Ascension Youth Ministry

Written by Anna Eftink

Think back to the first time you personally encountered God, that time when faith went from a concept to a relationship. Try and think back to that moment when you first saw Jesus for who He really is, to that moment when faith finally ‘clicked’ within your heart. What did you feel in that moment?

I imagine you were probably overwhelmed with peace, joy, and happiness to a point where it overflowed into the lives of those around you. What were the little things that contributed to that big moment of heart-realization? Odds are that you weren’t knocked off of your horse by a blinding light like Saint Paul on the way to Damascus. It’s much more likely that it was like falling asleep: starting slowly and then gradually happening all at once.

Youth ministry is all about those little moments that contribute to the overall greater moment of faith realization in the hearts of young people. Teens today are so hungry for Jesus Christ. They may not articulate it like that, but they are. They are hungry for purpose; they are hungry for meaning; they are desperate to be seen, desired, known and loved. They are hungry and Jesus is the only thing that can satisfy their deepest longings.

Jesus set up His ministry on Earth in and through a community of believers. These believers were the disciples, and the disciples had varying degrees of faith, coming from all different sorts of backgrounds. Some were faithful Jews, while others were lying thieves, tax collectors, cowards, zealots, Roman sympathizers and the like. Nonetheless, Jesus called them all. He chose them all, hand-picking each one of them to walk alongside Him, and He, in turn, walked alongside them for some three years.

And one day, He took His mixed bag of disciples to a place nobody wanted to go: into the heart of Samaria. On their way, Jesus stopped at Jacob’s famous well to rest and get a drink while the disciples went into town to get some food. And as we know, Jesus met a woman there around noon, and He told her everything that she had ever done (John 4). But notice in the passage the evolution of the titles that she addresses Jesus by: first referring to Him as a ‘Jew,’ then as ‘Sir,’ then as ‘a prophet,’ and finally as ‘Savior of the World’.

This is youth ministry. Youth ministry is walking with the young people of today’s church, accompanying them from a place where at first faith is completely foreign and frowned upon, or cerebral, to a place of intimate relationship with the Savior of the World. This happens through a bunch of little ways but especially through caring adults being present to our young people.

So much of doing God’s work is just showing up and being present. And if we do that enough times, the hearts of our young people will be softened and opened-up to a point where they’ll be ready to encounter God, seeing Him for who He really is. Wouldn’t you want an encounter like that for your son, daughter, grandchild, niece, or nephew?

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