got to talk to some Gen Z man like you can't do that no hot summer nights for our kids 70% of the kids that went to hot summer nights aren't following Jesus anymore but we we were reading this book and in a talks about David Kinneman talks about this principle called resilient disciples and he identified that there's a subset of the population of young people that are leaving or that are leaving youth ministry but they are holding to their faith they're evangelizing they're operating and calling their tithers in the church they're building healthy homes and he uses this phrase called resilient disciples and I could spend honestly the rest of the time talking about that to you guys but we felt the Lord highlight that phrase to us resilient disciples and and even if we built it into our mission statement we exist to make resilient disciples our mission and our heart as radiant students what that has looked like for us is I don't care how many kids come on a Wednesday night I care how many kids are following Jesus when they graduate with that this is just an observation I have I believe like this past couple decades in youth ministry we've defined success through the lens of an evangelist you know so Ephesians 4 5-fold ministry apostle prophet evangelist pastor teacher we have defined success in the context in evangelist what I mean by that is we've defined success is how many kids can I get in the room and I'm gonna preach the gospel to them that's that's the that's the excuse I'm kind of that's the language we use is we're gonna do all this stuff because they got to hear the gospel they're lost invite your lost friends hear the gospel and we just got to tell them the gospel and and don't hear me wrong I think there are some people that are genuinely called to that but I think that we've seen that model and we have blanketed it over all of next-gen ministries in the result has been we get a lot of people that are coming in the building but we have very little depth I believe that God is restoring the prophet and the teacher to next-gen ministries God is restoring the prophet and the teacher to next-gen ministries and if we are going to build disciples that last the distance we need a prophetic spirit that discerns the spirit of the age and creates culturally discerning young people that can engage in tiktok conversations right where they read that they see a tiktok theologian and they're like let me evaluate again that against the word of God let me take what I'm seeing or look I got friends at the lunch table they're talking about all these things let me take this conversation and evaluate it against the word of God we need theologically sound young people and if the only message the only Bible your young people are hearing on Wednesday nights is Jesus died for you and you know you can say yes if you raise your hand right now and we got pizza afterwards why are we why are we surprised that young people are walking away when that's been their experience God loves you so much it's like what about hell what about my gay friend I'm it's not surprising when you see a generation deconstructing and you look at the theological content they were fed it's not surprising we need teachers back in student ministry and with that there's this whole idea that it's like you can't talk to your kids more than 20 minutes and you know like the value is like we need small groups to teach the word can this is a soapbox for me but I think that we have undervalued the power of the word of God we have undervalued the value of preaching the word of God and instead we're like we're gonna let them talk about it by themselves and don't hear me wrong there's a value for small groups but there is power in the word of God there is power in the word of God I think we need youth pastors that get up and have a word from God and preach the word of conviction the whole council of the word of gods that we have theologically formed young people I think another another aspect of this conversation and this is what we were wrestling with is I think that for a lot of millennials even specifically we have had a view of ministry as a means to our ends of feeling significant and I think that the next generation is paying the price for that young people deconstructing their faith is the fruit of youth pastors using young people to feel like we're significant because we care more about getting them in the room and telling your youth pastor friends that I had I had a hundred kids last week because that makes you feel good then you care about theologically forming resilient disciples right and I think I believe in this hour the Holy Spirit is is shifting youth pastor specifically from a Saul mindset to a Samuel mindset Saul Saul used the anointing of God to build his own kingdom to hide his insecurity and to try to numb his fear of man Saul put on the priestly robes right he put on the e-fod when he was trying to make God do something for him Samuel comes in the primary ministry of Samuel was to anoint the next king and I think we need next gen leaders and pastors that aren't looking to ministry and looking to God to heal the sense of insecurity in your heart but actually you recognize that the value and the purpose of your life is not to be the next cool youth pastor in town but it's to call out and raise up the next generation of Daniels I don't know about you guys but I was shaking in my spirit last night from John Tyson talking about Josiah's revival to Daniel that is wild I've never heard that before but we need as youth leaders youth pastors we need to get over our insecurity and tap into a bigger vision I just believe the young people Gen Z deconstructing is the fruit of insecure youth leaders and youth pastors for the past two decades so we're reflecting on all this and and honestly like it's a lot of self-reflection right because this is this is all stuff that was in me you know this is this is all stuff that I was processing through and COVID and we all felt if you led through COVID you get it you know it's like you have your youth ministry or kids ministry and you come back and you look at the attendance and all of a sudden it's like a third of what it was before right and you're like where are all those kids that helped me feel good about myself where are all those kids that helped me feel like I was actually making a difference right so we're processing this and and from that point we just defined like our win our mandate is we are going to raise up missionally minded resilient disciples from the context of prayer and account of God that's the win that's the lane that's what we're gonna do and and again I think that can should look different for you guys like that can look different but that was our our why and and what I want to do for the next next few minutes is I want to talk about how that implemented practically for us how that was expressed practically and this is not like this is hopefully maybe to give you guys some cool ideas but this is not to tell you guys if you want your youth ministry to grow do it like this right like this is not what I'm trying to do today is come up and say do this do this do this and then you'll have a prayer centered youth ministry I would much rather say this was our process and this is how God led us in this season so a big thing that that we worked through was our pizza slice I've heard of the net how many of you guys have seen this but I think everyone should have a handout the kind of net analogy for your ministry wide net small net we call it a pizza slice because we're in youth ministry so it just connects connects a little better but in this process of saying okay like what do we call to do what's our mission statement and where is our time talent and resources being allocated a big tool that helped us to do this was our pizza slice so we have our pizza slice right here so what this kind of slice represents what it is a picture is you have wide up top which represent accessibility how easy is it to access events at this spot the deep section it represents a vision and culture like how potent how connected is what's going on to your vision so I'll do access and vision access and vision so what we began to do is we began to map out our events and what we were doing onto this onto the scrap so for us we we do quarterly big events we still want to do fun events we still want to have fun with kids family our language is family praise hard in place hard together like we want to model family value and family culture by having a lot of fun with our kids so we do quarterly big events with our kids and they get those those events they're easy to access they are fun they're definitely more like evangelistic focus those are the fun events it's like hey invite your friends we're gonna be lighting off like a thousand dollars worth of fireworks for the 4th of July or we do a big Super Bowl party like invite your friends this is a great opportunity to expose young people to the church but yeah so that's our big events that we do quarterly kind of moving down moving down what I would say is that the next thing that we landed on was our services we have for our student ministry we oversee 5th through 12th graders 5th through 12th we break that up into junior high which is 5th 6th and 7th and senior high which is a through 12th it's kind of weird but it works really good we pull up the last grade of elementary into our middle school program and then the last grade of middle school to our senior high program so what happens is that before middle school students ever step foot on a high school campus they have community with upperclassmen who love Jesus and are discipling them yeah so it's weird you got to communicate it to parents a few times but the practical implementation of it is really fun so but with that we do Sunday mornings for our junior high Wednesday nights for our senior high so our weekly services that's like next down on our pizza slice right like a little bit more deep a little bit more connected to our vision but still pretty open right so pretty accessible you got un-church kids kids inviting their friends we want them to invite their friends to our Wednesday nights next down is our student leadership program which I'm going to talk about more in a minute student leadership and then I'll say at the bottom is our trips and camps quarterly big events weekly services student leadership and discipleship trips and camps with this conversation of wanting to identify how do we make resilient disciples we were talking with our team praying with our team and I believe my discipleship philosophy is this is that disciples are made by a few strategic big moments that are stewarded by a lot of faithful small moments a few strategic big moments that are stewarded by a lot of faithful small moments and I think in general there's there's typically a spectrum in a lot of churches fall really strong on one side or the other side right it's the churches that are all about like camps events encounter but then do not have weekly rhythms to enforce that discipleship or they're all about like hey we just need to teach in the word of God and be there and you know Bible knowledge and this and this and this and you know I don't but they reject what they would say the camp high you know we're not about emotional experience we're not about camp high and and what I believe is that we need both of those in tension to form resilient disciples right I'm here today because I had an encounter with God as a 12 year old at a camp that encounter was stewarded by years and years of small discipleship conversations we need both and those moments are reflected on this spectrum so our student leadership program I want to talk about that for a minute just because even as we're talking about praying churches I think it's it's one of the things that we stumbled upon that I believe God is anointed and in the city unique way for our house you know so we on Monday nights again we have a Wednesday night senior high service we have a Sunday morning junior high service on Monday nights we have a thing we call student leadership or we have student leaders from both of our campuses we have a we have two campuses here in Kalamazoo junior high and senior high come down to our downtown prayer center and we own the Monday night prayer meeting so we rally students from across our whole city and we say Monday nights this is the core of what we're doing and it's amazing seeing you know suburb moms and their Tahoe's going down one-way streets downtown the wrong way asking me where to park I love it I love it but in this question of how do we make resilient disciples we're like we need life-changing counters in the presence of God in weekly small rhythms and that pushed us to more than just our weekly services we need a discipleship engine for our kids so on Monday nights we have almost 90 junior high and senior high students that have signed up for a 10-week semester and we own the money the Monday night prayer meeting we have an hour of prayer from 6 30 to 7 30 p.m. we do around 30 minutes of discipleship leadership teaching and then we break up into small groups in discipleship that's our small group expression I don't do small groups on my weekly services honestly I just feel like it's not I would much rather have a high impartation power encounter with God for new students and then have the conversation afterwards right of what happens and then pastor them a conversation following that then making conversation the main thing that we do on our Wednesday nights but on Mondays Mondays again we have students come from all of our city to take their place on the wall and encounter God in his presence and it's amazing guys like we have fifth graders that come in and it's third you know nine ten years old they come in in the first week they they look around the room and you know their senior highs senior high students praying in the spirit praying on the mic you know the stuff and they get big eyes you know these little kids looking around being like what's going on and you know women it's an hour long so they're like you know it's 20 minutes in and they're just dead you know all the junior high boys are like coloring on each other with Sharpie and like got some junior high girls doing tiktoks in the back of the room you know we like get them back in but but what we see right and again it's a prayer meeting we're not doing games beforehand we're not trying to make them comfortable we are throwing them all the way to the deep end of the pool but what we see is that the second week all of a sudden they engage a little bit more the third week that you know one junior high kids raising his hands you know that fourth week that kid that was sleeping the whole time is woken up a riso sleeper the light of Christ may shine upon you and as the semester we do in a semester system develops all of a sudden we see young people catch a burden for prayer and encounter with God in a prayer room context see fifth graders get up on the mic and begin to pray for their schools you know there we have this fifth grader same as Asher he's prophetic yeah I need to pray for me but this fifth grader gets up on the mic and like new kid figuring things out gets on the mic and begin to start praying he's like Lord your word says the righteous are as bold as lions God release righteousness and boldness over a generation gets up God there's a spirit of laziness and entertainment in our high schools God I break off a spirit of boredom off of my high school and release passion for Jesus I'm like what this kid is 12 years this kid's 12 years old 12 years old he's a sixth grader how does that happen we're not trying to entertain him we're not trying to convince him that we're cool so you should come and hang out with us we're not trying to bribe him with pizza in stupid games right we're giving him the real thing what you catch him with is what you'll keep him with what you catch him it with and is what you'll keep him with and that Monday night I'd say is the core of everything that we're doing here radiant church is more than having a youth ministry that's built around cool small groups built around a cool service built around cool games I want to build a youth ministry built around the presence of God in a prayer room and we're seeing young people encounter God in a prayer room and go out and evangelize to their friends I would much rather hear a story of a young person or if I'm gonna hear a salvation story my youth ministry I would a hundred times more rather here at testimony of a kid sharing the gospel to their friend in their school than a story of I invited a friend and they heard the gospel from you if you're the only person that their friends are hearing the gospel from we've lost that battle right if you're the only evangelist in your youth ministry we've lost the battle more than youth pastors operating as evangelists as a way to heal their insecurity we need Samuels and prophets to call out the next generation of evangelists to go to this next generation and even big picture guys I feel a burden we're the first generation that can honestly say we can finish the Great Commission our generation right you look at Miss Eologists we can do it we can do it they're finishing translating the Bible into every single language like 2025 like we're there what's the need of the hour it's laborers it's laborers and currently amazing programs that have heart for the Great Commission like YWAM and others are taking the 1% from our church and trying the best to send them to the mission field and a lot of those kids are burning out and deconstructing this for me this is what I'm praying what I'm feeling from the Lord this next decade my goal for radiant students for next-gen at radiant churches I want to send a tithe of our kids to the mission field what would it look like if success for your church looks like we're gonna send a tithe of the next generation to fulfill the Great Commission not I'm gonna use my budget my talents my gifts to get a bunch of kids in the room so I feel good about myself we need Samuel youth pastors who will rise up and call out evangelists and kings in the next generation what I'll say to this pizza slice this looked very different when me and Pastor Preston started our conversation it's like we had this like maybe way down there and we didn't even resource allocation this is a so I would encourage you all we gave you this pizza slice we gave you this thing to identify your mission statement really clearly what's your mission statement should overflow from your church that your pizza slice from access to vision what's everything that you're doing on it and and I would ask you as well what percent of your time talent resources are dedicated to each one of these things we found 60% of our money in our time and our planning meetings was going to this and it's like that's valuable but is that what we're called to do no we're called to make disciples which happens best down here so we flipped our budget on its head we cut back events cut back things all again in a conversation with our senior pastors our oversight saying we this is what we're called to do can we shift our focus from up here to down here and guess what when we did that we lost students students stopped coming kids that used to come for the games and different things they stopped coming you know that told me is why were they coming in the first place me and don't have me wrong we still do fun stuff we still do fun events we want to be evangelistic and give kids an opportunity to have a great time and invite their unsafe friends but we shifted the resource allocation weight to where we felt called to so it encouraged you as you build this pizza slice out even like this put down by each one what percent of your budget your planning meetings in your volunteer resources go to each one of these things as it comes for even like trips and camps right like we we love those events again so many of us are here because we encounter God at a trip and event one thing that we do each summer that's been instrumental for us as we attend bold conference in Kansas City Pastor David Perkins runs his student conference there we've been there from the very start Pastor Kenny Groscha in the back he's Pastor David Perkins youth pastor he's gonna be kind of taking point with some bold stuff this year but having strategic moments of encounter is so significant for your kids so I know I was kind of all over a little bit today so I'm still a little little swirly from that last session but but more than anything right I wanted to walk you through our process identify your why identify your mission statement identify your values do some self-reflection is your ministry about you feeling good about yourself or about accomplishing the mission that God has given you and then map it out what do you call to do how does it translate and then what's your resource allocation look like towards it it's really not that complicated it's not that revelatory but I believe this is if every single one of you guys do this do this your youth ministry will stop looking like everyone else's youth ministry and we'll start looking like your youth ministry instead of you know scrolling online looking at the next big mega church youth ministry like they're having a fortnight tournament we need to do a fortnight tournament they had a slime mountain you know your text in your intern make me a slime mountain God this year an intern in here we just bless you in abundance every spiritual blessing but our our our assignment to the next generation in this next decade guys it can't be can't be a tool to heal our insecurity can't be a stepping stone we're losing 70% this next generation 70% and I believe if we going to change that we need kids pastors that won't be afraid to make some parents mad by shifting the focus from cute moralism and comfortable stories to power encounters with kids guess what some people might leave the church they're leaving anyway when they leave high school don't hear me wrong we need to be pastoral but we cannot compromise the call of God on our generation to try to make people feel welcome what I'd like to do for the next few minutes yeah like 10 minutes is just kind of do some Q&A Pastor Preston everybody you want to jump up here press it getting blessed in that meeting I definitely didn't do it as good as you would have but it's all right yeah no I don't know and also we got our book who does not have faith for exiles and wants it this guy right here raise your hand first you have faith for exiles this is my copy I just finished all right buddy there you go bless you man but I would love to answer any questions you guys have about our process even how we implemented that mission statement our pizza slice student leadership any of those things yes yeah we use bold we use you Kenny and everything you have to offer no I think with this the trips the camps the retreats the conferences the everything I like leaning into these as core I love them because it actually kind of involves the whole pizza slice right you get some high-impact relationship building games you know fun pizza nights whatever like we play you know we'll go on retreats and we take our student leaders to a retreat center twice a year and we play murder in the dark for like three hours and kids get super mad but we have fun we and we enjoy it we have like some some more like kind of engaging moments but then we get like those that that moment to go deep those encounter moments and so I think they're kind of near the bottom there they I don't know again I miss 45 minutes of Zach's wonderful teaching but um like our mission statement it's multifaceted right like we exist make resilient disciples we apply changing encounters in the presence of God who transform schools and families in our city like it's missional it's encountering and it's disciple making and so this kind of down here relays all of that it kind of encompasses the entire mission statement we're up here it's you know maybe some more discipleship focused like relational building and then as we continue going out or this would be discipleship this is like relational this is you know maybe some missional we just got out of a revival history series out of our youth nights on Wednesdays and Sundays of just like hey go be a revivalist for your campus like here's what's happened before we can see it done again and so anyway sorry I know I just talked a little bit longer on your question but that's that's my like my take on kind of the deeper moments encompassing more of why we exist yeah and a practical thing we do as well with that and even you ask any it's like how do you go to somebody else's vision somebody else's culture and incorporate into yours is this is super practical but we run a two or three day camp after a conference so we'll go to somebody else's conference and then we follow it up with our own camp we like run a camp center somewhere like we would go to conference in Kansas City and then go to st. Louis or went to Kentucky one year and then we run our own services and camp kind of follow up after conference so we use conference for heavy impartation and then we you do our camp for follow-up pastoral connect with the kids and honestly like we love conference but I I'm crazy about that camp after like that's where God has moved in some really significant ways for us but yeah Jackson yeah you cast the vision and you beat it like a drum every one of our leaders know why we exist we exist to make resilient disciples we plaster it all over our walls we say it a thousand times on a Wednesday night we repeat it every Sunday morning before we start junior high we say chase students go make disciples this is why we exist this is unto everything that we do and when you cast vision like that people buy in right like people people follow vision where there's no vision people perish but when you and when it's when you get the leaders that want to show up the ones that care and you get like hey guys we're switching it up we're no longer about you know we're literally inverting our pizza slice like the ones that care the ones that are here for discipleship and you know just like the students you know how some will leave when when we don't put emphasis on this and more on this like same with our leaders the ones that are there to make disciples as well man they stay they buy into the vision they go hard they run further than you even ask them to run they're taking kids out to coffee you know four or five days a week and then you as leaders as the staff and the pastoral staff you are only as good as your leaders right so how are you discipling your leaders right you can't let them run themselves dry because they bought into your vision and they're all hyped up and then they go and you know burn themselves out how are you when I first moved here three years ago I was like I'm not even for this first six months I don't care about students I'm not trying to build relationship with students right now I need a lead team I need leaders who are gonna help me accomplish our vision and so I invested all of my time all my energy into leaders and bought them into the vision and now they're faithful you know they're they're they're leading with me they're running with us and so Zach and I do that like we we chase hard after our leaders because then I mean that's the that's the disciples right Jesus had his three he had his 12 he had a 70 and it flowed down from there and you know investing your time into the ones that matter I know as a youth pastor it's kind of like oh man I gotta I gotta chase students it's all about students I gotta you know this sixth grader I gotta take him to coffee or go to you know and you do but you will be more effective if you put just as much time and energy into your leaders like if you build a foundation on discipling leaders and helping them be healthy and buying into your vision oh it doesn't matter if there's 10 kids or 100 kids on your on your youth night you're gonna be able to sustain whoever walks through the door because your leaders are healthy they're passionate they know the vision they know why they're there right they're not oh I'm here to make hanging out with my friends or I'm here because my friend serves like no no they're here because we exist to make resilient disciples and everything we do is unto that and so they're bought into that so you sorry you beat it like a drum that's how and I would I would also say there it is full circle I'd also say you can make this pizza slice with your leaders right more than just your kids are you discipling your leaders and a lot of it is doubling up my best leaders are the ones that had crazy encounters with God on student trips and retreats Haley Hawks on the back of the room she's one of our youth coordinators even Haley Mosley is our central youth admin they're incredible we're so grateful for them Haley Hawks was a junior sophomore when I moved here in student ministry and so I was her youth pastor and she interned me but I'd say Haley is on staff today called of God incredible communicator leader because she had an encounter with God as a leader on a youth trip right like that your trips and conferences they're not just about your kids encountering the lords for everybody so yeah yeah three years we're challenging discipleship and every other department our Monday night prayer meeting is the most attended prayer meeting of the week outside of our student one or our all staff one on Tuesday mornings we have an all staff Tuesday morning our Monday night next-gen prayer meeting is the biggest prayer meeting of the week other departments are coming in and they're like how can I get a prayer meeting and it's like there's 15 pick one minute last question right yeah so yeah I yeah no that's a great question great clarifying question yeah student leadership it's you know anybody can join student leadership but then also anybody can join our trips and camps you know but like bold conference I mean we sell out so it's like that it's high engagement and even cost would be that like there's a pay payment threshold and some of those things yeah but yes anybody can go and honestly we again using like our retreat like fall retreat everybody loves fall retreat right it can be viewed as a big event a big three-day two-night event that you can have fun you throw you know you throw slime at each other you eat nasty mayonnaise you know covered hot dogs whatever I don't know I guess people may put mayonnaise on their hot dog regardless maybe that's not that gross somebody's taking notes in the back mayonnaise on hot dog but so yeah it's kind of yes it's it's open for everyone and then we we even if you take like our but the purpose of it the purpose of it is not to we want a bunch of new kids to come and have fun right it's I want people to get wrecked by the presence of God and get and get brought into a mentorship relationship for their disciple yeah yeah funnel them in funnel them into the presence yeah no that's good Kenny it's wise wisdom in the back left yeah like last thing I'd say as we make disciples and as we engage kids we need to stop watering down the presence of God and watering down our faith Gen Z wants the real thing they've been given diet Christianity for the past 20 years because we're afraid it's going to offend them it's created a deconstructing apathetic generation we need encounters with God on our Wednesday nights we need the presence of God we need the gifts of the spirit we yeah we have unchurched kids coming into our Wednesday nights and they're getting words of knowledge called out falling on the floor encountering God getting saved that's what I want that's what I want not I talked in small groups for six months and then I left when encounter with God but we love to pray for you guys before you leave we're so grateful for all of you for coming in and my prayer right is that maybe you got a few ideas practically but more than that more than that that there would be context context for you in your assignment to hear from the Lord to identify it and to implement it that you would not be an echo of the next big youth ministry that you're watching on Instagram but that you would fulfill God's assignment for your life in your context so Lord right now I just lift up all these amazing leaders God these youth pastors youth leaders next-gen leaders and Holy Spirit right now I ask that you would speak to them clearly you would speak to them clearly I ask for a word from heaven over each of their hearts over each of their their youth ministries that you would give them clarity in their assignment God I ask right now just for healing over insecurity in our hearts God we do not want to use the gifting in the calling of God to try to heal insecurity Lord today we find our identity in you Lord and we say we say God wherever you put us wherever you send us Lord we want to be in step with you so God would you give the strategy of heaven and I ask for praying churches and praying youth ministries to spring up all around this country God that that the next generation would not be would not be engaged by Christianity light but would be engaged by the full expression in power of the gospel God we ask for encounters just for every one of their students today that you'd be with them God I ask for grace over this everyone that's feeling weary feeling tired Lord that you'd give them grace to stay faithful to run the distance Lord we love you we need you in Jesus name Amen thank you everyone bless you guys