Asian American Youth Ministry Training Day 2025: Part 1

Welcome to this workshop. This is a workshop that’s going to bring together two things. One would be the book The Great Churching, which how many of you guys are familiar with that book in terms of mention? How many of you guys have heard of it being mentioned? Okay. Yeah, it’s a book that’s a couple years old. So the first half of this workshop is actually going to dive in a little bit into some of the principles and findings, which To me, it’s pretty fascinating, but admittedly, for an early morning, it might be something that’s a little rough to get through.

So please bear with me here in the first half. In the second half, we’re going to go ahead to contextualize then a lot of what is discovered here into our Asian American context, which you heard Pastor Anneli talk about that it’s not something that we have to necessarily settle for or live with. But in terms of our context of ministry, it’s wise and helpful to recognize that God has placed us here.

Has formed us in certain ways and they gave us come out through that context so that we can be disciple makers in the communities that he has placed us and so there’s nothing to be ashamed of there’s actually a lot of joy that can come from the uniqueness of that shared heritage in that culture that we are doing ministry in so that would be the second half i do hope for there to be a little bit of time of discussion towards the end and so you know kind of get to know your table mates a little bit and the people in the back we’ll just form smaller groups there um but the purpose then is for you to go to take away from this workshop both kind of lay the land of what our churches and our ministries are doing ministry in in terms of the context where the movement is going as it relates you know to our culture but then also as you look at the next generation and then finally uh you know how it is that maybe you could have a takeaway or two for your particular ministries and that would be great uh and coming out of this then um i’m hoping that during lunch more opportunities to talk and throughout the entire day I think there’s opportunities to engage there so let me go ahead and pray for us and then let’s get started.

Father I ask you Lord at this time just to meet us here we thank you Lord that you’ve opened up our hearts and our minds this morning to be reminded God that the call Lord to make disciples in this world is not meant to be easy or smooth but Lord you’ve gifted us and blessed us in many ways in order to be faithful to you but then also proclaim Christ in his death and resurrection but then also the fullness of joy that comes from knowing him and having a relationship with you.

So I pray, Lord, that you would help us, God, as we go through this workshop to be able to see ways in which so much of that is shifting and changing from maybe what we grew up with and what we’ve assumed or inherited. But, Lord, as we look forward to the ministries that we have, God, that we have hope and we see a way forward as we continue to follow Christ. So we thank you, Lord. Thank you for this time. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen. All right. Well, let me really quickly introduce myself. My name is Taren Shea. I’m the family pastor at First Chinese Baptist Church of Walnut.

So the connection then, very simple, would be that Pastor Hanley and I were at the same church. So we serve together. It’s a joy meeting here at NIMPREACH. It’s a joy for us to be able to serve in this way. I’m more affiliated with Rooted, which is a youth and family ministry resource, blogs, podcasts, that side of things. He’s connected more formally with Sola. So our church then, we’re kind of one-footing each vote here for today. But with that, I’m super glad to see you. For me, I’ve been at this church now for nine years. I’m a parent myself of three kids.

My entire upbringing as it relates to Christianity has been in a Chinese heritage church. And so in terms of seeing a lot of these things and kind of experiencing and recalling it, it’s never like one to one, 100% that a description would fit you perfectly. But there’s a lot that we share in an Asian American culture or upbringing or context or where we’re serving now that I think a lot of times we just take for granted that it is. But there’s so much that God can do to use those distinctives for his glory.

But then also for us to be mindful of how it is those distinctives impact the way that we see things, how we live, what we assume, and so on and so forth. And so today I hope to be able to open up a little bit of the water that we’re swimming in, both in an Asian American context for ministry, But then also in a broader culture as we are really entering a brand new generational transformation that hasn’t been seen in the last 150 years, which is actually what the authors of this book are telling us. And they’ve actually discovered through research.

So here’s an opening quote that I want to share with you guys to be able to give you like a snapshot of what this book is trying to describe through its research and through its findings. This is a quote by Colin Hansen with the Gospel Coalition. He said, we’re living amid the largest and fastest transformation of religion in American history. So when he is describing this, he’s not just using big words to make it seem like it’s a big deal. This is not promotion. This is not publicity. This is actually evidence in the finding.

So what the research has discovered, and this is a formal sociological research done by a PhD that was commissioned by two pastors that wrote this book. What they found was that in the last 10 to 25 years, that range of time, depending on how broad you want to go, but this generation, we’ve seen 40 million people de-church. So 40 million people, when you were to put that in context of history, it is greater than the first awakening, the second awakening, all the Billy Graham crusades and those decisions.

So just kind of imagine all the ways in which we have maybe thought of revival in some ways, or how God has worked through this country, the 40 million that have de-churched in the last generation is a larger number than all those people that came into the church through those revivals. And so that’s why the authors say that this is a generational change, a generational transformation, one that we’ve never seen, but one that we are in the midst of. And so the first part then of this workshop would be using the book to highlight some of the stats and trends.

So if you bear me, I want to take us there. so what did we learn from the research of this book i’m gonna highlight a few not everything this is a pretty thick book but there’s a few that i thought would be helpful so number one it’s helpful to know your terms so when you’re using the word the church what does it mean well the authors and the researchers they actually described it in a very specific way so that you’re able then to to get the data from it so someone who is the church is somebody that used to go to church at least once a month.

And of course, you’re already thinking once a month, like we need you to come more than once a week, right? But you know, they’re being very generous. Once a month, you used to go to church, but it was consistent enough, you know, for you to say, yeah, well, yeah, I go to church once a month. Now that person, that same person goes to church, that’s them once a year. I’m thinking this is just a researcher’s way of saying we can’t say zero because we really can’t, you know, 100% guarantee that. But practically, this person does not ever go to church anymore.

This is not even a Christmas or Easter Christian. This is not even like, you know, my family member is getting baptized, I should show up or something. This is like, I don’t go to church. I go less than once a year. And so that definition of de-churching, I feel like it’s very, it’s very stark. I just can’t imagine, you know, that we are able to see someone go from this to this in a way and not feel concerned, and that would be a rightful place to be. But the idea of de-churching, too, is talking more than just, let’s say, online presence for anticipation.

We’re talking about the physical attendance of a church, which, you know, may be different depending on how our churches count numbers, but we’re talking about physical presence in a gathering of an assembly of Christians. they don’t go. They might still be watching at home, but by these definitions, that is de-churching if they don’t ever go less than once a year. So who are these de-churched people? Well, there’s two main types of de-churched people, and this is actually helpful to understand as well because there are reasons that leads people to ultimately stop going to church.

So the overwhelming majority, 75% of people, casually de-churched. And when you hear that, that’s exactly what it is. It’s due to circumstances, it’s due to changes, it’s not due to anything like super intentional. If anything, it’s probably the lack of intentionality as life happens and things fall through the cracks. In fact, the most common reason why people de-churched was simply because they moved. So if you’re a college student moving to your campus from home and you never reengaged with a local church, then you would be de-churched over time.

If you’re somebody that moved for a job, if you’re someone that got married and then settled in a new place, all of these reasons for moving, well, that is a major component of de-churching. But then there’s other things too. Like, for example, maybe your rhythms change every single week. When a family has young children, all of a sudden, you know, the sleepless nights and maybe like the sports on the weekend.

you know those circumstances leads to some de-churching and then of course what did we just go through we just went through covid so covid is like everyone de-churched for a season and then how do you re-engage you know to be a part of vocal church again well a lot of people just actually never did and so what the researchers found was that 75 percent of people were casually de-churched and that’s actually good news in a sense that it’s not due to some like you know specific anti-church kind of persuasion, but it’s just that life happened and there wasn’t the re-engagement with the local church.

And there’s good news there, which we’ll look at later. Now, 25% though, the researchers call it their casualties who are the church. So this is where there were pain points that happened in their lives. It could be a result of all of the talk and all the social media stuff and all of the harsh and political events of a lot of exchanges of messages that’s broken relationships, especially in election years, that’s kind of happened. It could be because they were hurt in a conflict with somebody at the church.

It could be where convictionally they decided, you know what, I no longer believe these things anymore and this is just something that I no longer hold to. I don’t want to relate to the church in this way.

and so there’s a pain point there and so that’s 25% of the people that have the church is that there are casualties of the churching and so we want to be mindful of those things but even when you look at that a lot of times when we see someone stop coming to church it’s easy sometimes for us who are more faithful to always think the worst of their motivations kind of like oh man you know they don’t like us they don’t like God they don’t you know want to you know be a part of the church they’re like rebelling forsaking us you know most people it’s not like that they’re not coming at us so they leave the church they just kind of slipped away and fell away but we do want to be mindful of those who have been hurt by the church because that’s where we have an opportunity in ministry to engage them here are some more observations the first is that among all the ethnic minorities for some strange reason which the researchers themselves said this warrants more research asian americans have the greatest percentage of the amongst those that were surveyed.

Now, mindful, the survey was done mostly in the Florida area, and actually even more specifically Orlando. So the number of Asian Americans compared to, let’s say, here in L.A., or in certain areas where there are a lot more Asian Americans, it’s just different. So we have to take note of that. But it is interesting that compared to the other minorities, Asian Americans were the highest percentage of the churching. And what the researchers said straight up was, we’re a bunch of white guys, So we need to do more research on this. Somebody needs to do more research on this.

And so we’ll see who maybe would take the baton on for that. But certainly we could kind of make some connections there. But that’s kind of interesting to me. I’m not quite sure that that’s what we thought would be the case. The second observation, or kind of interesting insight, is that there’s an inverse relationship between whether you went to college versus if you de-churched. Let me make that a little bit more clear. Getting more higher level education does not mean you will de-church. It actually means the opposite.

And when you think that, it’s kind of counterintuitive because what do we notice a lot of times? It’s that transition from high school into college where we lose a lot of students. So maybe intuitively we think, oh, it’s because of college. They went to college. They started partying. They made the wrong friends. They had bad habits and they’re no longer interested in God. Actually, no. According to research, that’s not it. There’s not a direct relationship of going to college equals de-churching. It’s actually getting a college education leads to more resilience for those that believe.

So there’s something about somebody who is a Christian and they go to college and they continue to follow Jesus that they are less likely to de-church because they own their faith. So it’s not that college is the problem, because a lot of times we tend to kind of gogeyman that too. It’s kind of like, oh yeah, that school is so liberal, that area is so bad, everyone’s going to fall away. no, there’s a greater stronghold to one’s faith than just the fact that they go to college. Of course, then that brings us to some harder reflection sometimes of them.

Why do our kids leave? Why do our kids, when they go to college, if or they finish high school, why do they leave the church? And that’s actually where we need to start exploring and thinking of it. A couple more. Cultural Christianity is at an all-time high. So cultural Christianity, if I could maybe borrow someone’s definition here. This is a definition from pastor, author, Dean and Sarah. Let me describe cultural Christianity for you.

He says, cultural Christians are those who genuinely believe they are on good terms with God because of church familiarity, a generic moral code, political affiliation, a religious family heritage, etc. Cultural Christianity is largely based on confusion, whereas the hypocrite and the false teacher have a Christianity based on deceit. So what is cultural Christianity? is you’re raised in it, and you just don’t assume anything else.

So you might find this if you talk to a student, and you’re asking them, they’re raised in a Christian family, and say yes, and you’re trying to ask them, hey, when did you put your faith in Jesus? And maybe their answer is, well, I’ve always believed. I don’t question their salvation at that point, but I would want to dig more into it.

It’s not like, well, how could you have always believed? At what point did the gospel become clear to you? At what point did you actually choose to follow Jesus, to repent and believe, let’s narrow that down to maybe a season of your life, so that you can have more certainty and concreteness to your faith. So let’s explore that. But that’s what cultural Christianity is kind of like. And that’s at an all-time high. I’m sorry, it’s at an all-time high because real Christianity is starting to fade away. So we’re in a post-Christian culture.

So now, a lot of times, even when people believe, it’s because they were raised in it. there are not really people that are following Jesus. So it’s an all-time high in that way. Now, this fading away of de-churching is with both the right and the left. So you’ll actually see this in political parties. They’re kind of rhetoric, they’re leaders. People can be on the right or on the left and use maybe religious terms and adopt religious ideas, but they’re not even Christian. They just believe in these ideas, but they’re really secular.

So it’s just evidence of more and more of this just being prevalent that you’re a cultural Christian really at best, but are you a Christian at all? You know, maybe not. Last observation, somebody’s mental health is really, really important and also related to de-churching. What the researchers found was that those that have de-churched, they struggle more with depression, loneliness, anxiety, hopelessness, suicidal thoughts. Okay, so this is just among those that responded to the surveys and the research.

And so there’s a direct correlation between, yes, you might have to be church for one reason or another, but you’re worse off for it in your own mental health, in your own sense of self-esteem, in your own sense of worth. So you would almost kind of think, wow, you know what, maybe the church, if there are issues with the church, oh yeah, it’s the church that’s making me feel this way or think this way or being judged or whatever. But it’s actually the opposite.

It’s where when you are connected to a church or when you have active religious affiliation, you’re better off, you’re healthier, you’re more joyful, you have more clarity about life, you feel more purposeful. And so that’s just an observation to think about too because a lot of times when our students are going through the stuff that they go through, maybe it helps us to kind of think, wait, how is their relationship with the church? How are they doing? And it’s not just then attendance.

It has to be something more, right? Because we have probably evidences of many, many good youth group kids that have gone through every single thing and finished high school and graduated from every single thing in the church. And maybe they’re still struggling. And it’s because there actually is more. All right, so let’s go ahead and analyze some of this stuff. So with each slide, I’m going to just share an idea. And then we’ll come back to be able to hopefully tie some of it together.

number one here is the water that many of us are familiar with in asian american churches from asian american culture coming from an asian american upbringing number one segregation is normal think about it especially if you’re at an immigrant church even if you’re at an asian american church the idea of segregation whether it’s by life stage or by you know like language or by age, it’s almost expected. I’m at a Chinese church. We have three language worship services.

We also separate the youth and the children, although we try to bring them together once a month because we do value intergenerational integration. But if you’re coming to a Chinese church, if you’re coming to a Korean heritage church, you’re probably thinking, I’m going to go in through these doors. My Korean-speaking parents are going to go to that service. My kids are going to go to that service. I’m going to go to this service. And then you come back together to get in the same car to go home or something. So if you don’t think that’s weird, that’s the point.

You go to church to be segregated. And then you come back home together. Okay, maybe. Or you go to different cars too, depending on the time you’re selling. That’s just normal. I don’t know if it should be normal, but that is normal. In fact, if that wasn’t normal, many of our churches might not exist anymore. In a sense, it’s kind of like, well, then why does your church need to be there? Why should I give, why should I serve? Kind of a good question there. Number two, there is, even below that, a lot of segmentation. So ministries, you know, are in different departments.

And a lot of times the departments don’t talk to each other. And then, don’t forget, you factor in the languages, you factor in the cultures, you factor in all this kind of stuff. Like, if you’re in ministry, whether as a lay or as, you know, a vocational, it’s almost like you’re just supposed to do your slice of things. And do it well, don’t cause any problems, you know, don’t go underbred in your budget. and make sure your attendance is high. And that’s it.

There’s not the sense of, how is this correlated, not only even to the family, but correlated to different life stages, what’s going on in their lives, so on and so forth, more cross-generationally, cross-culturally. We don’t even think like that. Number three, scripture. So there’s at times, and I think a lot of this is actually Western influence, there’s at times in which our faith is reduced to a decision.

that did you say this prayer? Did you walk up the aisle? Did you write down and fill out this card? Did you raise your hand? So there’s not necessarily a focus on life on life, person on person discipleship of one person leading another person, encouraging another person, walking with another person to follow Christ as he or she follows Christ. It’s much more programmatic. It’s much more decisionistic.

It’s much more attendance focused than it is program focused than it is, wait, how are all of our people actually doing down to the person? So the way that we view, you know, scriptural teachings and mandates, it comes from different, more individualistic point of view and program point of view.

And then finally, you know, we are coexisting always in a spectrum, right? There are churches that focus a lot on content, right? So, you know, strong educational teaching, strong theology, strong confession, but then there’s not a lot of desire for missions or, you know, reaching a community or contextualizing the gospel.

There are some churches that they’re like all in on, we’re going to the neighborhood, we’re going to do all of these, you know, things to reach the people around us, we’re going to, you know, be all people for all people, so on and so forth, but the theology is like one inch deep, right? We’re in the spectrum. There aren’t two churches that are exactly the same, although I think there’s tribes that kind of focus on different things. But I think that describes us as well, is that we land on a spectrum in terms of what we choose to focus on.

And sometimes we do nothing really well, we just try to do a lot. Other times we lean so much on one side and not the other that we kind of miss out on the greater things that God may be doing amongst our people.

So when I think about the Asian American experience, I think of those four things and I’m like, you know what, that’s just normal for us and I don’t think it’s exactly the same type of normal for others so that’s idea number one is that there is a distinction in a lot of our experiences idea number two is that it’s not just that the culture is changing and we’ve got to be paying attention the culture is changing because we are changing people are changing, we’re becoming post-Christian in our outlook, in our understanding, and in our values. So here’s a quote from the book.

Over the last 50 years, it appears fewer people are asking, is Jesus true? And more are asking, is Jesus good? And is Jesus beautiful? People are asking more pragmatic, existential, and aesthetic questions as post-modernity, secularism, and other complex sociological, economic, political, psychology, and technological forces have been increasingly fractured culturally, relationally, and individually.

How does that work itself out in youth ministry? Your kids could probably tell you the gospel, and they could describe to you what it is in the steps, and what does it mean to believe in Jesus, that your sins are forgiven, that you’re reconciled to God. They could probably cite verses, especially if they come up in a culture with certain Bible memory programs that they’ve gone through faithfully. But their question is not, what does the Bible say? Or is this true? They’re kind of over that.

They want to know, can I trust it? And is this good? Like, why should I give up my dreams and ambitions and what I want? And what social media and my friends tell me is a good life for this. Like, they don’t question that it’s true. But it’s a truth in a sea of many truths. There are many, many truths. Everyone has your own truth. And so, yeah, sure, you can say this is true. You could put it all in the box, describe it, teach it, articulate it clearly.

But there’s not a care for that because we’re in a post-Christian culture where it’s not necessarily accepted and understood as this is the paradigm to live life. This is one way, but there’s so many other ways that are attractive, that are enticing. All right, so one more idea here. There’s been a missed generational handoff. All right, so this is where, you know, I look around this room. I’m thinking there’s some parents here in the room. But this is what they found.

Among the church evangelicals, which I think we would fit in that camp broadly, about two-thirds expressed that their parents’ evangelical faith played a role in pushing them away from church. And if you bring that up, you might actually get some resistance Because you might have very faithful parents that have done their best to provide for their kids, to bring them to church. They might even be deacons and elders and pastors in the church serving faithfully. But clearly there’s still a generational gap. Something was missed.

And some of the reasons then that were given, and I don’t know if any of this sounds familiar in your discussions with your students. It would be a percentage of people said it’s because the parents are focused on culture wars, first and foremost. As if winning that was more important than anything else. There is a lack of love, joy, gentleness, and kindness in communication, in discipline, in understanding. Now, this is one-sided, mind you, is survey, right? So it’s what the kids say, the teenagers say, or the people that are de-churched say. But that doesn’t mean it’s untrue.

That’s their perspective, even if there’s two sides to everything. That’s what they have taken in. There’s an inability to listen. There’s an inability to engage with other viewpoints kindly. and for 13% attitudes towards race. So you could totally have faithful parents that serve in the church that unfortunately, and I would put myself in there, I mean, we could totally fall into these little, you know, traps of how we communicate, how we live, how we love to the kids that we have.

And this goes into the church family too, right? Like your teachers, your elders and deacons that have impact, you know, in the children and the youth, so on and so forth. that maybe the message they’re getting from us, even though we’re teaching and sharing the gospel, is they’re getting all these secondary messages too that they are taking as primary. Oh, you know what? This is the most important thing to a Christian.

It doesn’t make it fair because it probably doesn’t reflect the motives of the people that are being evaluated in that way, but it also doesn’t make it less true that that’s how they feel. All right, so culture Christianity, expanding on this idea a little bit. as the social pressures to identify as Christian in our culture are removed, and as new pressures now to discourage people from identifying as Christian, many who were never Christians in the first place are finally able to freely walk away.

So when you see this de-churching, it’s helpful to see and quantify it even though it’s heartbreaking, but it also is an indicator that people no longer need to claim a religious affiliation to feel accepted or to feel normal. So not to even be the people that weren’t truly believers, but they’re cultural Christians. There’s a bunch of those. But then even the cultural Christians are now taking a step away to say, you know what, I don’t even want to be a Christian. That’s a liability. That’s bad for my career. That’s bad for my friendships. That’s bad for my prospects in life.

So that’s an aspect to consider as well. A couple more. Actually, the final one before we get to the big idea here. So here’s a triplet of relationships, identifying factors that are described towards people sociologically. So there’s three aspects to how you would connect to something or how you would be living out something. One is your belief, what you know and are convicted about in your head. Two is your belonging, which are your relationships with people, community, how you get along, your friendships, and so on and so forth. And three is your behavior, which is what you actually do.

So the Christian hopefully would be pursuing Christ and living in community and pursuing holiness out of a desire to live out the truth. So for a Christian, it should be all three things going in the same direction, even if it’s at different places. But a lot of times there’s only two out of three that are in the life of a person. And this is actually what happens when that’s the case.

If you believe, which means you know the right things, you belong, you have friends, but you don’t behave, you’re not pursuing holiness, you are not designed to honor God, you are not living to follow Jesus, then that is the definition of a cultural Christian.

so you know the right things you know the right people but you can care less right so that’s a culture Christian of course you’ll be called a Christian because of all the things on the outside but that’s not where your heart is number two if you belong which means you have friends and you behave which means you don’t get in trouble but you don’t believe you’re not a Christian that’s so hard because isn’t that so many of the people in our churches like they’re wonderful we’ve known them for years they’re very you know we enjoy them We confide in them, we trust them, but they don’t believe.

So they’re not Christians. The call then is for evangelism when they’re not Christians. But number three then is the one that connects with the research here. If you believe, which means you know the right things, and you behave, which means you do the right things, but you don’t belong, you have no meaningful relationships, then you’re a lone Christian. And the de-churched, the one thing that stands out amongst all the findings, is that this idea of being a lone Christian is very descriptive of many of them.

Is that they just feel disconnected to the church, to the people of the church, to the people they were raised with, to the pastors and leaders in their lives. They just feel alone, like they don’t belong. And so the research found that, interesting enough, most of the church people have orthodox beliefs. Some even more orthodox than people that go to church every week, depending on your denomination. But they de-church because they decided that this is not a group of people or this is not an organization or a community I need to be a part of anymore.

And then for those who are de-churching casualties that I don’t want to be a part of anymore. So they believe, they will confess many of the things that Christians believe. They are trying to live upright lives and being productive in the society, but they just don’t fit in to the church. So that’s where we find a lot of people. So this comes then to this big idea that I want to share with you guys. And the book highlights a couple of chapters actually. Is that we need to grow in one particular area as youth ministers, youth leaders, mentors, pastors, beacons, alters.

Is that we need to grow in relational wisdom. Because the problem that you can find in all the things that were just mentioned earlier is that there’s a discrepancy between a particular understanding of Christianity, a particular organization of Christianity, a particular belief of Christianity. There’s a discrepancy from a person to then their understanding and reception of that idea. It’s a broken relationship on all those fronts. So what we need to navigate is from the idea and the angle of relationship.

so the writer said this when we zoom all the way out amongst all 40 million people who have de-churched one problem that becomes clear from our survey data is relational incompetence in the ways both church individuals and churches themselves relate to persons at risk of de-churching so it’s how people communicate to others it’s how people relate to others it’s how people understand the ideas and the truth embedded in Christianity but there’s a disconnect there there’s a relational disconnect in all those different ways so I want to share some good news inside of all this number one is that there actually is a way forward well actually let me go back a slide here this is a important um this is then what they propose as a solution okay so are there things that people need to hear sometimes yes does the gospel require words yes but possessing relational wisdom often means quiet calm and curious in ways that are relationally disarming and help people hone the connections they are making so being quiet would be that you listen more than you speak or teach every single time.

It’s actually letting what that person’s articulating come into your hearing. You could be in a room and not pay attention. You could face someone and smile and not listen. So being quiet is actually letting information come in and being observant. Calm would be not being defensive and not being upset.

Whenever someone says or does something that just seems so awful or wrong or so unchristian or unbiblical i mean you don’t you know just condone sin for sure but a lot of times when people say something that you’re not used to or you don’t think is right or you you know kind of make it kind of makes them seem a little strange or or kind of outlandish or rebelling against god or you know whatever it is our reaction is up to us how we respond whether we you know explode at them whether we start you know being you know defensive trying to correct them whether we ostracize them or make them feel small.

That part’s on us. But we actually really want people to be able to share with us what they’re going through, especially students. And then finally, being curious. It’s asking all the why questions. It’s asking all the open-ended questions. And letting our students and letting our people fill the blanks. So instead of assuming, oh, this must be their motivation, this must be their attitude, This must be their reason for criticism and then never actually talk about it. You just keep exploring. You keep asking questions.

So this is then the approach that they’re recommending in order for us to not be relationally incompetent and to engage those who are de-churched. Okay, so there is hope for the future. So the first thing I want to share is, you know, on behalf of Rooted, we have these five pillars that actually guide and drives all of our ministries, all of our thinking and all of our curriculum. And I’m not bringing this up just to push root it, but when I saw the pillars, I’m like, I think this addresses the church really well. So here are the five pillars.

Number one is gospel centrality, is being clear on what the gospel is, but then also being clear on what the gospel isn’t, and putting Christ in the center of your sharing. And I’ll get to that in a moment. Number two is theological depth. It’s not going on the assumption that, oh, the kids are too young and immature to understand deep spiritual truths. Now how we communicate it is one thing. Theological depth doesn’t mean boring. Theological depth doesn’t mean one-hour sermons. Theological depth doesn’t mean like so many Bible studies that you can’t wrap your schedule around.

Theological depth just means that you drive a biblical idea to the point of interaction and also to the point of understanding. And through it, you build out a biblical worldview that lets you think through and have a lens to filter through how life works. Relational discipleship. That’s taking the time to build and pursue relationships with students, with parents, with others. It’s not just like teaching and then you’re done. It’s not just scheduling a program, checklist attendance, okay, you’re done.

It’s actually for each person making sure that they are being shepherded and that they are being pursued and investing in that which takes time and energy and we all have limits but it’s a priority there. Number four is partnerships with parents, especially when you see that the research for de-churching is that for many people, their parents were at least part of their grievance. It’s because my parents, who claim to be Christian, said and did and told me these things that I’m like, I reject Christianity now.

That might be ignorant, that might be ill-informed, that might be even wrong in terms of what actually is the truth, but that is what they are taking. And so we need to quit parents too. The church doesn’t do this alone. And then finally, intergenerational integration. Not to think of our youth ministry as a silo. As if the goal is to graduate them at 18 and then we’re done. No, the goal is actually to lead them into big church. If there’s graded life stage differences and separation. Their lives in the big church is their entire adulthood. 18 till they die.

So we gotta think, how do we integrate the relationships in the church how do we integrate all the milestones in the church you know so that the kids can see that wait this is my church in the future i want to be in this church this is who you know i i belong with this is not just me and my horizontal affinity you know friends that i go to school with or friends i grew up with like don’t settle for i graduated all my students and my job is done because you actually want them to still be in the church so intergenerational integration prioritizes that vertical presence in the life of every student and the mentoring that comes from you know cross-cultural and cross-generational ministry that’s so important and just our students knowing older people and not just us that you know they call us old but more than just their workers that they actually know members in their church and are able to build relations with them go to them with any questions ask them for advice receive prayer that’s so important because that’s actually how they’re going to continue to be in the church.

So these five pillars are very helpful towards addressing this de-churching issue. And, you know, there’s resources that, you know, throughout the day, if there’s different flyers and different things that we’ll share about if you’re interested in it, you’ll feel free to just look up our website and there’s a lot of information there. Now, gospel centrality. This is where we have to be very mindful and very intentional that the gospel needs to be presented in its fullness. So we know the gospel. This is a very common diagram.

So the gospel, you know, we know that it’s death and resurrection of Christ, right? For the forgiveness of our sins. Paul says that in 1 Corinthians 15. This is of utmost importance that you’ve got to know this. But we can reduce it to just, okay, know this, believe it. Know this, raise your hand. Know this, get baptized. And you’re done. Unfortunately, in many of our ministries, that’s exactly what it looks like. That our kids become a statistic. Stuff like baptism or confirmation is a rite of passage that makes the parents feel good about themselves afterwards. Like, oh man, I did my job.

But again, it gets you on the starting line, doesn’t it? In terms of your journey in the local church, in terms of your outward confession of who you are. It’s the starting line when you reach those milestones. It’s not the end. It’s the beginning. And so you want to have that fourfold gospel that includes the fact that God existed before all things, that he made all things, and he made Adam and Eve to have a personal relationship with him, to know him, to love him, to be productive, to be fully satisfied, to be living in joy without fear, without condemnation.

That was who we were always meant to be, and that’s how everything will be restored at the end. We know that Jesus wins, but it’s not just that Jesus wins, but it’s that God’s people will be fully satisfied and fully fulfilled in who we were always meant to be as his image bearers that know him and love each other with a perfect love. The end is who we’re supposed to be, which then means that every person needs to see that, well, between my decision and commitment to follow Jesus, I need to be a part of something that gets me to the end. What is that something? The local church.

That’s the connection for de-churching. For many people that believe the right things but think I can do this alone, it’s not questioning their salvation, but it’s also confronting them on the fact that, no, you can’t do this alone because you weren’t meant to do this alone. You weren’t saved to be spiritual orphans. You weren’t saved to be fighting all the spiritual battles in your life by yourself.

You were saved to have a spiritual family of uncles and aunties, of leaders, of deacons, of mentors, of people that know you and love you, even though they’re from a different generation than you, because you’re Christians. That’s the fourfold gospel. So when we talk about gospel centrality, it needs to touch upon that. It can’t just be, okay, know the gospel, say a prayer, get baptized, get confirmed, you’re done. There has to be more than that. And so that is something that we could all grow into.

The reason to be hopeful when you see the research is this, is that there is a difference between what we see in de-churching, even though it’s massive in scope and number, there’s a difference between de-churching and de-conversion. De-conversion would probably more, if at all, describe those 25% who are casualties of de-churching. But even then, it’s not describing all 25%. So there’s a massive difference between de-churching and de-conversion.

They even might be people who have de-churched, and most of them, who are still very open to returning to the local church, who are in friendships and relationships still with people that are in the church, who have heritage and respect, and will show up into the worship and the gathering of a local church if simply they are passed. And I’m not just saying this because that sounds like the right thing to say. A lot of times that’s how we try to get our students to share their faith with their friends or invite people to church.

It’s actually what the studies show, that 51% of the church evangelicals, which again probably describes us the most, said that they would be willing to give church a try again. There’s not this negative view towards church that we sometimes take personally unto ourselves because we serve the church. We’re serving in the church. It’s just for one reason or another, and definitely a conviction by God goes a long way, but for one reason or another, they’re just not active in their local church and they don’t go.

So the catalyst then to bring them back, and I would say this is not only the catalyst for students, because maybe our students are faithful churchgoers, but the catalyst to keep students in church is relationship, is to continue to build out and strengthen that web of relationships among the lives of our students. So they found that the church evangelicals simply need a friend to invite them to church.

For hundreds of thousands of the church evangelicals, all they need is a personal invitation to a decent church community, which as I look out into this room, I think that you guys represent those church communities. So when we’re contextualizing this for our students, sometimes that’s what it takes, but it does require that we pursue them and that we’re intentional about it. Now this final slide is more of an external expression. If the internal way of processing would be being calm, curious, and quiet, that’s internal.

That’s how we respond to maybe the sentiments or the complaints or the lives of some of our students some who are de-churching and so on and so forth. This is how we externally engage. So taking the example of Paul in Acts 17, as he is speaking to a bunch of Roman pagans at Areopagus, he actually leads them in a conversation that ultimately ends at Christ and the need to put your faith in him and to trust in him as the God above all gods, greater than any emperor or pagan gods, but he actually does it through these particular steps.

So number one, he takes the time to comprehend the people that he is talking to. So if what you’ve heard a little bit today starts to kind of resonate with you, it may be like, oh wow, I can see my students or my youth thinking these things, influenced by these things, learn more. Learn more about where your students are at, what they’re exposed to, you know, the things that they’re hearing, the things that they’re learning, the influences in their lives, learn. Learn about where they’re coming from. Paul knew his audience very well.

In fact, that’s how actually he opened his particular sharing with them. He said, Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. He knows who they are. For as I pass along and observe the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. He knows them. He then commends them. he actually praises them for being religious pagans. In that he’s not saying, you know, you should believe these things, but he’s saying, hey, I see some resilience here.

I see, you know, some faithfulness here, you know, to a God, to a deity, you know, that is in your life that you believe deeply in. You know, the book actually has a pretty insightful quote. He said, you know, if you can’t think of something to commend in your conversation or in your understanding of someone who is de-churched, and then for our context maybe just for students, if they just come across to us like, oh man, they’re just offending us in every single way.

How they dress, how they look, what they say, what they listen to, you know, how they carry themselves, then we probably don’t know them well enough. If we can’t think of one thing to commend about them and we just like pretty much put them in a box of being the worst human being ever, we probably don’t know their hearts well enough to be able to say something to commend them. So it comes back to comprehension again. Do we really know our students? Do we really know our kids? Well, he praises them for their worship and their faithfulness to what he makes clear that this is not a true God.

And then he offers the critique of, you know what? Jesus is actually the true God. You should worship Jesus. He is greater than all of these gods that you guys are faithful in profession and also in worship. And so that would be the external way as an application to engage the church, but then also to engage our students where they’re at. Because again, I think the de-churching research shows a lot of where our students are going, how they’re being influenced, and who they’re seeing as role models and what they’re seeing as church culture, what is happening around them.

That’s how they come to understand it and what they are embracing and understanding. So yeah, this is actually a really helpful way to engage. Now, I appreciate some of you guys for writing. It’s a lot of writing. I’m glad to send out the slides to you guys later. So I’ll communicate with the leadership here. But if you want to have a personal conversation, I’m open to that as well, and I’d be glad to get it to you that way. So then here’s where I want you guys, just where you guys are for about eight minutes to talk a little bit. And you’re not going to talk about everything.

Don’t kind of checklist here, okay? Don’t worry about it. But here’s some things I’d like for you guys to each have maybe a couple minutes to share from your own experience.

One, it could just be, well, what are your personal experiences with the church? How much of this maybe you identify or you see or you experience happening from your personal context? Another question, if you want to get more personal, an application would be, how can you pursue relational wisdom? So whether it’s internally, how you respond, calm, quiet, curiosity, Or how do you engage with people externally? Comprehend, command, and critique. Maybe there’s something there that you want to talk about or share. And the last thing would just be if there’s a next step for you.

Immediately in your context, maybe you have a person in mind. Maybe you have an issue that is ongoing. Maybe you have a particular observation that is starting to be more clarified in your ministry context that you would like to address somehow or work towards or something you want to learn. Yeah, so let’s go ahead and do that, and then I’ll bring this back with just like one minute left to be able to dismiss us.

So with that then, let’s end with just a simple passage from 1 Corinthians 9, 19.3, which is Paul’s declaration that the gospel is the utmost importance, but why he’s willing to do what it takes to build the relationships with the people that he is committed to in order for them to not only know the gospel, but to be blessed by it. So he said this, for the sake of the gospel that I may share with them in its blessings.

So this opportunity that we have in our ministry context, and in our homes, and in our friendships, you know, to really invest in meaningful relationships and point them to Jesus is actually what is worth it, and what we’re called to do and are able to grow in. And I hope that even, you know, as we’re here, even just for the short day, eight hours, or whatever it is, that there’s going to be some, you know, kind of lasting, burgeoning friendships that come out of today, because trust me, you guys need it as pastors and as leaders.

We need friendships outside of our church and outside of our context. So today is so great for that. So let’s go ahead and close in prayer. Father, I just want to thank you, God, for this opportunity for us just to be together. I even thank you, Lord, that this is in the morning slot when we’re awake.

So I pray, Lord, that you would be with us as we break to go to lunch, that these conversations that have really stirred up certain thoughts in us and more importantly, having us focus on certain people in our lives, in our context, God, that they may continue to be sharpened and that they continue to be able to motivate us, Lord, to return to our context, to serve with joy, but also to build relationships with intentionality. We thank you, ultimately, Lord.

We can’t save anyone, but Lord, you saved mightily, and through the work of Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit, hearts can be changed, hearts are being transformed, people are being made into the image of Christ supernaturally, so I pray, Lord, that you just help us to preach the gospel faithfully, but then also process and also engage with people in a way that is winsome, that exudes your love, that demonstrates your kindness and also allows deeper relationships to be built over time.

So I pray, Lord, that you would use us, use us mightily, and help us to encourage each other as we go. In Jesus’ name I pray.

When Kevin and I started with Rooted, we were, I was brought on to work with Rooted to help start the initiatives with Asian Americans. I’m half Korean, by the way, if you’re wondering why am I here. You’re probably like, why is this white dude here? And so I remember back then, there really wasn’t much for Asian American youth. When I first started youth ministry about 2009, I was looking for some training, and I just searched Asian American youth ministry and searched through like 25 pages of Google results, and there was nothing.

In 2015, when Kevin and I started working on our Asian American efforts, we just kind of had these, like, Kevin always had these crazy ideas. Kevin’s right there.

And I would always say, like, no, who’s going to do that and kevin would be like we are like good asian american youth pastors we’ll just grind it out and um it was rough in the beginning but it’s just been amazing to see how god has used this wave of momentum uh to gather us and i think really to validate the asian american experience in ministry but specifically youth ministry and so it’s just a privilege to be able to be here with you guys and talk more specifically about this um i’ll be honest this is a new talk So whenever I give new talks, it’s always a little bit nervous because I haven’t tested the research and the speaking as much.

So I apologize if you find anything off base or off point. But what I’m going to share with you guys today is basically a culmination of about two or three years of research, pulling from different sectors and bringing them together.

Basically, what does it mean to play the long game in youth ministry and hopefully from a uniquely Asian American experience? I’ve had the privilege of, I’m from San Francisco I grew up, was born and raised there Anyone from the Bay in the room? One? Alright, cool Two, thank you, yes, yes I know there’s a love-hate relationship, SoCal and NorCal My wife’s from LA and so come basketball playoff season our house is a house divided and it’s amazing, it stands every year I lived down here for about eight years I got my Master’s of Indy at Talbot close by and I served in, I was saved actually into a Chinese American church in San Francisco, Chinese immigrant, Chinese American.

So that was my main understanding of Christianity and faith through an Asian lens was Chinese. And then I came down here and joined KCM, Korean American Campus Missions, and I served and worked at a small Korean immigrant church, which I’ll share a little bit about, and a Korean American church and thought like, yeah, finally I’ll be with half of my people Koreans and I’ll feel more comfortable and then I just realized like wow I’m totally different from these people too. Koreans are intense in SoCal. NorCal Koreans are super like chill and laid back.

And then I went back home and served at the Chinese immigrant Chinese American church again and now I’m serving in a multi-ethnic church that has about 40% Asian American of a variety of different Asians and so I’m just grateful for my experiences that I hope can help us as we talk about these issues from a variety of Asian lenses, not purely just an East Asian one, because when we talk about Asian American, it includes far more than just simply Chinese and Korean or Japanese. So I’ll just say, let me pray for us, and then I think lunch is, when is lunch? 12? We have one hour.

We’re a little bit behind schedule. I’ll try to keep us on schedule and not send you guys late to lunch. Let’s pray together. Father, I’m grateful for this morning to gather, this whole day that we have to God to gather as uniquely gifted and created people as Pastor Hanley just led us through in seeing that we are beautifully and wonderfully made according to your plan. Lord, I pray that being Asian American would not be something that we shy away from or as we minister to the students that we’re ministering to that we would seek to understand their unique makeup as Asians in America.

Lord, I pray that we would not see that as subverting who we are or superseding who we are, but simply integrating with our faith and seeing how Jesus, you’re in the process of redeeming all of who we are. And may we celebrate it. May we see the unique gifting you have for us as we do youth ministry in this ever-changing world. We lift up this time. We ask that your spirit would move and that you would just use me as a mouthpiece of yours. We pray this in your son’s name. Amen. I want to start off with a question. It’s not on the PowerPoint, unfortunately. I should have put it up there.

But I want to start with a question. You can either just, if you’re more introverted, you can just think about it to yourself. If you’re more extroverted, you can bother the introvert next to you and ask them to talk about it with you. But I want you to think about this question or talk about it. How do you define success in youth ministry? How do you define success in youth ministry? Okay, just take a few minutes to talk about, think about. Yeah, this is hard to find it. Because like, in a lot of ways, you’re gonna transfer your awareness and work in this paradigm.

So, it’s very, very powerful. I don’t know, I guess you just gotta be able to say, it’s a huge amount to work, and you can’t add. All right, let’s hear some answers. How do you define success in youth ministry? Anyone want to give us any thoughts, things that were discussed? You don’t have to raise your hand and be good Asians, don’t worry. You don’t. to find success in youth ministry? Is that because success doesn’t happen in youth ministry? You can’t define it. Okay, that’s a good qualification there, yeah. Any other thoughts? It’s always successful because God is moving people.

So there is not a quantifiable measure, but I think overarching, we know that God is the victor, so it’s always successful. Wow, that’s a good Christian answer. It’s always successful because God is moving, yeah. I was thinking much more cynical than that. Any other thoughts? Maybe not how you define success, but how do we typically define success? I want to raise a really sincere curiosity and question in my students. Okay.

Instead of spinning out the right answer from what they have known, I really want them to think for themselves and then ask a question about God and Jesus, I think I would be happy if I see them. Yeah, that’s great. Curiosity or, yeah. Well, you guys have much better answers than I was thinking. Typically, success in youth ministry in recent history, if you just are to be very crude about it, has been defined by metrics, by numbers.

If you think about, well, what are the most successful youth ministries out there? You probably have some that come to mind, and they probably are not from Asian churches. They’re probably going to be seen more from the large white megachurches. Because in youth ministry, but even in all ministry, but I think especially youth ministry, the way we tend to think about or define success is metrics. Let me tell you what I mean by that. Either it’s the size and number of the youth ministry you have every Friday night.

For instance, when I was at my old church, my first church was a small Korean immigrant church. I had 12 students. And a successful night was when all 12 students came out. That’s how I would think about it. Like, okay, that was a great youth night. An unsuccessful night or a failure night were the nights that had less kids. My biggest failure was when I had one kid show up. And I was leading worship. It was a one-man show. I had to lead worship, give the Bible study, lead the small group. And this kid showed up and she said, where’s everybody? I said, you’re it.

And I was like, do you want to still do the youth night? Like, there’s kind of no point. She’s like, yeah, why not? And so she did PowerPoint for herself. I have a picture of it. I wish I put it up. It’s like, it’s kind of like this like trophy picture I have that I show all my youth ministry friends, just the depths of where I was. But that goes down in history, in my mind, as the worst youth night I ever had. See, whether you’re large or small, we tend to use numbers as a metric of success.

And there’s another way we tend to use metrics, and it’s by the number of successful conversions or baptisms, if you’re a Baptist, or the number of kids that go on to successfully stay in church or the faith after youth ministry. We tend to think that, well, good success is how many kids we graduate out and stay in the church in the college years. And that’s why we tend to think about with youth ministry, there’s the 80-20 rule, about 8 in 10 youth fall away from the church. I think it’s more like 7 in 10 now. It’s a little bit better.

But still, a large majority, when they leave youth ministry, tend to fall away from the faith. And we tend to use that to think, well, that is a failing youth ministry statistic or metric. I think there’s another metric we sometimes use. And I think especially if you work with parents, this is what I see a lot. A successful youth ministry is defined by the emotive response of the youth. So how invested the students are emotionally when they come to youth group.

This is why if you ever have parents coming to you and complaining or arguing about the youth ministry, what’s the number one thing that caused them to complain to you as a youth pastor, youth leader about the youth ministry? You can all say it. Don’t be shy. What’s the phrase that they say? They don’t want to come. Yeah, my kid doesn’t like youth ministry. See, that’s an emotive response that we’re defining is successful or not.

when it comes to our current state of youth in america though we’ve seen a shift happening you guys have probably heard a lot about this of how this generation is the first fully post-christian generation it’s the least christian generation and so when we think about metrics i think that’s probably more indicative of the quick fix or microwave mentality of ministry that we’ve been handed to you rather than really what a faithful biblical representation of success in ministry or youth ministry specifically should be. So I want to ask you guys another question for discussion.

Question number two is how do you reach a post-Christian generation with the gospel? How do you reach a post-Christian generation with the gospel? And I think because these two questions are interrelated in the way we think about youth ministry. Because how you define success will probably lead to how you think about reaching a post-Christian generation and vice versa. So second question, how do you reach a post-Christian generation with the gospel? And take a few minutes for that. Can you define post-Christian? How do you define it right now? Current teens. We’ll get there.

I think it’s like… – All right, you can wrap up those conversations. I’m not going to ask you guys to answer it because hopefully this is a question we’ll get into. But it is a really pressing question and issue today. If you’re familiar with any literature that’s come out recently about this, Barna Group is one that does a lot of research on teens and young people that’s been asking this question. There was a book that came out last year, 2023, I believe, called The Great Dechurching that was just charting the flight of young people from the churches.

I think Terrence is giving a workshop on that one either right now or after this. And that’s a question that a lot of people are asking. How do you reach a post-Christian culture or generation with the gospel? And so hopefully I’ll give you some answers through this workshop, but not necessarily in ways that you may think or want. Because when we think about approaching youth ministry to this generation, I don’t know if we can really define success in such a short-term way.

Anyone here in financial planning or finances? no okay then i won’t sound as stupid i’m not um but i am learning as i’m growing and accepting adulting more that i actually need to financially plan my life and not just uh run by the seat of my pants month to month um so my wife and i we sat down with a financial planner and he basically said when you think about financially financial planning you think about in two categories you can think about short-term gains versus long-term goals.

Short-term gains is like the high-speed world of investment banking and looking for all the market trends of where do you invest and you quickly invest to get short-term gains, transfer that off, and you buy, sell, buy, sell. He said that’s short-term. You can go that route, and it can be really exciting. It can make you tons of money really quick, but it can also quite literally kill you because it can drive you into ground and make you stressed out and burnt house. And then the other side he presented to us was what we want to do for you is set up long-term goals.

So rather than thinking how much money can you make in the short term, what are your goals and how can you plan financially for that? And that will take a while. It’ll take anywhere from five to 10 years, but as you see steady growth, hopefully you can plan towards a goal. And that’s how I want to kind of present this workshop is we can think about youth ministry in two ways. You can have a short-term gains mentality of youth where it’s high-paced, it’s fun, it’s exciting.

It may have a lot of immediate perceived success, but will that really lead to the long-term goal of success that we’re looking for? And so I want to present to you is to look at first, how do we recognize the pitfalls of short-term gains that we may or may not be functioning out of unbeknownst to us? We need to dismantle those. And then how do we set ourselves up for long-term goals? And hopefully, how does our Asian, unique Asian identities play into that? And so this was framed as like the heart aspect of the workshop.

And so what I really just hope to do is to encourage your hearts by engaging your mind so you can be empowered in your hands. Think about it that way. So first, what are what are some long short term gains? I have a couple of these. We’re going to go at them one by one. I think one of the first short-term gains we need to dismantle or recognize is that focusing on immediate results can produce shallow fruits.

It may be fun and exciting to have a large youth ministry, but if all we’re thinking about is how many kids are coming in the door, that won’t set us up to build really deep-rooted fruits. This is why a lot of youth groups can come at youth ministry with the mentality of how the more relevant and engaging and fun you can make youth ministry, the more successful it is because the more students will come into the door, the more students will have coming.

I run a youth ministry collaborative in my city of San Francisco with about seven churches, and I can’t tell you how often that that verbiage comes out. As much as I know those brothers and sisters and they love the Lord, I can just tell that we tend to still reflect this mentality that we are successful when a lot of kids come to our events. And however we can get those kids into those events, that’s what we’ll use as our means for success for these short-term gains. But often, it only sets us up to produce shallow fruits.

When I work with also parents and other youth pastors, often, like I said, the thing that I’ll often hear is parents will come and they’ll complain, my kid doesn’t like youth ministry. My kid doesn’t want to come to youth anymore. Can’t you fix it? Can’t you just make it more fun or more engaging for him or her? But I think there’s something that the Bible addresses with that, and it’s actually catering to the flock. It’s speaking to please people.

When we set up our short-term games all about getting people in the door, we’re actually using a method of ministry that’s all about pleasing the people that are coming or pleasing them so that they will come. And there is something the Bible says about this. Anyone think about what the Bible says about ministering to please people? Huh? Don’t do it. Yeah, quite simply, don’t do it. 1 Thessalonians 2 is one of the most clear ones. Paul says, just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.

For we never came with words of flattery. Pay attention to what he says after this. He’s not pleasing man. As you know, nor with a pretext for greed, God is witness, nor do we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. We were gentle among you like a nursing mother taking care of our own children. There’s a lot going on in here, but Paul is connecting his not seeking to preach the gospel to just gather a crowd or please the ears of those who he’s reaching. And instead, he says, we came like a gentle mother.

Now, what does that have to do with not pleasing people in ministry? Well, a lot of times we’ll look at this verse and we’ll think, oh, well, Paul’s talking about the gentleness of approaching people with sincerity, relationally. I definitely think that’s part of that. But you know this word for gentle? I don’t think it’s actually meant to modify what comes after, which is the gentle with a mother within her own children. Because verse 8 continues on to talk about what it meant when he says we shared our whole lives with yourselves.

In the original Greek, that word for gentle is actually literally the word for infant. And so what Paul is juxtaposing is how rather than coming with the wise and flattering and impressive ministry of the philosophers of the day, he came like a weak and foolish infant. Paul’s saying that rather than trying to set up a ministry that impressed you to draw you in, I came as one that seems weak and unimpressive so that we were simply preaching the gospel to you and not trying to please people.

And I think that’s where we need some course correction because often a short-term gain mentality of youth ministry tends to approach ministry from the sense of strength, not wanting to look weak, wanting to look like we have everything together. And that’s why we tend to look at or platform or idolize the larger churches because they’re the ones that seem to have it together. They have impressive production. They have big budgets. They approach ministry in a way that seems strong, impressive. They have lots of numbers.

But I think in Paul’s mind, what he would say to that is he would challenge it and say, that is not the type of ministry that necessarily God has sent us into as his representatives, if he was an apostle or messengers of the gospel. And Paul even goes on in other places to talk about ministry as not meant to have this quick microwave mentality, but more of the imagery of a farmer working long, difficult hours in the field. And one of my favorite passages to think about ministry principles comes in 1 Corinthians 3.

Paul says, What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed as the Lord assigned to each. See, Paul’s likening ministry to working in a field. That means a couple of things, but one, that ministry will often look slower than we think it does. Anyone who works with youth knows that we probably won’t see a whole lot of fruit in the first year or two of youth ministry. One of the things I used to always tell my youth volunteers when I got new volunteers was don’t see it as a one-year commitment.

Try to view this as like a three- to five-year commitment because you’re not really going to see any large gain or fruit with the students until at least year three. Do you have any parents of teens in the room? How long have you been working with your kids to raise them up in the way of Christ? 10, 15, 18 years, right? Do you see, when did you start seeing fruit? Maybe you still don’t. I mean, the thing is, parents, we know that you can’t automatically in one year get your kid who doesn’t believe in Jesus to immediately all of a sudden profess Christ. Now, God can work like that. He often does through the power of his Spirit.

But parents, we know that discipling and raising our kids, it’s a long-term game, right? it’s not when we’re just in it for the short haul because we’re in it for 18 years, 25 years and so on and so forth and I think the way we think about youth ministry should probably take a cue from parents in thinking while we may only have them for 4 to 7 years in youth ministry we need to think about our ministry to them goes far beyond these 4 to 7 years it started way before those 4 to 7 years and it’s going to continue on way after those four to seven years.

And again, I’m not saying that we should not expect God to bear fruit in our youth ministries. I think it’s fantastic and amazing. It’s one of my favorite things in youth ministry when I get to see students baptized in our church and profess their faith. But what I am saying is that I think we need to have a more realistic biblical understanding of what Paul says working in the field is meant to look like. When we focus on short-term gains or fruits, we’re actually focusing on something that the Bible tells us we cannot control. Because if Paul says, who brings the fruit in ministry? God.

It’s not Paul’s amazing preaching. It’s not Apollos’ deep, fantastic teaching. It’s God. And so the number one principle in youth ministry is remembering our call is to be faithful to labor. God has called us to, while we trust him to be fruitful with the people God has called us to. We trust the growth to God because that’s not something we can just manufacture. Now, neither does that mean, though, that we just don’t care about being relevant and engaging with youth.

I don’t think that youth pastors should be content with getting up and preaching like a commentary or reading a theological excursus from Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology to Your Youth every Friday night. I knew youth pastors back in the early 2000s that did that. And I think that’s actually a great injustice because we’re failing to, as Pastor Henley mentioned, to contextualize with our youth. That’s a big part of what we’re called to do in youth ministry. We should try to seek to do youth ministry well and relevant and engaging.

A little bit after this, in chapter 3 of 1 Corinthians, Paul says in verse 10, he says, like a skilled master builder, I sought to lay the foundation that God had called me to lay. Now, what does he mean when he says skilled builder? I think that means he is taking great care in working with the people he’s called to. But I think one of the problems with that word for skilled, I’ll often see people use this passage to talk about being excellent in ministry or excellent in youth ministry. Is that something you guys have heard about? Maybe it’s a core value of your church.

I see a lot of churches that’s a core value in excellence. Now, I don’t think excellence is a bad thing. I think being excellent is good. I’m an Enneagram 3. If you’re a fan of Jackie Hill Perry, you probably think I’m of the devil right now. But that means I love excellent things. I’m driven to be excellent.

I do think those are good things but I think it’s skewed when we think that Paul is saying he was excellent or he’s called to be excellent in his ministry because that word for skilled in the Greek it’s quite literally the word for wise which is the very same word that he uses we’ll see this at the end in 1 Corinthians 1 when Paul says God chose the foolish things in the world to shame the wise so that your wisdom is not of yourself but of God. Paul is connecting that theme from chapter 1 here to chapter 3 where he’s saying that we need to labor wisely.

But what does that wisdom mean? It’s not the wisdom of the world. It’s not to be excellent according to American corporate leadership principles. It’s not to take our cue and co-opt everything from the American corporate world and adopt it into the church So now that we have a highly syncretized American faith, it’s actually to think about being wise in ways that the world thinks are foolish. Being wise according to God’s standards, not our world’s. And so I think the first thing we need to dismantle is that we actually can’t focus on short-term gains.

It’s not in our power to do so, and neither is it biblical. So what’s the alternative? What’s the alternative to short-term gains? The long-term goal is to seek to produce disciples beyond the teenage years. If we can’t make teens Christian in their four to seven years of faith, we can’t just focus on hype of youth ministry. I see a lot of youth ministries that really focus on the hype of the Friday gathering or the youth gathering. The more excited, emotive response that kids have, the more hyped they are, the more into things they will be.

You know, that’s actually a manufactured emotive response. When we try to hype kids into youth ministry or into Christ, that’s actually, there’s another word for that. The word is manipulation or coercion. And when we start to do that in a way where we tell kids that if they’re not hyped up for Jesus, there’s another word for that. It’s called spiritual abuse. And so to me, it’s no wonder why we see so many kids falling away after high school because they’ve been coerced, manipulated, even, I dare say, abused spiritually into being hyped into Jesus.

And that is not something that can stand beyond the teenage years. That’s a shallow fruit that will quickly fall once they leave the comfort of their homes, their home church, and their youth ministries. And so what does it mean, then, to produce a long-term goal of discipleship beyond the teenage years? My really good friend, one of my best friends, Mike McGeary, one of the things he says is we need to set up teens for a faith that they can grow into. A faith that they can grow into. I think often we think about youth ministry as we want a faith they can grow with.

Think about like the same way we think about with kids, right? My kids are four and seven, and I feel like we’re buying new shoes for them like every two or three months. And we’re always trying to catch up to their growth curve. You know, they’ll always like every like two months, I’ll get this thing from the kids like, Daddy, my feet hurt. My toes hurt. I’m like, well, why? Stop complaining. And then I’ll bend down and touch their shoe and realize, oh, shoot, your toes are curled in your shoes. How long has it been like this? Why don’t you tell me sooner? But we’re always trying to catch up.

And I think often we think about ministering to teens or young people like that. Youth ministry is about growing faith with them. So we’ll constantly just meet them where they are and we’ll have to respond to their questions. We’ll catch up. what does it mean though to prepare for a faith they can grow into? I think it actually means sometimes the clothes are going to look a little too big. It means sometimes that the faith that we give them may not always match exactly what they’re facing or the questions they’re answering, but it’s one that will set them up to grow well.

I think that means a lot of, a number of things, but most fundamentally and simply, it means presenting a faith that goes much deeper than just a shallow Jesus-hyped faith. It means setting up kids with a deep, robust understanding of our faith, Christianity, the gospel. It means giving a deep-rooted theological understanding, and especially when it comes to hard questions. Things like LGBTQ and sexual issues. Things like apologetics and heaven and hell.

Things like social media and AI, whatever else that they’re facing, but giving them a faith that is growing, that grows beyond them, so when they grow up into it, it doesn’t feel foreign, that the clothes don’t fit or the clothes are too tight all of a sudden. Setting them up well for a faith that they can grow into. There’s also this phrase that we often use in youth ministry is, what you win them with is what you win them to. And so if we’re often thinking that, well, if the short-term gain is just getting kids in the door, we just need to have pizza and a lot of fun.

Well, really essentially what we’re doing is we’re winning kids to the church or Christianity through fun games and pizza. And once you take that away, you take away the foundation of what brought them to the church. And so as much as, you know, our kids, I often will say to these parents that come to me and say, my kid is bored in youth ministry. They’re not having fun.

I’ll often tell them, well, is that such a bad thing? Do your kids have fun every day at school learning chemistry and geometry? No, but as a good Asian parent, you care about those things, right? If your kid were to come to you and say, mom, dad, calculus is not fun. You would say, who cares? Be a good Asian and study hard because this will be good for you in the future. This will set you up for what? Long-term success. And I think we have to have the same mentality when it comes to youth ministry.

It doesn’t mean that we take all the fun away, but it means that we can’t build youth ministry on fun. We have to give them something more robust than that. You know, you may not have a very large or impressive youth ministry, and you may often think, Hanley mentioned this, you see the larger church down the street or the big white church as the big leagues, and we’re in the minors or like, you know, not even AAA, we’re in like single A league or double A league.

But, you know, one of the things that I think is a shame is that we often think that we need to become like the white church to have a successful youth ministry. But you know what church is the most fastest declining church in America right now? White evangelicalism. White evangelicalism is the fastest declining church in America, right? Did I say growing? I meant declining. Sorry, did I say that right? The fastest declining church in America is white evangelicalism. Some estimates say that in, I think it was about 2014, white evangelicalism was about 29% of the American population.

It’s down to about 23% now. You know what’s the fastest growing segment of Christianity in America? Any guesses? It’s not Asian American, unfortunately. But it is evangelicals and Protestants of color. As a whole, the black, Latino, and Asian church is the fastest growing segment of the church in America. Some figures in 2014, I believe, saw it at around 10%, and now it’s around 14% of the Christian demographic of America. There’s a fantastic book. It came out in 2014. It’s a little bit outdated, but it’s called The Next Evangelicalism by Soon-Chun Ra, where he talks about this.

And he says, if the curve is kind of going like this, oh, sorry. I don’t really, I can’t think about it now. White evangelicalism is declining, Protestants of color are ascending, growing, then that means the way we think about faith, and especially to young people, needs to remove itself or at least question a lot of the models that have been handed to us by white Protestantism, by white evangelicalism. Because those are setting us up for a metric of success that’s not equipped to deal with the current state of the world, and especially the current generation.

And so I think playing the long game then in youth ministry means actually leaning into our unique ethnic heritage. It means celebrating how God has created us and bringing that to the table because there is a shift happening. And in that shift, I think the American church is going to realize that there is a bankrupt model from white evangelicalism and it’s going to look for new models. So where is it going to find it? If all of our Asian churches are just playing the white person’s game of church, they’re not going to find the answers to a future ministry to teens in us anymore.

If we just become a white-dominated, white-assimilated church metrics or model, then we will fail to present a ministry model that will actually press us forward into this new era. You know, when I think about that first youth ministry that I had 12 kids, it’s funny. people would always say like, oh, that’s so sweet, like Jesus and the 12 disciples. And, you know, I’d always think like, oh, yeah, you’re right. But then I’d pause and think like, well, if I have 12, who’s my Judas? And honestly, I thought, well, it actually feels more like I have 11 Judases and one Peter or something.

But when I think about those times, I think about as hard as it was, I couldn’t think about the numbers because all I had was 12 students. I couldn’t think about success the way a large church would. So I had to actually rethink what does success look like here? And I’ll bet for most of you, when you think about your youth ministries, you can lean into so much of who we are uniquely as Asians to think about areas of success. I mean, just think about it for us.

When we think about a good, successful youth ministry, I mean, you guys already kind of said this, but I think a lot of what we do well is the relational communal building. When I’m working now in this multi-ethnic church, about 40% of our church is white. And it’s fascinating to me how in their minds, deep community means seeing each other about once a month. Now, would that be deep community for us as an Asian church? No. You think I see you once a month? Like, I don’t even know you. Who are you? We do community very well. There’s a very tight-knit, sticky community.

And what a lot of researchers say when they look at what keeps, there’s a sticky faith movement. what keeps faith sticky for young people, it’s when the community is sticky. Oftentimes, young people will belong before they believe. Now, it doesn’t mean that we should ignore the belief, but a lot of times, young people want to belong to something first, and then they start to understand the belief in process of belonging. And I think that’s something that Asian churches do probably better than most others in America today. There’s a strong relational connection that we have.

And, you know, when I think back at that youth ministry, it forced me to think about that with 12 kids. Because all I could think about was how do I engage with these 12 kids in a meaningful way relationally. I mentioned that the current metrics or youth success rate or attrition rate, so to speak, is 80% of youth fall away from the church after high school. I was just thinking about this, preparing for this. In that original group of 12 that I had, of what I know, there may be more, but of those 12, I know at least five of them are faithfully still in the church and walking with Christ.

Now, five out of 12 doesn’t sound very good. It doesn’t sound impressive. Like, oh, yeah, I made five disciples in three years at a small Korean church of 12 students. But when you think about that metrically, that’s 41%. That doubles the success rate of white evangelicalism. And I would guarantee most of your churches have a far higher retention rate of your youth in church beyond their high school years than most white American or white evangelical churches do. And so we can leverage our unique cultures in that way. We Asians, we care about education, right? Education is a big thing.

You know who I think, I’ve never corroborated this and done solid research. you know who I think the most educated church is in America? It better be the Asian church. All the Asian churches I know, the youth pastor and maybe sometimes even the children’s ministry director has an MDF, has a Master’s of Divinity. Almost all of them. They may be changing a little bit now. You know, almost every white church I know, the youth pastor does not have a Master’s of Divinity. Youth pastors are not seminary or theologically trained formally in non-Asian churches.

That’s across the board, especially where I am in the Bay Area. It’s the Asian churches that have the highest education. Now, that doesn’t mean that that’s a source of pride that our education equates to salvation. But what it does mean is that we are uniquely equipped to present a robust, deeply theological, biblical faith to our students far more than any other church can. And we should lean into that and celebrate that. Okay, so that’s the first one. Let’s go to the second one then.

The second short-term gain that we need to dismantle is that focusing on immediate results can ignore the present reality. Focusing on immediate results tends to ignore the present reality. What I mean by that is when we think about the focusing on metrics of success, this was actually something that we inherited from about 50 to 60 years ago, believe it or not. The emphasis on numbers, metrics, success was something that largely started actually out of here in Southern California. It started in 1955 with a guy named Donald McGavern. He wrote this book called The Bridges of God.

He was the son of missionaries in India. And in his book, he started questioning why is it that the gospel moves rapidly through people movements? He saw this in India. And he tried to engineer or reverse engineer these people movements to a science, which widely became known as HUP, Homogeneous Unit Principle. What he essentially says in HUP is that the more that we can remove any social barriers to relational connection, the faster the gospel will spread.

And that means that if we can reduce down the target audience or the target people to the most reducible, homogeneous unit or demographic, the higher success we’ll have at seeing the gospel spread rapidly through them. In theory, and at its heart, it’s not an unbiblical or bad thing. Where it started to go awry was in the 60s, along with Peter Wagner, this is information you may not need to know, but just for your history, at Fuller Seminary, they started the Institute for Church Growth.

In the 70s, that principle of the HUP started being adopted by churches in Southern California, first and foremost by Calvary Chapel. Calvary Chapel sought to reach the growing hippie movement that was happening out of my hometown, San Francisco, on Haight-Ashbury, where there were droves of hippies coming to the Summer of Love in San Francisco and being left unsatisfied by partying drugs and sex and concerts. And they were becoming homeless and ravaged on the streets. Calvary Chapel spread so rapidly across all the cities in America.

I mean, there’s a high chance whatever town you’re from, there is, probably still is to this day, or at least was, a Calvary Chapel there. And that’s because they were working according to this idea of the homogeneous unit principle. The more that we can reach people where they are with people like them, the more easily they’ll be reached. Saddleback took that principle to an extreme where he, when he started Saddleback Church down in, is it Irvine or in the city of Saddleback? I’m not entirely sure. Lake Forest. Thank you. Gosh, I should know that. My grandparents live there.

When he started Saddleback, he started asking the question, who is the most unreached people demographic here in this area? What he found was he made this whole profile about it. I don’t remember what the name was. You remember Hanley? He had like this tagline for it. It was like, yeah. But it was basically the middle class suburban white businessman. And he said, how can I reach that demographic? And so what Rick Warren started to do was he built his entire church to attract in the middle class suburban white American businessman.

Everything he did looked and felt like corporate America because that’s who he was trying to reach. His church exploded because there were droves of people moving to the suburbs down in Southern California, leaving L.A., and they were moving to those areas. Rick Warren saw an explosion in growth over this HUP, Homogeneous Unit Principle. And that largely started the megachurch movement. It had been around before, but Rick Warren is often seen as the godfather of the megachurch movements. Now, in theory, again, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The problem happened when this engineered science became seen as the model for success in ministry. And all of the megachurches followed suit where they all started to look and feel like Rick Warren Church Saddleback. You had Bill Hybel’s church out of Chicago that looked the same way. Mariner started, looked exactly the same way. Every single megachurch that started was a carbon copy of Saddleback. Now what’s the problem with that model? It’s a model set up for the middle class, white American, suburban businessman.

Now, as much as we could say that even brought good fruit and results back then, is that the type of demographic we should try to reach today? Is the middle class, suburban, white American businessman the model of your youth ministries, the target audience of your youth ministries? If it is, you’re in the wrong ministry, because that’d be really weird to try to target middle-class white American suburban businessmen in a youth ministry at an Asian church.

And yet, why is it that we often think that their model of church is the target model we should aim for? See, when we don’t critically think about the methods we’re adopting and using, what we’re actually doing is we’re not contextualizing, as Hanley said. We are simply taking a contextualized version of church and thinking it can just be placed over the draperies of our house. But there’s deep embedded issues with that because this was a product of a bygone era. The Saddleback model of church is a product of a bygone era.

What I mean by that is as much as it may have succeeded, if we want to use that term, with the numbers and success and whatnot in baptisms, That’s not a model that’s set up for quote unquote success today. Because just because something worked in the 70s and 80s for white middle class suburban America doesn’t mean it’s going to work again for 2025 or 2020s diversified Gen Z or Gen Alpha.

And I think to continue to allow the megachurch to define the metrics of success for us would continue to elevate white evangelicalism that again is the fastest declining segment of Christianity in America today.

rather than trying to just cater to it or assimilate and become like a white church I really think we need to ask the question what would it look like to establish a church model and ministry that looks uniquely Asian that you looks uniquely uh carrying on our cultural heritage I mean is that something you’ve even talked about if you’re a youth pastor that’s something you even talked about with your other youth leaders or elders what would it look like to set up a youth ministry uniquely Asian, not just adopting the principles of a white suburban church.

You know, modern youth ministries, they are highly individualistic. They’re highly built on the hype. Whereas I think our Asian churches have so much more to offer where even as we think about that stickiness of community and deep meaningful faith, we can offer a way forward. You know, one of the things that, especially when I was at the Chinese church, that I used to always to warn guest preachers of, especially sometimes the Korean ones, but especially like white ones. They would come in and they’d always say like, why are your kids so quiet? Anyone work at a Chinese church? Most of y’all.

Are most of you guys Korean in there? Go figure, yes, OC. If you work at a Chinese church, chances are your kids are far more introverted, far more reserved and quiet. And so we’d have these speakers come in trying to like hype up the kids.

and I just tell them like look like I know that may work from like whatever white cracker place you’re coming from but that doesn’t work here I’m half white I can say it right I have a lot of white friends but I always tell them I would tell them they may not seem like they’re responding in the moments but go and talk to them afterwards and you’ll be blown away at how much they’re retaining from your message you’ll be blown away at how deeply they’re thinking about the principles you’re to them. See, I think that’s something that’s so amazing and unique about Asians.

I have to tell this at my multi-ethnic church. Our youth group, our church is only 40% white. Our youth group is like 95% Asian. I’m sorry, 40% Asian for the whole church, 95% Asian for just the youth group. And we have a very large mix in our multi-ethnic leadership. And we do a lot of trainings with our youth leaders on ministering to Asian American youth. Because so often our non-Asian leaders will come in and just say like, I can’t get the kids to speak up.

And I’ll tell them, well, yeah, they’re not like white kids where they often have this free reign permission to just speak out of turn. They’ve been conditioned, I think in some ways for good, to wait to be called on. And that’s not something to be scoffed at. It’s something that I think shows respect. It shows thoughtfulness. It shows waiting before you speak to present a thoughtful answer. So rather than just trying to become white, we should lean into these areas where our unique heritage, can realize that it can present something here beyond the present reality.

I’m getting a little bit off track, but anyways, one of the ways that I think, so think about the immediate results. It ignores the present reality that the world is no longer white, middle class, and suburban. It’s just not. I think back in the 80s, about 81 or 82% of America was that. It was largely white and largely middle class suburban. Now, especially with Gen Z, the demographic has completely shifted. If you look at this chart, this just kind of shows the trending of where we are today by generation based on race.

And if you look at Gen Z, Gen Z is the first non-white majority generation. 49% of Gen Z are considered non-Hispanic white. And the rest, the 51%, are of some persons of color. Now again, what that means is we cannot simply just adopt a white framework of church, theology, and ministry model. And so not only is that the case, also this idea of church ministry that was adopted by the megachurches, Rick Warrens, the Saddlebacks, It was crafted and created in an era that was post-Christian, post-Christendom in its field.

It was an era riding off the backs of World War II, where there was large droves going back into the churches. It was riding on the backs of a culture in which, for many Americans, going to church was just part of the culture. It was crafted and created for a whole demographic that saw the church and Christianity as still a somewhat good thing to believe. And even if they didn’t believe it for themselves, Christianity was still good for society. But with both diversification but also our modern days, that is rapidly changing.

And so our long-term goal should seek to sow seeds for future evangelism and revival. The long-term goal can’t just be on immediate results. must be to sow seeds for future evangelism and revival. Because if we are in a so-called post-Christian society or culture, then we won’t actually see large fruit happen so quickly. We may not see large people movements anymore. We may have to think about our ministry being much more long-term and slow and incremental. Because we’re kind of past the place where the gospel is new.

We’re past the place where the gospel and Christianity is beneficial and even it’s seen as hostile to society. Now, what do we mean by post-Christian? It was a good question at the beginning. What does that mean? You probably heard this thrown around a lot. If you read a lot of books on trends like I do, it’s used in almost every single book coming out today. But what does that actually mean? There was this, sorry, there is this missiologist named Stefan Paz, who’s a Dutch missiologist and professor out in Amsterdam. In 2011, he came up with this article called Christianity and Sociology.

And what he was essentially trying to do was say there tends to be the way that Christianity engages in society is different wherever it goes, obviously. But there are different categories by which we can think about it. Tim Keller took this up and he called it the life cycle of Christianity in a culture or history. And Paz identified four categories around these, pre-Christian, Christendom, post-Christendom, and post-Christian.

And what he said is, depending on what category we’re in, in our time and place in history and society, we may need to shift the way we think about both our models, even our evangelism, and even our discipleship when it comes to ministry. The Christendom era, we can’t get into this too much. There’s a couple different places if you want to learn more about. I have a couple different teachings. One is from TGC 2023. I did a workshop there that goes into some of this. One of them is on a rooted site that talks about this especially more in depth.

But in a Christendom culture, everyone more or less assumes the basics of the Christian faith. God, sin, Jesus, and faith. And so when you try to reach people in a Christendom culture, it’s really just about connecting the dots. People know who God is. They understand the concept of sin. And so it’s really just about connecting the dots for them to show that Jesus is the answer and faith in him is what leads to salvation. In a post-Christendom era, this is thought to have started around the Enlightenment era. In America, it, I think, probably lasted a little bit.

Christendom lasted a little bit longer even. And we didn’t see this post-Christendom state until probably the 20th century. In a post-Christendom era, Christianity is still familiar to the majority population. And people have an understanding, maybe a slight understanding of these concepts. But really all you have to kind of do is fill in the circles and then connect the dots for them. And this is the era that Saddleback and the megachurch movement was born out of.

And so all of their models were born under the assumption that people will come to church because they still view it as a good thing. And as long as we simply just show them that Jesus is the answer to their life’s problems, we can fill in those circles and connect the dots. But they already have a basic understanding of God, sin, faith, and Christ. What about in a post-Christendom era? Do people have a basic level understanding of Christianity, of these four tenets of Christianity? Do people have a basic general feeling that Christianity is good even if it’s not for them? No.

In a post-Christian era, people either have no understanding of these four tenets at all or they have some vague concepts, but it’s no longer defined in the way that biblical faith or the Christian faith defines them as. And so what that means is we need to start thinking about ministry to young people beyond just assuming that they know who God is, even if they grew up in the church, beyond just assuming they know Christ and what sin is. I mean, just kind of bring up that question that we talked about at the beginning.

How do you reach a post-Christian generation? What that question is essentially implying is, how do you reach a generation with the gospel that has no concept of God, sin, or Jesus? how do you convince a whole generation that does not believe they’re sinners that in fact they are sinners and need christ i mean that’s a big part of the equation of the question that we need to answer and i actually think the asian church is well equipped to answer that question because there is a certain standard of morality today isn’t there it’s not like our young people today have no concept of morality what is their concept of morality today anyone know is there one you guys still questioning if there is one or not i think there is i mean we tend to think that it’s purely just the autonomous individual self the whole you do you but the standard for morality is don’t break the social codes don’t don’t cross into someone else’s territory of what they want to be for their lives.

Now, we think that’s a hyper-individualistic place of morality, but actually, it’s a social morality. Because to not cross into someone else’s sphere of what they think is right for them, that is a social moral code. So what we have now, it’s not a morality that’s based upon some agreed-upon law outside of ourselves that a highly westernized individualistic guilt innocence culture does.

We have something that looks much more like an eastern culture where morality is based upon your relation to the group how you adhere to the social standards or transgress those standards i mean doesn’t that sound so near and dear to us as asians if you grew up in a home you could you could have done everything right but if you got a b your parents looked down on you right you you dishonored the home um you know you You better try harder next time for the B because you didn’t get an A for Asian. You got a C. Like we’re always joking this with our friends. Like you can’t eat dinner tonight.

You got a D. Don’t come home. You got an F. Find a new family. Right? You guys have heard of those? Yeah? Yeah? Okay. Yeah. See, we have an understanding that there are some social codes and norms that morality is attached to, that my standing and worth is attached to, that are not based upon some law. And I think that’s where the white church is losing people today because they don’t understand that shift. For them, the gospel is still purely an individualistic justification relationship with me and God. But actually, the faith of the Bible is far more communal.

There are so many places in the Bible where our standing with God are attached to our standing with one another. This is why you have places in Scripture that say, if you do not confess your sins to one another, not to God, you are not, the light truly is not within you. That’s in 1 John. This is why in other places where it says, if you are not reconciled to your brother, you will be cut off from the family of faith and from God. The understanding of the New Testament faith was tied to the group.

And I think this is where the Asian church is uniquely, I mean, incredibly postured to address the issue of sin from a communal honor shame lens. So again, I can’t go all into that. Go check out the TGC workshop if you want. You can just Google it, I think. But all that to say, Gen Z is growing up in a post-white society, so it’s far more diversified, but also a post-Christian society that needs different understandings or ways to approach the gospel beyond just a white theology. Guys, white theology is not right theology.

Just because John Piper says something doesn’t mean it’s what your kids need to hear. It doesn’t make it right even. I would say that at my church and people think I’m crazy. Like, oh my gosh, how can you not agree with John Piper? I’m like, because he’s kind of irrelevant now. I was talking to John Piper at TGC. We were having lunch before the workshop and we were explaining the workshop. I was like, oh my God, I can’t explain this to John Piper. I was just nervous and shaking. He was like, tell me about your workshop.

I explained it to him and he couldn’t understand the concept of sin from an honor-shame lens. He was like, I don’t get that.

How is that any different from me feeling embarrassed for having zits as a sixth grader? and I was trying to explain to him well like you know from an Asian understanding we kind of understand this and then he went on to say like you’re right that is important though I see that with young people and that needs to be talked about you know what that means to me I was thinking about this maybe a little bit prideful but I was thinking those of you that work in the Asian church have a way to reach the next generation in a way John Piper never can you can more uniquely reach the next generation more than John Piper can because that’s the gift of the Asian American church to the state of America today and young people.

All of our unique qualifications of who we are or all who we are sorry qualifies us to present to young people today a vision of faith and sin in the gospel that they will resonate with and understand just as Hanley was pointing to us this morning. And so just to kind of wrap it up then, there’s some statistics of Gen Z, won’t get into that. But just kind of interesting to think about, Gen Z today is probably more akin to an unreached people group than their millennial Gen X and boomer predecessors when it comes to Christianity, just by percentages and understanding.

But if we are to sow long-term seeds for revival and evangelism, what that means is we need to think far more long-term than even just the next three to five years. I think playing the long game in youth ministry or ministry to teenagers, whether you’re a parent or youth pastor, youth leader, means thinking, how does my ministry to these teens, how does that play into 10, 20, 30 years down the line? And that’s maybe a concept that we don’t get excited about because we won’t see immediate fruits. Oftentimes we won’t see that fruit at all.

But one of the things that’s the most encouraging for me as I read and study in the field of missiology, Stephen Paz, the guy I mentioned before, he’s one of the world’s leading missiologists. He’s my favorite writer right now. He did all this research that asked the question, how much is our modern church planning and church evangelism and church growth efforts really reaching people for the gospel? and what he found was fascinating.

He found that the church growth movement, church planting movement that was huge, still is huge, the evangelism movement, they don’t actually reach that many new believers for Christ. It’s a lot of transfer growth. It’s a lot of biological growth. There’s not a lot of new believer growth. The one segment where he did find there is mass amounts of new believer growth was actually a ministry to young people, to children and youth. And this is why. I’m going to share a couple quotes from you. They’re a little bit long, but I think they’re worth sharing.

Pa says, as childhood involvement in church is by far the most reliable predictor of adult churchgoing, the most effective missionary long-term strategy may be to reach out to children rather than focusing on adults with no church background at all. Thus, youth children ministries may be an important missionary tool in turning around long-term decline, not because they are significantly more successful at attracting non-church people, but because they play a vital, very important role in making a connection between Christianity and the next generations.

Thus, they may sow the seed for future evangelism because people who decide to join a church later in life are almost always people, sorry, almost always people who draw from childhood experience. This appears to be the case even when these people went to church on a very irregular basis. What Paz is saying from all of his research and findings as the number one predictor that someone will come to faith in adulthood is if they were involved in church in childhood. The number one thing that creates successful evangelism to adults is not actually that they had no church background at all.

It’s not the methods. It’s whether or not they were exposed to Christianity in their youth. And so as much as we may feel like we have a failing metric in youth ministry, even if sometimes we feel like we’re failing to show the success or turn around the attrition rates or whatnot, what Paz is saying is that don’t worry too much about the immediate metrics.

Because come 10, 20, 30 years down the line, when someone else evangelizes to this teen who’s now in their 30s or 40s, 20s, 30s, and 40s, there’s a much higher chance that he or she will come to faith because of your involvement in their life through the gospel and the church. Far more the highest predictor for it. He concludes, as evangelistic mission in Europe or anywhere else in the West is largely dependent on the availability of a fishing pond of people with some previous church involvement trying to attract children. Maybe the best long-term mission strategy.

When he says attract there, he’s not talking about attracting in with big programs, fun and games. He’s simply saying how do we prop up our children and youth ministries to minister well to the next generation. Mind you, he’s in Europe where the average church size is 60 people. So he’s not thinking about large American youth ministries or children ministries. He’s actually thinking about how do we engage with the next generation in small groups of 5 to 10 people. And this is actually not a new concept.

This is something that’s corroborated in history my dissertation was on this guy named john livingston nebius who ministered in china in a pre-christian era so that first era that pause mentioned in the 1850s 60s 70s and 80s and 1800s and one of the things that he found was very similar to pause 160 years before pause even said it john nebius said one must not look down upon young children thinking they’re merely little ones of no consequence how often does that feel like that’s how we’re viewed as people that work with youth or children in the church we’re just glorified babysitters i think was one of the signs out there right for in just a few years they will become the leaders of the people and the parents of future generations given more time they will shape the affairs of the world as they see fit as the saying goes what one learns in youth one practices in adulthood the teachings and values instilled in them now will remain unchanged in the future it is often observed that while elders forget much i’m sorry i cut out a little bit where am i at many who received instruction in youth even if they strayed for a time later found themselves naturally drawn back to the faith the seeds sown in their hearts had never truly vanished wow amazing both nevius in the 1860s and pause in 2019 found the same thing that when we sow seeds now in early childhood and adulthood early adulthood we’re sowing seeds that will not leave these kids 10 20 30 years down the line so you know i used to say to people play the long game in youth ministry like three to seven years you know what i say now to people play the long game in youth ministry, 10 to 30 years.

You know, if we want to see a revival on American soil, I think it’s going to happen through the Asian American church, but not in our present day. I think it’s going to happen through the Asian American church faithfully ministering to Asian American teens 20, 30 years from now. And I think that’s when we may see a revival finally start to happen. In fact, we’re already starting to see glimpses of it with Gen Z. There’s been this whole TikTok movement of people coming to faith through TikTok teen influencers.

Now there’s some, you know, interesting dynamics about what faith they are being drawn to as it’s largely LGBTQ affirming faith. But all that to say that there is a hope for the future and there is a future revival to come. And I think we need to be poised as the Asian church to prepare for it and receive it gladly with our unique Asian hearts and desires. So just I want to close with this last passage, I mentioned it, just to encourage us, 1 Corinthians 1, it’s a little bit long end, but I think this is a good encouragement to end on.

For considering your calling, brothers, not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming a testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom, for I decided to know nothing among you except Christ Jesus and him crucified.

Crucified and I was with you in weakness same word that he said before in fear and trembling and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom but in demonstrations of the spirit and of power so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God so hopefully this is encouragement to you guys it is 12 so I’ll pray for us but we can probably take a couple of questions after that so let’s pray together God I thank you so much for this group and these young men and women that are ministering to teens.

I thank you for the parents in the room that are seeking to faithfully raise their children up in the Lord. Lord, what a hard calling it is, but what a hopeful one when we think about all this, that you are raising up a future generation to turn to you. And God, I wholly believe that you have socially engineered and orchestrated world history on a global scale to bring us as Asians into this country over the last 150 years, to be poised and ready to stand firm in the truth of the gospel in this age, to be unapologetic about who you’ve created us to be.

God, to submit all of that under your lordship so that Jesus would be the one that gets all the glory. We ask that you would work in the power of your spirit as Paul proclaims, even now in the lives of our students and our children, that you may reap a harvest among them God, God, willingly within our age, but even if not, even if it’s something we don’t get to see, God, we know you will continue to bear fruit where the seeds of the gospel are sown. We pray all this in your son’s name. Amen.

My name is Noah, first name Noah, last name Dennis. I know it gets confusing, it sounds like I have two first names. It’s okay if you call me Dennis, mix it up. I always say first shall be last, last shall be first. This is a middle school seminar, right? It’s all about dad jokes. It’s the twist. Just kidding. But I do love dad jokes. I’ll give you guys another one. If you take my last name, Dennis, and spell it backwards, does anybody know what that spells? It spells sinned, right? So I tell people, I sinned, but God turned me around. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Just to make sure you guys are all in the right room, we are talking about connecting with middle school students on stage and off stage, or in other words, just put the fries in the bag, bro. Anybody in the wrong room? No? Great. Well, I thought the best way to talk about connecting with middle school students was to invite one myself. This is me in middle school. This is my very first Facebook photo. And it’s also my most liked photo on social media, that’s right. It pops up every few years when students find it and they make fun of it. Hey, welcome guys. Come on.

Let me just kind of get a quick survey of who’s out here. So how many guys are like the leader of your youth ministry? Like you are the one who’s preaching every week. You’re the one who’s preparing messages, Bible studies, small groups, you know, Sunday school, all that stuff. All right. So we got a mixed audience. So the rest of you guys are just are you guys are volunteers in your ministry. You guys are leaders in your ministry. Okay. Well, hmm. I kind of prepared this thinking that I’d be speaking to people who are putting together messages for their youth ministry. That’s the first half.

The second half is talking about how to connect with students in small group. But, you know, they’re kind of like all applicable principles, you know. We’ll talk about it. We’ll get in there. Hopefully you can pick up at least something in here. What I’ll speak about today is not a comprehensive how-to guide. It’s not a, this is the one and only way you should do it. I’m just here to give you a few tips and tricks on what I do in our youth ministry that might help you.

If you guys are a youth pastor or a youth leader, how often is it that you really get to check out another church and see what another church does? you’re probably busy with your own ministry. I mean, if you’re a youth pastor, you have to be there Sundays, Fridays. You can’t go and see another youth ministry. So I thought, you know, it’d be fun to bring a little bit of what we do here at Living Hope and introduce it to you guys to give you an example of what other churches might do out there. Let’s first talk about just put the fries in the bag, bro.

Does anybody know what this phrase means? No, it’s all lost on us. Okay, we got a few younger people out here. You know, what does it mean? Can you explain to us? What does put the fries in the bag, bro, mean? Usually you’re trying to push it along. Just don’t give me all the strategies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the idea is like just do your job, bro. You know? In other words, middle school students, they don’t want to hear a lecture. They don’t want to hear you share and reminisce about your entire life story all the time. They just want you to get to the point.

And that’s kind of what we’re talking about today. How to be efficient, effective, but also connect with your students. all at the same time. Let’s just do a little warm up here. You guys got people next to you. Go ahead and discuss some of the recent gen alpha language you’ve heard, maybe some phrases you’ve heard. I wanna hear your favorite gen alpha phrase. I’m gonna give you a chance to chat it up with each other. Go ahead and turn to your neighbor, and ask each other, what’s those gen alpha phrases? Sometimes feels like they’re speaking a whole other language.

And that can be one of the many reasons why sometimes it’s difficult to connect with middle schoolers, they don’t even know what they’re saying sometimes and they don’t know what we’re saying. So connecting with middle schoolers can feel difficult time to time. Like, I mean, just look at how awkward that middle schooler is. Connecting with middle schoolers can be difficult for a variety of reasons. Perhaps you can think of some right now. Maybe, for example, you have a really shy kid and they don’t want to open up.

And no matter how hard you try and no matter how interested you are in their hobbies, Sometimes they just don’t want to really share who they are, or they don’t feel comfortable. Middle school can be a difficult time to connect with students as well, because ultimately it’s a transitional phase in life. They’re going from childhood entering into young adulthood. And as they discover, as they go through that, they’re starting to discover who they are, what they like, what they don’t like, where they fit in, where they don’t fit in. And not everybody is at the same point in their journey.

Even the range from sixth grade to eighth grade, traditionally middle school, is huge developmental growth that happens over the three years.

But even within a grade, you can find students who are on one end super social, super outgoing, know super ready to make friends and on the other side you might have students who are still more interested in you know things that they might have been interested in elementary school than anything else and so sometimes you know trying to navigate this audience for people who are like you know further along in their journey and people who are just beginning their journey can be sometimes a difficult thing to connect with.

And so I want to talk to you today about, you know, some things that I found helped me connect with middle school students. And part one is connecting from stage. So those of you guys who prepare things to be presented on stage, lock in. Hey, but you know, this could be all of us one day, you know, at one point or another. Maybe you’re delivering a testimony or maybe, you know, you’re up there sharing about something. All of these are definitely principles that you can definitely apply in different ways.

But my goal, when I prepare a message or something that I want to deliver to our youth ministry, I’m trying to aim for something memorable. It doesn’t have to be the most profound thing in the world, but I do want to create something that at least they’ll remember, something that will stick with them, persist with them. Like we live in such a world, such a day and age where we’re getting bombarded by information left and right. You just hop on TikTok and you scroll. You can easily scroll through a hundred reels in an hour and you’re hearing from a hundred different voices.

How can you be one voice in their life that they’re going to remember? And so that’s something that I always start with when I prepare stuff for our ministry. How to be memorable. And ways that I found work for me is aiming for something maybe humorous, being a little funny, you know, really engages the middle school mind. I found that this generation, they love the absurd. Just being wacky, weird, funny, something that just goes against social norms that can be really engaging for students. And also trying to be profound.

Sometimes there is a way to connect with students just by simply being more profound than the voices that they hear around them. And so we’ll talk about some ways that I try to incorporate these into my messages. One example is audience interaction. Who loves audience interaction? Who loves receiving audience interaction? You know, being the one who called out to go up to the stage.

You know, who loves volunteering? No? Nobody in the room is like the first person to volunteer to go up stage? audience interaction can be a really memorable way to interact with students to get them to remember what you’re trying to say here’s some examples of audience interaction that i use hand raising really really really easy entry-level way to start engaging your students you know you could start every sermon with a simple hey who in the room blah blah blah blah blah you know like Like, who in the room just woke up on the wrong side of bed today? And then you can get maybe half the room to raise their hand.

Something like that. That automatically engages them. It’s like a buy-in for them. They’re invested at least that little bit more in your message or what you have to say. Because now they are participants in what you’re trying to say. You’re trying to draw them in by getting them to interact with you. Oftentimes, when we speak, there’s sometimes a divide between the speaker and the audience, the people out there. But you want to try to break down that barrier as much as you can. And something as simple as hand-raising, again, it draws them in.

It lets them know that this is not just like a YouTube clip that they’re watching where they can space out. But this is something that they are actively participating in. That their brain is engaging in. That they’re thinking through as you speak to them. Other ways I love to incorporate audience interaction is by taking questions from the audience. Or, I mean, I’m sorry, asking questions to the audience and getting their feedback. Things like, you know, like, like, I don’t know, I can’t think of anything that’s happening. I’m blanking right now. It’s still too early in the morning.

You can ask questions. You can get volunteers to come up on stage. One time we were preaching through the book of Esther. And there’s some parts of Esther where it’s like super narrative structure. You got Esther. She’s going before the king to plead the case of the Jews. If you just read it, it’s a story. It’s cool. But sometimes the Bible language itself feels a little distant from the kids. So what I did was we read through the passage, and then I had our youth leaders, I put them on the spot. I had them come up, and I had them act it out in front of the kids.

And one of them is in the room right here, Nick back there. Super great volunteer. Yeah, our volunteers are super willing. I really appreciate them. Yeah, I mean, if you’ve got a really outgoing kid, you can get them on stage and interact with you, get them to act out something. Just help them do something funny, something wacky. That way it kind of sticks in their brain a little bit better. And discussions are always a great one. Like we did at the beginning of today where you guys turned to your neighbor here and you had them.

We discussed Gen Alpha phrases that might stand out to you or Gen Alpha phrases that you don’t understand. That’s another way that they’re engaging and participating in the message. I love to use visuals. I’m a big PowerPoint guy. Sometimes it can be wacky, weird images, like this ugly pig, something that will just stick out in the mind. Sometimes I love to use stock imagery. Oftentimes I find my images just by Googling some generic phrase and then going to Google Images and finding the one that I like. I think here I was looking up like cheating off another student.

And because we’re Asian Americans, I wanted to make sure I had an Asian American doing the cheating. Or someone who looks a little bit more Asian American. And then, you know, I love Photoshop. or, you know, we might not all be inclined to learn Photoshop, but there’s a great tool out there. I don’t know if you guys have heard of it, Canva. I love Canva. If you guys are working at a church, you can get a nonprofit license for Canva. And so you can get Canva Pro, and that’s what our church does. And we can make weird, funny images like this.

You know, anything that kind of just sticks out and sticks in the brain of the kids. But I love to use visuals sometimes to spell out what I think the kids should really understand, the main point. Putting it on the screen, we have kids in our ministry who love to take notes. They write it down. They remember it. It sticks in their brain a little bit better. We live in a screen-addicted age, and you can use that to your advantage by putting the important stuff on the screen or even by putting stuff on the screen that you might not say directly out loud but it helps to make the point.

You know we can absorb more information than just one thing at a time. So like you can see something visually and hear something else and you’re absorbing sometimes like two times the information. I even sometimes love to put examples out there so I’ll even sometimes spell out the examples themselves. Oftentimes one trap that I fall into when I prepare messages or sermons is I tend to stay in the abstract.

We talk big pictures, we talk about things that we can’t see with our eyes, you know, concepts like faith, justification, all these really awesome things to understand and know, but they oftentimes live in this realm of the abstract. And especially for kids, you gotta bring it down to the pragmatic, the real world, how it’s lived out. And giving them examples even on the screen really helps them to remember it because sometimes they’ll remember the example and then through the example they’ll remember the principle that you’re trying to teach them. And then I love to include stories.

Oftentimes, kids will love to engage with narratives and stories. I tell wacky, weird stories from my own life. This was a story I used in a message a long time ago about my childhood in Japan. I told them this story growing up in Japan. One time I was playing in the park. And in the park, I found, I saw something shiny. in a bush, right? So I went in to find out what it was, grabbed it, pulled it out, and I found a Zippo lighter. It was like one of those fancy lighters. I was just a kid, like six or seven. I had no idea what it was, but I was, you know, I’m a very curious kid.

So I decided to flip open this lighter and I gave it a fire. You know what fire is for a kid? It’s like magic. It’s like, whoa, you know, like, I mean, I’m not a pyromaniac, but as a kid, I was like, whoa, this is crazy. This is cool. That was my first thought. And then my second thought was, wait, how do I put it out? And I never messed with a lighter before. So I took this lighter. I’m like, you know what? She’s got to put it back where I found it. So I tossed it back into the bush. And guess what happened? The bush came on fire, right? Oh my gosh. Right.

So I’m like, what do I do? So I run home, I run to my dad, I’m like, “Dad, there’s a fire in the park.” And he’s like, “Okay, we gotta go put it out.” So we run to the park, and then we find the fire is still in the bush, so we stamp it out together, and then the fire goes out. And my dad turns to me, and he tells me, “Noah, you’re a hero.” I did not have the heart to tell him that I was the one who started the fire. And then I usually show the kids, this is my anime origin story. And by the way, this is created using AI on ChatGPT. You can do incredible crazy things.

I usually tell that story to kids to talk about the subject of guilt. That we have these secrets that we hold inside of us. And we don’t feel like we can share them because we’re afraid of the consequences of what’s going to happen if we share about that thing we feel that guilt or shame about. And then I go into a message about what that does to our life. And about how God ultimately embraces us no matter what. And so stories are just a great way to engage the students. It might not be a story they relate to. I don’t know how many of your kids are starting fires out there.

But, you know, the underlying feelings and emotions are things that they engage with. Think about your own stories growing up and the way that you felt at times. You know, maybe there’s a time where you did feel guilt or shame. Or we can even take this to different subjects. Like, maybe you felt doubt before. Or maybe you felt fear before. Or fear of people. Those are all stories that you can incorporate and engage students with. You want to connect with them on the emotional level.

Think about the core emotion of that story and how it connects to the core emotion that you’re trying to connect with, with the students. I don’t know how many times you get to go to other churches to hear sermons from them. So I thought, you know, maybe we’ll bring a quick sermon in here. I can show you what I do with our junior high kids. Is that something you guys want to see? Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah. My youth leaders have heard this one before. This is a sermon I preached this Wednesday actually, so it’s kind of recent. Yeah. Welcome to Living Hope Youth.

You guys are all now junior high students in our youth ministry. It’s a Wednesday night. It’s 8 p.m. after we’ve eaten dinner, played games, we’ve come inside, we did praise, and now you’re about to hear a message. This week we’re beginning a new sermon series on lessons from pigs. Let me play a quick video for you. Now to the story of a pig that is inspiring others. One palm-bellied pig has certainly entered his share of problems. Chris P. Bacon was born without the use of a bag of money. You have to read this story. We should not. Oh, my God. Thank you guys for laughing.

My middle school students didn’t laugh. This is one of my favorite videos on the internet. But yeah, we do this every year where we preach a sermon series based on a topic. We last year, for example, did a sermon series on lessons from donkeys, where we took donkeys as our theme, like three stories in the Bible that had to do with donkeys, and we taught about what that means for us. Now, donkeys in the Bible, for example, symbolize humility, and so we talked about lessons of humility that you can learn from those stories of donkeys.

For the kids here, I wanted to teach on what we can learn from pigs. So I started with this. Yeah, who loves bacon? I love bacon, right? Pigs, they’re delicious. They’re great. They’re so tasty. Ham and cheese sandwich. Oh, my gosh. That is so good. My personal favorite, tonkatsu. Whoa. Especially the cheese tonkatsu, oh my gosh. If you guys are from this area, you guys know Yoko. It’s a local spot over there in Buena Park. I had Yoko on Friday. Oh my gosh. Probably because I was talking about this message. That’s great. You know? Cheese tonkatsu, oh, so good.

Pigs, they’re delicious, right? Pigs, they’re all so cute. Look at that pig. I mean, like, look at it. It’s so cute, right? How about this one? Hey, let’s get everybody, let’s say this together. Let’s all go all on three. Okay, ready? One, two, three. Aww. I mean, it’s just such a cute pig. Who could not love a pig like that? I don’t know if you guys know this, but some people actually keep pigs as pets because they’re just so adorable. I mean, look at it. We got delicious pigs. We got cute pigs. We also got a few famous pigs. Anybody know this pig? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Some of you guys know this pig. Or how about this one? Pepper pig. Anybody know pepper pig out there? I personally don’t know Peppa Pig, but I guess these kids know Peppa Pig, you know? It’s a meme out there. I don’t know if you guys are online, but it’s kind of a meme now. Kids were telling me that Peppa, the mother pig, is pregnant. I don’t know what that means, but I put it out there and they kept saying it. I don’t know what that means. So, you know, pigs are delicious. They’re cute. There’s some famous pigs.

Pigs are pretty great, right? Who thinks pigs are great out there, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you’re wrong. All you guys are wrong. Pigs, they’re ugly. Look at that pig. Everybody go, ew. Ew. Ugly pig. Or how about this one? Ew. Pigs are messy, smelly, dirty. Look at that. They literally play in mud. Or look at this one. Pigs, they literally eat garbage. Ew. That’s gross. All the kids at this point, they’re going like, ew, ew. But more than that, they are ceremonially unclean. Everybody say, ceremonially unclean. Ceremonially unclean. You guys are great.

You guys are just like my middle school students. In the Bible, pigs often… Sorry, in the Bible, God told the Israelites not to eat pigs because it was something that made them unclean. They’re one animal that God told people to stay away from. That’s what he said in the Bible. And the pig, though it has a divided hoof, does not chew the cud. It is unclean for you. You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses, for they are unclean for you.

And this idea of uncleanliness is super important in the Bible because what it means is that if you are unclean, you cannot enter the presence of God. This verse is so serious that God says, even if you touch a pig and you plan on going to the temple that day, you cannot enter the temple. You have to go through this cleansing process to be made clean again to enter the presence of God. So oftentimes pigs in the Bible become the symbol for the unclean or the unholy.

And we’re going to talk about lessons that we can learn from pigs over the next three weeks about how, what God is trying to teach us through pigs and what we can learn about being unclean or unholy. Da-da-da-da-da. Oh yeah. I forgot I included this. Now some of you guys out there I know are saying, um, actually, we can eat pork. And yes, you are right. The Bible does say that we can’t eat pork. And the reason why is because when Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again, and we believe in him, he makes us clean.

And so all those things that used to make us unclean, now no longer make us unclean. There’s this famous story in the Bible where God tells Peter, he has this vision of all these unclean animals, and God tells Peter, you kill and eat these animals. And Peter’s like, no, but they’re unclean. And God says, oh, okay, I forgot the verse. But God says, let no man call what is unclean what I have made clean, or something to that effect. And so, yes, that does mean we can, in fact, eat pork.

So, lesson one, what I want to teach you this week, for our first week on Lessons from Pig, is about this phrase, pearls before swine. How many of you guys have heard of this phrase, pearls before swine? Absolutely none of our kids raise their hand.

It’s a phrase we don’t really use these days, right? so Jesus is teaching in Sermon on the Mount and he teaches this verse right here this is what Jesus is teaching us he says do not give dogs what is sacred do not throw your pearls to pigs if you do they may trample them under their feet and tear you to pieces and we go hmm hmm it’s kind of a confusing passage right Jesus is saying don’t give pearls to pigs or else they’re going to turn on you and trample you and tear you to pieces. That’s kind of like very vivid imagery.

And it’s a little confusing exactly what Jesus is trying to get at here. But let’s talk about this. Let’s break it down. Let’s break it down into two parts. The very first part here is do not throw your pearls to pigs. That’s a pretty vivid image for us. Here you can visualize it for yourself. You got pearls, You got pigs. Now think about a pearl and how precious and valuable a pearl is. You know a pearl that’s formed inside the mouth of an oyster or a clam and it takes a long time for it.

As an oyster like absorbs sand, it filters it out and you’re left with this very beautiful shiny stone known as a pearl. You have to go down, dive into the ocean, crack open the clam, harvest it. These things are so rare and so precious that even if you back in those days, they were more precious than some precious gemstones. Like these things were some of those valuable things you could own back in the day. And you and I, we understand the value of a pearl. I mean, it’s pretty, it’s beautiful, it’s really hard to find.

But does a pig understand the value of a pearl? No, a pig doesn’t understand the value of a pearl. If you give a pearl to a pig, what’s the pig going to do with it? It’s probably going to eat it, right? Yeah, the pig eats trash, right? So what Jesus is saying essentially is don’t waste what is sacred on people who won’t appreciate it. Don’t give your pearls to pigs. These valuable things, these sacred things, keep them sacred. Don’t give them to people who won’t appreciate it. Oops. Here’s a phrase that might sound a little bit more modern to us. Never try to teach a pig to sing.

It wastes your time and annoys the pig. You know, we find singing valuable, beautiful music, right? But if you try to teach a pig to sing, there’s no way it can sing. It’s just going to waste your time and annoy the pig. And then I lay out some examples for them. And I’m just going to speed through this a little bit. So, you know, here’s one example. Arguing with someone who never missed their wrong. Another example. Trying to win the approval of someone who will never like you for you.

The idea here is, again, I’m trying to get them to think through something that’s valuable that they’re giving away to someone who’s not going to appreciate it. Like with this example, what I’m trying to get at with them is like, you are valuable. You don’t need to change who you are so that other people around you can like you. Like you should, we don’t want to become people pleasers, just giving ourselves away just for the approval of others. something valuable, something sacred you want to keep and not give away to someone who’s not going to appreciate it.

Or maybe like this one, for example, trying to convince people to live like a Christian when they always reject Jesus. You know, it’s like we have this valuable gospel and this good news. And Jesus is essentially in this passage saying, don’t give the good news to people who are just going to continue to reject it over and over and over again. like someone who knowingly rejects Christ. The idea here with this example is like, you know, trying to convince people to live like Christians when they don’t want Christ, like, it’s not going to work because they don’t want Christ in the first place.

You can’t have Christian living without accepting Christ himself. So again, the thing tying these examples together, so here’s the abstract idea. So I’m kind of giving commentary on what I’m doing here, right? Here’s the abstract thing. Wasting what is sacred on people who won’t appreciate it. Very abstract concept. We’re trying to bring it down into a level that the students can understand with our examples. Arguing with someone who never admits their wrong. You have this valuable truth, but you have someone who won’t appreciate the truth.

Jesus is essentially saying, don’t waste your time on people who aren’t going to accept the truth. And there’s some nuance to this, and this is what I continue to teach the kids. you know like okay so are we just supposed to let bygones be bygones you do you me do me and then the bigger picture is we have to look at the context of it and I thought it was really helpful to have a visual here you know kind of weighing the sides of this if we take a look at the larger picture I’m sorry the larger passage that Jesus is preaching on from 7.1 through 6.

7.1 Jesus is saying don’t judge others unless you be judged right we love to quote that verse, by the way. But on the other side, Jesus is saying, don’t naively accept everyone. There has to be some balance between our judgment and our acceptance. And I think that’s what Jesus is trying to teach on in this passage. I thought, you know, maybe having this arrow here with a line in the middle would be a great visual way for our students to understand what I’m trying to tell them. This really abstract concept, you know, I thought was better explained sometimes with a visual right here.

Yeah and that was my lessons from pigs that was the first one I kind of skim through the last part because it does get a little longer but yeah that’s you know that’s as you guys saw hopefully I’m pulling in different techniques to try to engage with the students you know I have a lot of audience interaction you know I have the kids you know raise their hand if they think pigs are great you know something like that I have visuals with the ugly pigs and the cute pigs and telling stories through examples all different ways to try to really get this stuck in our kids brains you know we got a lot of competition out there with tiktok but I believe in you guys you guys can come up with funny creative content that is meaningful and more profound than what those influencers can come up with, right? Alright.

Oh, this was just a quick note that I put in here. You don’t have to compromise Gospel Center preaching for fun preaching. You can have both. You can make it compelling and funny. I believe in you guys. Yeah. Alright, alright, alright. 

Part two. This is probably the more relevant part of us here. We’re going to talk about connecting in small groups and I wanted to start this off with discussion with your neighbor.

Why don’t you guys talk about this together? What are things that work for you and don’t work for you in your small groups? I’m assuming that you guys get a chance to interact with students in not just a large group but like you get to break them off into smaller groups. What are things that work for you and things that don’t work for you in your smaller groups? Go ahead and turn to your neighbor and discuss. I just want to give you one last encouragement, something that we encourage our youth leaders with. It’s this principle in youth ministry that we call Sticky Faith.

I don’t know if you guys have heard about it, but the idea is we want to create faith in our students that really sticks with them through life. And one of the best ways that research has shown to help students grow Sticky Faith is relationships with adults in church.

Research shows that if they have a relationship with five adults in church besides their parents, people that they can talk to about issues that they might not be comfortable to talk about with their parents, or just people who live out an example of faith, adults in church, if they have five in their life by the time they go to college, the chance that their faith sticks is like it grows exponentially. And so you, by being in your students’ lives, you’re one of those people. Your role is so valuable. You might not see it on the everyday week-to-week.

You might not see it when your students won’t listen to you and answer your questions, when it feels like the discussion is falling flat. But stick with it, guys. Middle school is kind of a rough period because they’re really becoming who they are becoming. It’s a transitional phase. And sometimes they don’t have the maturity to understand some of the things we want to talk about with them.

But stick with it because what I see over time is that in middle school, if they have fun, if they have great memories, if they make great friends, by the time they get to high school, their maturity finally matches where we want them to be. And we can start to really go deep with them. They’ll have that foundational layer of I love being at church. I love my friends here. And then they’re just so much more prepared to just go deep once they get a little bit older. You guys have a really important role in their lives, and you guys are just so valuable to their development.

I just want to pray for you guys and bless you guys as we go out there. Father, we’re so thankful to have even just a small part in this work that you’re doing in our students’ lives. We pray over them that you will continue to grow and mature them, give them a love for you that will be indescribable. I pray a special blessing over these leaders here that you would empower them with your spirit to do this great task, God. What they’re doing is so invaluable, God. And maybe they don’t feel appreciated every week for it. Maybe it is a thankless job.

But, God, we know that even if we receive approval from no one else, that you are watching us. That you see what we do. That you are pleased with it. God, help us to be encouraged by the words, well done, good and faithful servant. as we serve faithfully, consistently, your people, God. We’re so thankful. We pray this in your son’s holy and precious name. Amen.

We’re delighted that you really are here because as our brother Hanley was mentioning that you guys are really the front lines of really ministering to our youth. That’s really the trenches. It’s not easy, especially in this day and age. So, but before I begin, I kind of want to introduce myself so that you get to know who I am. My name is James Hahn. I’m the senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, and I planted the church 23 years ago. So we’re a multi-site church. We are in Hancock Park in LA, which is like in between K-Town and Beverly Hills.

And my second site is in Torrance, and that’s where I live currently. So I’ve been pastoring for 23 years. I’m also an elected official in my city of Torrance. I’m on the school board. I was elected seven years ago. So I get this privilege of serving my city by being on the school board. So I’m integrating with kids on a regular basis, especially when it comes to the issue of school and education. And my wife is also a principal in my city. And so it’s kind of fun for me. I get to be her boss. The only time in my life I get to be her boss at this one moment of my life.

So I want to be on the school board forever so I can always have that one above my wife. And so it’s always a good thing. At the same time, I’m a parent as well. I have three kids. I have a junior at UCLA. I have a freshman at Climber McKenna College. They just had a lockdown the after shooting on campus, a little bit crazy. And then I have a junior in high school. I got one left. I got two more years before I’m set free. And so he’s a junior in high school right now. So we have three kids, and they’re the absolute delight of my life as well. So that’s kind of my background.

So that’s why for me, this topic of partnering with parents is absolutely real. One of the things about my church is that our church is in the PCA, the Presbyterian Church in America. So the way that we do our youth ministry is this. Our youth actually join us for worship. And so we have what we call covenantal worship, where our youth group joins us the whole time for our service. So all the kids that have been in our church for all these years, I’ve watched them grow from elementary now all the way through college. And they’ve been able to participate in our worship.

And the reason why I like it so much is because of the fact that our kids, our youth kids, have an opportunity to see their parents worshiping. They have the opportunity to see what perhaps worship looks like, right, outside of their own peers, but to see it from intergenerational, from adults to elementary to middle school. So that when they leave high school, when they leave high school and they go to college and when they go when they’re young adults, they realize that church is still the same.

It’s not geared to a certain age group, but it’s geared for all different segments of all different age groups. And so that’s been one of the blessings is to watch our kids be able to model their parents and the parents that are in our church when it comes to worship itself. And I pray that the long-term effect would be as they grow up and they begin to have their own families, that they will be able to impart the truth of the gospel to their kids as well. So today, the seminar topic really is this idea of partnering with parents.

I’m also here to learn from you, right? I want to learn from you guys the things that you’re going through. Because I can only speak primarily from a Korean-American perspective. Because the majority of the people at our church are Korean-Americans. So that has a unique perspective from a Chinese-American church, a Japanese-American church. Our youth pastor is a Japanese-American. So he’s been a part of our church for seven years. And sadly, he’ll be leaving this fall. Because he’ll be going to the mission field. He’ll be going to Japan, serving in Tokyo. And we’re delighted for him.

because of the fact he’s going to an unreached people group. And especially that he’s Japanese American, he can speak the language. He’s going to rock it. He’s an absolute stud. But we’re going to absolutely miss him a great deal. So we kind of want to talk together about this idea. What does it mean for us to partner with parents? And this is real for me because I’m a parent, right? I know what it’s like. I love my kids. We have a great relationship with my kids. Right now, I’m lucky all my kids are home. Well, because my daughter’s on spring break.

My son’s about to run the LA Marathon on the Sunday. And so that’s why everybody’s home. So my wife is absolutely thrilled, right? She loves it when all our kids are home. I can’t wait for them to leave because now I get my house back, my sanity back. It’s a lot better when they’re gone. But yet, you know what? We do really love our kids in every way. So today we’re going to talk about this idea of what it means for us to partner with parents.

And so I kind of want to begin with the idea of what prevents us from partnering with parents, right? What makes it hard for us to really have our parents engaged in our youth ministry? So I thought about this a little bit when I was preparing this seminar itself. So one of the things that I feel like I wanted to start from was our perception of parents as youth pastors or as youth leaders, right? So often when it comes to parents in our youth ministry, we feel like we don’t need them, right? As a matter of fact, they’re more of a hindrance to our students.

and the reason why we feel like they get in the way, they don’t understand the kids, right? They don’t understand us the way that we want to do them. And so we feel like they’re an obstacle. And not only that, because of the fact that we feel like our students don’t want them there, right? They don’t want them to be a part of what they’re having fun or what they’re learning. So they kind of want that separation. And for us, we feel the same way. We feel like, you know what, we want them to be away from the youth ministry. We feel like they’re more of a hindrance than a help.

right right that’s how we feel we feel like they’re more of a hindrance rather than a help and we have this negative perception of parents right so often we feel like they’re the root cause of why our students are not growing we feel like they’re in the way of they’re the barrier for the maturity that our students can experience why is that because of the fact that they’re the ones who take the kids away from our youth group right with all their activities whether it be sports whether it be academics, whether it be whatever thing that they have to do, we feel like they’re always taking away the kids away from the youth ministry.

Because of it, we don’t want to deal with that, right? Not only that, but we also feel like we don’t need them because of the fact that we feel like we’re the experts. We know youth. We know youth ministry. We know what these kids know. More than the parents, believe it or not. That’s how we often think. And so often, we feel like, you know what, we know better than them. That’s why we feel like, you know what, we don’t need to partner with parents. That’s what prevents us from partnering with parents.

But the second thing that I also feel like when it comes to the idea, I didn’t put it up there, but I just thought about it again, is this idea. The reason why it prevents us from having partners’ parents with us is because it’s a cultural shift as well. And what do I mean by that? Today I feel like in our society that there was a bigger divide between parents and kids than ever before. And the reason why, one thing you’ve got to understand in school districts, what they value, or what they’re trying to strive for, is this idea of student rights, student privacy.

Now, this idea of student rights and privacy is really gaining traction, right? And so, for example, in our district or in the state of California, let’s say your kid has a conversation with your teacher, and she tells the teacher that, you know what, I want to change my pronoun. Or I want to change my identity. So rather than be called Kyle, I want to be known as Kylie. Right? So you have that conversation with the teacher. By law, the parent is, the teacher is not allowed to tell the parent. By law.

You cannot tell the parent that your kid will now be referred to as Kylie and no longer as Kyle. And the reason why is because of that, it’s about that student’s right. And I get it. Perhaps they want to argue the idea that it’s for the safety of the child, right? Because if they tell their parents they want to change their identity, then their parents will flip out.

They may physically hurt them or they may abuse their child because of their desire to change their identity, right? But in my perspective is that so often when you do that, you put that kid at more heart, right? Because they’re not getting the counsel, the advice, or the guidance from their parents or people around them to speak into their life. But the reality is it’s about their rights. It’s about their privacy, right? And because of it, parents do not have the right to know or the right to have that information. And so because of it, you’re bringing this rift between student and parent.

I remember a couple years ago, I actually saw a situation where a kid actually filed in court where they would want to divorce their parent, right? They want to divorce their parent. Why? because they don’t want to have that authority over their life telling them what to do. So our kids today feel like, you know what, I wanna be able to do what I want to do.

And I think that mindset has been embedded by the culture that we live in today, right? All about student rights, all about student privacy, right? So again, because of it, we feel like, you know what, parents should not get involved, right? Or culture’s telling us that, you know what, They don’t need to be involved in that way. And so I think that’s what prevents us from a parent’s perspective, right, our perception of parents, right? We feel like they’re a hindrance. Students want their privacy. We feel like, you know what, they’re in the way.

They hinder our kids because of the fact they do all these activities. And we just don’t need them, right? We don’t need them. But another reason what prevents us from having parents that are involved is because of students. The students don’t want their parents to be involved in the youth ministry as well. And the reason why they don’t want them to be involved is because of the fact that they don’t trust their parents. They don’t trust their parents. They don’t trust their wisdom. They feel like, you know what, my parents just don’t understand.

The reason why, because they’re from a different time or different culture, right? And they don’t understand the way that things are done in America, right? America is different than where they came from, whether it be Korea, China, Japan, wherever that other country may be. And so therefore, you know what? I don’t want them to be able to come and to speak into these matters because of the fact it’s just different, right? A lot of times kids are embarrassed by their parents, right? We’ve all been there as immigrant kids, right? So I grew up in the early 80s. Hanley grew up in the late 80s.

I grew up in the early 80s, right? And so I’m 53. So back then, it was really hard because I grew up in a very predominantly white area, right? And so we all have those crazy parent stories, right? Like, you know, my parent, you know, McDonald’s is three syllables, right? But my mom made it four syllables, right? McDonald’s, right? And you have these things, right? You know, or you go to like McDonald’s and like you’re in drive-thru and then you order the food, like hamburger, pinch pie, you know, all this kind of stuff. And then she would say to go. Of course it’s to go. Your drive-thru.

What else are you going to do? sit there in the drive-thru, it makes no sense that you have these experiences, right? And it’s funny because I watched this even with my own children when they had to go and my in-laws had to take care of my kids. And my kids said to me, dad, mom, never allow grandma and grandpa to ever do this again because they wanted to die when they were ordering food for them at Arby’s. They just wanted to shrivel, right? And so because of that, there is this idea of shame, right? They feel embarrassed by their parents.

And so because of that, kids don’t, they feel uncomfortable when parents are getting involved or where they’re volunteering. So they don’t want that as well. They want their own privacy. They want their own independence, right? They want to be able to be kind of a place where this is my safe place. This is where I can ultimately hide, right, away from my parents. And so the student’s perspective of having parents involved sometimes are affected by these things.

They feel like they can’t understand, they’re embarrassed by them, they have shame, and they just don’t have a very strong relationship with their parents. So that’s another reason why I think a lot of times as youth pastors and youth leaders, we don’t want our kids, our parents to get involved, or we don’t want to partner with our parents.

But the third thing is obviously the most obvious is language and age barriers, right? Language and age barriers, right? And so a lot of times, you know, you can’t speak the language, right? And so I’m notorious for this because my Korean is absolutely horrendous. Like, I can barely speak Korean at all, right? So, and that’s the thing.

So when you’re dealing with first-generation parents, you have this awkwardness, right? There’s a lot of insecurity, And I know that insecurity as I have to learn how to speak with these adults where I just can’t articulate well enough what I’m trying to express. So rather than doing that embarrassment, I would rather hide and not deal with them at all. So that’s how we avoid the parents. That’s why we don’t have them to be involved in our youth ministry. Or it could be another factor is age.

You know, because of our culture, we have this uniqueness of where if you’re younger, you just feel weird to talk to someone older. And I think that’s kind of embedded in us because of the way our parents raised us, the way our culture is. And so for us to kind of like instruct or kind of give advice or kind of like speak to older adults, again, it puts us in a really uncomfortable, odd situation where we feel like, you know, I just don’t feel comfortable. And so we feel like they look down upon us with our youthfulness.

They feel like, you know what, you don’t understand what it’s like to be a parent, especially if you’re like a 24-year-old, 25-year-old, and you’re telling this 45-year-old guy about their child. It’s kind of an odd situation. And so because of it, because of our age, we also say, you know what, I would rather not deal with parents. We don’t want them ultimately to get involved.

So when we think about these three categories, right, is that with the way that we see parents, the way that our students see parents, right, and then the language and age barrier, right, it prevents us from getting our parents involved, right? And so, and I think this was hard.

And I think these are real issues that we all deal with when it comes to the kids, when it comes to parents in our church, dealing with the parents in our youth ministry itself, right? Do you feel like you understand that? Do you feel like these are the barriers that you feel through as well? Is there anything that you, I want to learn from you too.

Is there anything that you feel like also prevents you from having parents involved in the youth ministry? Or getting involved with what you’re doing with youth? Did I miss anything for you guys? What do you experience when it comes to parents? You’re probably thinking that’s why I’m here. Because of the fact that I’m having a hard time with this. But is there anything that you feel like your own personality? The parents’ perception of themselves. Okay. Maybe sometimes they might feel like they don’t fit in with the kids.

Like, I’m older, maybe my language barrier, so they’re also maybe aware of these things. Yes. And they feel like they sort of disloot themselves as well. Right, because they don’t feel like they belong either. Right, yeah, exactly. So the parents feel like they don’t belong, right? And that’s why it’s kind of funny, because I’m that awkward parent. I love getting involved. I have no shame, right? I have no shame, right? So, you know, I’m old now. So I’m also involved in campus ministry. So the campus that we work at is at UCLA.

So I’m involved in a ministry called KCM, right? And so I just spoke at KCM two weeks ago And for the very first time I said, wow, I’m really old now, right? Because like, so when I go to KCM now, it’s kind of fun for me Because I see a lot of my friends’ kids now at UCLA And so, and I felt like, wow, I’m really, really old Because now the freshman class, I’m older than their parents, right? And so if I’m older than their parents, then man, they must be thinking like What’s his grandpa doing here today? So that’s why that perception of, man, I feel awkward. It is true.

And that’s why I’m thinking, like, maybe my days at KCM are over because I feel like I can’t understand them, I can’t relate with them or whatever. So the parents’ perception themselves, it really does affect them getting involved in our youth ministry as well. Any other ideas? That’s a good one, right? The parents, yeah. Like the perception of, like, oh, like, the church should hand on a kid’s faith. Okay. Right.

And that’s a big thing, right? They feel like, you know what, that’s what we’re paying you to do, right? You’re there to take care of our kids as if we are the babysitters, right? Because they feel like that’s our job, right? And that’s what it is. When I used to do youth ministry, I did youth ministry for 13 years, right, when I first began. And that’s what it was, right? They would just drop off the kids and they would just leave. The unique thing about the second call of my youth ministry was that we had two separate buildings.

Like you had to drive from the main worship building for the parents. You had to drive to the youth building. So literally we were on our own. We could burn the church down, no one would know. Literally, we were on our own. That whole building was left to me. Because I was in the EM, I was in the youth, I was in the elementary. Literally I was doing everything there. And so that’s what they would do. they would just drop them off because of the fact that that’s your world and that this is our world, right? So that’s another good example, right? That perception of that’s your job.

So that, you know what, I don’t need to get involved. I can leave it there as well. That’s a good one. So perception of parents, their own perception, the whole thing they just drop them, that’s your job, that’s what you have to do. Any other things that prevents parents getting involved with your own experience? Yeah. I mean, this might be the minority of some of our parents, but if the parents aren’t believers, And the kids want it to be part of the youth group, but the parents do not share the same faith. Right.

And that’s a unique situation, right? It’s when the parents are not believers, right? So they just don’t know, right? They don’t know what to do, right? And so that’s unique. That’s how they drop them off. That’s a good problem, I think, right? So that’s how we can – we’re going to talk about that a little bit later, about how we can witness to them and be an example for them. But it’s true. A lot of times parents just don’t know, right? And that’s why they drop them off and they just trust them into our hands in that way.

But these are all good, right? These are all things, these are things that we want to think about. What prevents me from overcoming my fears? Or what prevents me from working with others that are older, younger, different than me, right? That’s a very important question you have to ask yourself, right? Because of the fact that if you want our kids to learn how to deal with other people, then we also have to model that in the way that we deal with the parents as well. And so the next thing that we want to look at then is, Oops. So we don’t need to have that. So I did all that. Sorry about that.

We need to partner with parents, right? We need to partner with parents in this way. So one thing we want to look at is the parents are our advocates. They’re not our adversaries, okay? We need to partner with parents because they have to be our advocates and not our adversaries, okay? The reason why I say that is because of the fact that who is the biggest influence in a kid’s life, right? They would say two things, right? It’s their parents and it’s their peers, right? So the parents are the biggest influence in their life. And I realize how true that is, being a parent myself.

And the one thing I realize is that kids are longing for the affection and the love of their parents, right? No matter how much they may be ashamed of them, nor how much they’re embarrassed by them, they still want that affection and their longing to be approved by their parents. Right? And that’s the greatest tension of all. Because what’s the number one reason why kids leave the church later on? Their parents. Right? Their kids leave the church because of their parents, but at the same time, it’s the parents that they would want the most.

And so that’s why in order for us to have an effective youth ministry or to really effectively change the life of our students, right, we have to ask ourselves what’s the biggest influence of their life. What will make them leave the church or what will make them stay in the church? And if it’s their parents, then we have to figure out how in the world we’re going to partner with these parents because of the fact that they can lead their kids astray. No matter how much I do, no matter how much amount I’m making, no matter what I do, they’re the biggest influence in their life.

And why is that? Because obviously they’re with them all the time. You only have a couple hours a week to have an influence on a child. Your parents are going to be there every single day, right, in their lives doing whatever they can. And so obviously because of it, we have to be willing to partner with our parents. So often it’s not that we simply want them to be involved. We need them to be involved because we realize the importance of what they do for their families, right? So we need them to be advocates for us.

We need them not to be our adversaries, but their advocates, right? Because if discipleship is our goal for our students, then there’s no one better than parents because they’re the ones who are with the kids the most. But not only do we need to partner with parents, but who is the one who’s supposed to be the primary discipler of children, of the youth? is parents, right? We know that from Deuteronomy 6, verses 4 through 9. I’m going to read that for you. Deuteronomy 6, verses 4 through 9. This is what it says for parents to do for their children. Deuteronomy 6, verses 4 through 9.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your… I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m reading again. with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise. You shall buy them as sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

You shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on the gates, right? The word of God tells us as parents, we are to install the word of God and the lives of our children. And one of the things you have to understand for a child to be born in a covenantal home is a blessing of God. Because you have the opportunity to hear the gospel from your parents, right? If you’re born in a non-Christian home, you may never have the opportunity to hear the gospel, but because you are in a Christian home, you have the opportunity to hear the gospel.

And therefore, that weight of that responsibility is even that much greater for the parent to do so and obey that commandment. Because if we don’t, then the kids may go wayward in their life, right? And that’s why we have to encourage our parents and remind them of that responsibility that we’re not the primary disciple, right? As a youth pastor, I’m not there to replace them as the parent. Sometimes as youth pastors, we always feel that pressure to say, you know what? Because the parents are not doing their job, I’m gonna feel that.

No, you will never be the parent, right? You will never be the substitute parent, right? Right? In that way. But you need to come alongside and you need to encourage the parents to do their role. So one of the funny things about being a parent, one of the great things I’ve ever heard is this. As a parent, it’s kind of funny. When your children are small, you’re a manager. Right? You do everything when the kids are small. You change them, you feed them, you do everything. When they’re in youth group, you’re just a coach, right? So when you’re in youth group, you don’t manage them anymore.

You kind of need to coach them about how to make a decision, how to make right choices, right? Or how to take responsibility or how to get along with people. And then when you go to college, when they go to college, you’re nothing but a consultant, right? That’s why you just reduce the consultant. You just say, hey, this is my opinion. You can take whatever you want, right? Because at that point, you know what? They’re an adult and how true that is. And that’s what we have to help parents do.

We have to help parents to be good coaches for their youth, for their kids, right? How to help them to make a decision. Not that they can make every decision for them anymore, but to guide them along with them, right? And so that’s why we need to partner with parents to help them fulfill their responsibility of what it means to be the ultimate disciple or the ultimate one to equip their children with the truth of the gospel, right? We need to partner with parents.

And not only that, but parents are a great resource, right? Right, they’re a great resource for our youth ministry because of the fact they can provide a warm and inviting environment so that other students can come and grow, right? One of the best things about the church that we’re in, one of the things that is that our parents are very involved, right? And so what do they do? They open up their homes, right, for our monthly youth activities, right? So they’re opening up a home, they’re providing food, and all the kids will come to that home, right? So that they can have time of fellowship, so that they can learn, so that they can grow, right? And so it creates an opportunity for the young people to get to know these adults in the church and build relationships with them as well.

So that’s one of the beautiful things. One of the things that I feel like God has gifted me and my church was for these past 23 years is that my kids have like 100 aunts and uncles, right? Because of the fact they all helped me raise my children. And so the beautiful thing at UCLA was three of our students who grew up their whole life together went to UCLA together. They’re still there. Right. And that’s their friend group. That’s their like nucleus where if they ever need someone to talk to, they have each other. Right.

And so but it’s because of these parents who have been so involved because of the parents that we were able to provide that support and security for our children. Right. So it provides a warm and inviting atmosphere. One of the things I notice as an adult, as a parent, is this. Your kids get closer to other kids when the parents are friends. Right? When the parents are friends, it’s a natural bent that the kids feel a little bit of security and comfort. And as a result of it, they get closer together in that way. And it’s kind of funny that way.

So it’s funny because my son, my oldest, my son at UCLA, his two roommates are my college buddy’s sons. They’re two roommates. College buddies that we’ve been together friends for a long time. And one of their friends that every Christmas we have Christmas parties. And we got together every Christmas, Christmas, Christmas. And the kids didn’t really know each other that well at the time. So when my son was applying for looking for a roommate his freshman year, you know, you go on Instagram. You kind of find each other, match each other.

And so my son goes, hey, this guy’s kind of cool, right? Maybe I should ask him to be my roommate. My youngest said, you idiot. We’ve been having Christmas lunch dinner with this guy every year for the past how long? Like he didn’t make that connection. But because of the idea that we’ve been together, there was a sense of security and comfort. And they became roommates that freshman year, right? That’s how it began. And now the roommates for three years now. And the other roommates are a college friend of mine who transferred in. And he’s been my friend for so long.

And there’s a sense of security and comfort, right? Because those kids know me, and they know our friends, and that network, and they get closer together. That’s why this idea of having parents are a great resource, because it creates a sense of security and comfort where the kids feel safe, where they can kind of come together. And that when they get automatically closer together. And so those are the benefits that you can have as well. And I noticed that not only amongst Asian Americans, but we have, I got to tell you a funny story.

So we have a friend, so one of my kids, my three kids, they have another family. They’re a Caucasian family that we went to school together all these years. And one year, when my kids were in junior high school, high school, I said, hey, we’re going to go on spring break with the Turners. And I thought that kid was like, yeah, that’s awesome, Dad. They’re like, what? I said, yeah, we’re going to go on spring break and turn. My oldest goes, that’s kind of weird. We’re like, why is that so weird? Well, they’re not like us.

I said, what do you mean they’re not like us? Well, they’re not Korean, right? I was like, why? So white people, we do Korean, we do it differently? No, that’s just weird, right? But we did it. We did it, and those three kids, right, my oldest, my middle, and my youngest, are best friends with their three kids. But because of the fact that we did things together, right, we did things together, and they felt that security and that safety. That’s why parents are a great resource, right? They’re there to provide wisdom and guidance, right, to be an example for them.

But, again, it’s different because we’re an English-speaking – we’re not affiliated with a language church, right? We’re an Asian-American church. So we don’t have those kind of language barriers. But the families are able to learn – the kids are able to learn from these other parents. That’s why they’re a great resource, right? And another reason why we need to partner with parents is because they need our support and they need our encouragement. Right? Parenting is hard, right? is absolutely hard. And they need someone to encourage them.

They need someone to say, you know what? It’s going to be okay. I’ll tell you right now, parenting is crazier now than ever before. It is crazy. And I’ll tell you why it’s crazy, right? A couple of reasons why it’s crazy. The kids’ demands for going to college today are crazy. So, you know, my kids, like I said, are at UCLA, at Clara McKenna, you know, and they did well. But for them to do well, the amount of stuff, they had to write 13 extracurricular activities that they did, right, when they applied for college.

13, okay? My son and daughter have done more things you could ever possibly imagine, right? From sports, from club sports, to speech and debate, to ASB, to whatever, right? you know, boys and girls stay from whatever, all these things. And who’s taking them around? Us, right? And the thing is for parents, they feel like, you know what, if I don’t do all these things for my children, then I’m not doing what’s best for my kids. So parents today feel this enormous pressure to provide all these opportunities for their kids in order for their kids to succeed.

And if we don’t do that, then we fail as parents. That is the mindset of a parent, right? That’s the pressure that parents feel to this day, right, in that way. So because of it, parents need us to come alongside them to say, hey, it’s okay. Their identity is not in their success. Their identity is in Christ, right? This is what they need to hear, that it’s going to be okay. God has a sovereign plan for them, right? Today, yesterday, UC Irvine and UC San Diego came out with their college acceptances. And you can retell the sense that our church, nobody wants to talk about it.

Nobody wants to ask, hey, like, do you hear anything yet, right? And so it’s stressful, absolutely stressful in every way, right? Not only that, but parents, like our brother said here, they feel inadequate. They just don’t feel like they know what to do, right? They have a perception of themselves, like, I can’t provide anything for my students. So that’s why they need us. They need us for us to be a resource. They need us to help them to speak into their lives when they have questions about social media, or they talk about mental health issues, or whatever it may be.

Because we know what, even though we’re not the experts, that we can provide support for them, right? We can speak into what’s going on in the social media world, what’s going on in our culture, right? We can explain to them why things are at school the way that they are or why they feel a certain way. So we can provide, we can be a resource for them. Not that we’re going to replace them, but they need us because they need help. It’s not like they don’t want to lead and guide their students, their kids. It’s not like they don’t want to disciple their children. They just have to know how.

As a matter of fact, they didn’t know how to disciple themselves. How would they want to disciple these kids? So that’s why they need us to come alongside and equip them with resources. Hey, pray with them. Maybe read the word of God with them on a daily basis. Just kind of give them a suggestion. Not that you’re going to say this is what you have to do. But just to come alongside to encourage them and say, hey, these are some of the things that you might want to consider in that way.

But not only that, the reason why we want to partner with parents is so that, you know what, that they can mature and grow. The thing is, if they mature and grow, and they grow in their faith, that automatically it will go down to their kids. If they grow and they know the importance of the gospel in their own lives, it will trickle down to their kids. It will be an impact upon their kids’ life. And so that’s a way for discipleship for the parents. As you and I work with the parents, that we can disciple them and guide them and lead them as well.

So this is the reason why I feel like is that we need to partner with parents. Because they need us. They really need us. Not only that, but they’re the biggest influence amongst our kids in that way.

Are there any other ideas that you may have of why you feel like a parent might need you guys? Like why do you need to partner with parents? Any other ideas that you may have or you thought of when it comes to this? Anyone? About your need? All right, then we’re going to talk about best practices, okay? Or best practices to deal with practical ways to partner with parents, okay? So number one, obviously, is to communicate with parents, right? This is absolutely essential, okay? That you need to communicate to them, not that you simply want them, but that you need them.

So how can you communicate better with parents, right? And so these are some of the suggestions that I have that I remember doing what I used to do when I was in youth ministry itself. So one of the things that you want me to want to do is to share with them and keep them informed of what is going on in your youth ministry. Right. What’s going on in your youth ministry? So I don’t know how much you guys send out emails to your parents or you do newsletter to your parents, but it’s very helpful. So my wife’s a principal at an elementary school.

So every week, what does she do? she sends an email out, a newsletter, right, highlighting all that they did in that week, right, what they accomplished or what their kids have learned and what things are coming up, just so the parents are informed, right. In the same way, I think that we can do the same thing for our youth ministry every month, right. Every month so the parents know what you’re teaching, right, what you’re teaching.

So, for example, my youth director, right, he always talks about the series that he’ll be going through with the parents, right, So that they know what they are learning. So that, you know what, if they’re learning these things, maybe they can speak about these things with their students. So a monthly newsletter, a weekly email, or even a post on Facebook or anything on Instagram, that they have an avenue where they can gain information of what is going on with the kids at your church. That is very important.

I think that you need to communicate better with their parents so that they are aware. And you know what? If they don’t speak the language that well, it’s even better because at least they can read English. They can kind of pick it up. So that’s why it’s very important for you to be able to communicate, whether it be an email, whether it be a post, whether it be a newsletter, but to keep them updated of what is going on. Another thing is to text them. To text them, right? About their children. You know, affirm their children.

Right? One of the things is just so that they would know what they are doing well or what, you know, what highlight they did. You know, something that stood out so that the parents can be encouraged. Wow, my kid is like this. Because a lot of times parents don’t know what their kids do. They don’t know what their kids are like. So that, you know what, you can say, hey, this is what they did today. And you can highlight them.

Just yesterday, you know, I’m the senior pastor, right? But one of our church members’ daughter, she is 10 years old, and she was going to perform a dance near where I live. I live in Torrance. And so it’s a redonning performing arts center. By the way, anyone who does dance is crazy. Dance is worse than sports. I’ll tell you that much for sure. So literally, so I went, and it was raining. She goes, you don’t have to come. I said, I’ll be there. I’m only on my way. I went.

I went to watch this 10-year-old girl perform, right? And understand, her mom, the parent, was my youth kid when she was 16 years old, right? And so I’ve been with her almost 30 years. Now, I get the privilege of watching her daughter dance, right? So she’s really close to me, right? And so I went to go watch her daughter dance, and it was one minute long. One minute! These people drive hours to go watch their daughter perform. One minute! I was like, y’all crazy! I said, what if I watch my kids play sports? just like an hour and a half, whatever. Literally one minute.

I was like, wow, this is nuts. And then you got to take $25 for parking, right? For one minute, literally one minute, right? Watch this kid dance for one minute, right? But you know what? It was pure joy. And I took a picture and I showed my family, right? Look at Emma, how beautiful, how cute she is, right? And that’s what it is, is to affirm so that they know what’s going on, right? It’s those little things, right, that speaks volumes to the parents, right, in that way. And that’s what it is. It’s like texting to affirm them, like to let them know what is going on.

Or, for example, if a kid shares about, you know what, my family’s going through a hard time. You know, my dad lost his job or, you know, we might lose our house or we lost, we got robbed or whatever. In those moments, what do you do? You need to reach out to the parents and say, we’re praying for you. Let them know that you’re praying for them, that you’re aware and that you care and that you’re ministering to the parent at that time of need.

I think a lot of times when we hear things like that, I don’t know when the last time you actually reached out to the parent and say, can we pray for you? Or we’re praying for you in that moment, right? So those are the little things that we can do to encourage our parents is to communicate better with them, right? And then not only that, but helping their kids understand their parents, right? We communicate better when we help our kids to understand their parents, right? In other words, we’re supposed to be a bridge for them, right? We’re supposed to be that avenue where a lot of times our kids can’t understand their parents and why they are the way that we are.

But I think that we need to be able to speak into their lives to help them to understand their parents, right? And the thing is, one day they’ll become a parent and they will understand, right? We always hear that all the time, right? One of the things is when I became a senior pastor, I had to repent to all the senior pastors before me. I had some bad judgments about them, right? Because I thought I knew better than them until I became a senior pastor.

And then I had to repent because I realized now I understand all the things that they have gone through in their own life, right? And the hardships in that way. But one of the things I realized, especially for immigrant families, you know, is their life is so hard, right? Their life is absolutely hard. And because of what they had to experience, think about my parents escaped war. That’s kind of a crazy thought, right? And I never realized until I got older. My parents literally escaped war, came here with absolutely nothing, and then they had to raise three kids.

Yeah, they had a lot of shortcomings. Yeah, they all did that. But I have a great appreciation from them now. Why? Because of the fact that I see and understand what hardships they go through.

That’s why they always say every generation after the previous generation is always lazier than the other generation, right? So that’s why people say that Gen Zers, like we always think millennials are lazier than us because we’re the Gen Xers, right? Like, what’s wrong with you, you know? You’re always about this and that, but life balance, what do you mean life balance? There’s no life balance, you know? That’s how we talk about it all the time, right? But then, because that’s how we were raised, right? Because we had a crazy life. We had a raise, like, by ourselves. I was a lousy kid.

Me and my sister basically raised ourselves, right? because my parents literally escaped war, right? So my kids are going to have a different life, too. But that’s just the reality. It’s enabling us to help the communication between parents and kids to understand the hardships and why their parents act the way they do, the way that they are in that manner and in that way. So it’s really to help communicate with parents, right? The second thing is to encourage parent engagement, right? To encourage parent engagement.

In other words, the way that we, practical ways, is to help, is really to be just up front. Asking parents to open up their homes for fellowship events. Right? Opening up their homes for fellowship events. Right? Inviting them to participate. Right? Inviting them to participate in your worship services. Right? Especially for those who have their own youth group services. That there should be an opportunity where there’s joint services. Right? I know that my friends church in Virginia, every month, they have joint worship where all the children join worship.

and in that worship, the children lead the worship. This is a church that has 700 people.

So all the kids join on that once a month where the kids participate in the worship with their families, right? And I think it’s a beautiful thing, right? In the same way, I think it’s important that we invite our parents to, hey, you know, once a month or maybe once every other month to have their parents join the kids in worship, right? To create that opportunity where they can learn and model for their kids what it’s like to worship so they can sit and they can listen to the same message and perhaps have a discussion about, maybe when they go home, about what they learn to create those opportunities where kids and parents can be able to speak with one another, right? So it’s really getting them engaged, right? You’re not gonna get them engaged unless you ask.

You have to ask. You have to be willing to be that bold, right? And so for our church, right, because we meet out of school, we don’t have a building that we can come on a weekly basis. So our monthly fellowship activities are absolutely essential for our youth group kids. So once a month somebody opens up their home and everybody drives out and they meet at their parents’ family’s home itself.

So again, it’s important for them to engage and be invited to participate, whether it be the youth group event, whether it be the youth group service, whether it open up their home, so that these opportunities can exist. Establish a youth group PTA. In other words, where the parents can come together and to talk about how they can support the youth group. Where you can moderate it, where you can lead that discussion. But maybe they would have ideas about what they would want to do to help support. Whether it be providing food, whether it be providing rides, whether it be providing events.

That’s a great resource for you as a youth pastor to be able to have parents who are willing to come together and to provide support. You need that support. So maybe having a parent to be the lead person, the president of whatever, to gather some other parents to establish the PTA. So that they can figure out how they can better support the youth ministry. But the PTA is not only about supporting the youth ministry, but it’s about creating an opportunity for parents to get together. And maybe share their lives together with their own struggles that they have with their own children.

That’s the thing. You need to provide opportunities for parents to come together to find comfort and to find support amongst each other. So that they know that they’re not alone. So often they feel like, you know what, I’m alone in this. But if you have a PTA, right, they feel like, you know, you know what? We’re in this together. So that’s why I think a PTA is helpful. Not only does it provide support for your youth ministry, but it provides a support group for each of the parents to come alongside and to help each other. Right? So that’s an important thing, to create a PTA in that way.

And the other way that you can also help parents engage is this, is to create opportunities for parents to get to know you. Right? to get to know you. Right, so that’s why it’s important. I’m not sure if you do this, but it’s to establish times where you will meet with the parent and the student on their own. I think it’s absolutely essential in every youth ministry where you as a pastor, youth pastor or youth director, need to spend time with that student, with their family.

Just so that you are understanding that unique family dynamic, you have to understand what is going on in that kid’s home. If the parents are the biggest influence, well, what is that influence? Do they feel pressure for academics? Do they feel pressure for sports? Do they feel, what is it that’s going on? So that you know how to pray for that kid, you know how to minister to that kid, and that also gives you the opportunity for the parents to get to know you. Here’s the thing. It’s often been said, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

And how can a parent know how much you care unless you’re willing to make that time to get to know the parents as well as to get to know the kid in that unique dynamic, right? So it’s important that you establish is opportunity. A visitation, right? Visiting the kids home, right? Going to their home, seeing their home dynamic could be absolutely essential for you to really be able to disciple and raise your student the way that they would need to go. So I think visitation, create opportunities for the parents that get to know you is absolutely essential.

And last but not least is equipping parents. Like our brother said, they feel inadequate. So how can you equip parents? Well, when you do that monthly newsletter, what you can do is provide links, resources. Hey, here’s a book on this topic. Here’s a website or an article. Things that you may want to consider, right? Again, you’re not replacing them. You’re just providing a resource for them, right? So they need to be equipped, right? Maybe have sessions on topics, like, for example, on social media, the effects of social media.

Maybe on AI, you know, or talking about what’s going on with their kids. Just so that parents are aware. One of the things is parents have no clue what is going on. Okay? So that’s why I’m that parent that has no clue what’s going on in my kid’s life. So I’m the fun parent. My wife’s a scary parent. Right? I’m the good cop. She’s the bad cop. Right? And so I didn’t know kids have private Instagram camps. They have a public one and a private one. I didn’t know that. Oh, yeah.

Right? So my wife’s always trying to figure out what’s the private one? What are they hiding from us, right? So my wife, she has B-reel. She does B-reel because she wants to make sure that she can see my kids B-reel, all this kind of stuff, right? My kids are, my son’s 21. We still have Life 360. We track him down to know where he is. My wife’s like stalker, right? She wants to know every moment what the kids are doing, where they’re at. For me, it’s like they’re adults. But nope, she’s that person. But it’s providing resources for these parents.

So it kind of helps them to know maybe what’s going on, right? So they’re not unaware. Because these kids may have a front that looks like, hey, everything’s perfect and everything’s good. But the reality is there might be a darker side to them that they just never knew. How often we have heard parents say, I never knew that about my child. And I think as a youth pastor or a youth director, we can inform them of things that are just going on. What’s going on in the culture? What’s going on with youth today, right? Because you know what? This is what you’re studying.

This is what you’re learning. So maybe applying those resources to parents so that they are aware, right? So for example, for me, I know what’s going on in the state, with the state of California, education. Because of it, I try to speak into parents’ lives so that they become aware of what is going on, what is the new things or the new patterns, just so the parents are aware so they can make good, informed decisions about how to help and navigate their child, right? So it’s about equipping your parents with these resources. so that they can do these things.

And so the question I want to ask you is, is there anything that you feel like is a best practice for your church when it comes to having parents partner with you? I’m kind of curious, what do you guys do at your churches to help parents partner with you when it comes with youth ministry? Anybody? Maybe that’s why you’re here again, right? This is why you want to learn these kind of things. But is there anything? Yeah. I think so. So we started this year, one of our– he’s a parent, a student in our industry.

And he has been meeting what we call parent connects every other week for a set amount of time. We had parents come during this industry, and they would leave. And they would get to know each other because a lot of times when they’re seniors in their grand party, they’re like, I didn’t know you were a parent of so-and-so. Like, they’re my best friend. Or they’re my student’s best friend. So you’ve seen a lot of people just doing that at once. That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s a good example of that, right? Anyone else? A good practice that you do, how you get parents involved in your church.

Right? But I hope that the whole point of the seminar was really to help you to see the importance of why we need to get parents engaged, right? They’re not our adversaries, right? They’re our advocates. They’re our partners, right? They’re the people that we want to deal with and work with.

So in closing our session today, we have a couple minutes left, is that I want to ask, is there any questions that you want to ask me? I’m not an expert on this area, right? I’m just speaking from life experience, right, of 23 years of doing adult ministry and family ministry within our church itself, right? If you have any questions that you would like to ask. Yes.

How would you suggest approaching those relationships where various languages I mean you mentioned like visiting with parents I work at a primarily Korean American church and like the parents are first-gen Korean immigrants and so there is that natural language barrier myself not being Korean so how would you suggest kind of So that’s a very good question How do you reach out when there’s a language barrier, right? So my approach to that is just try, right? So the thing is, the biggest thing is, is action speaks louder than words, right? So like a visitation is just being there at the parents’ home, even though you may not be able to speak with them, just your presence speaks volumes.

Huge. I remember that I was literally like two months ago, I was in Hawaii on a trip. And I got word that my assistant pastor’s wife’s dad broke his neck in Hawaii too, right beforehand. And so she was in the hospital. I was on my vacation in Hawaii. And as soon as I heard it, I knew I had to go and visit. But I knew also my Korean is no bueno. And so I was like, okay, what do I do? Do I just say, I’ll pray for you? Or do I step away on my vacation and go visit him at the hospital, right? What do you do? What do you do? I’m just being real.

I’m being honest, right? What do you do, right? And so at that moment, I thought, you know, I have to go see him. I have to go see him. And I went to go see him, and he was in the hospital. And he was just grateful that I came and I prayed for him, right? And it was like, you know, my sister’s wife flew in, so she was there. And she was helping her dad. And the dad was there. And all I could do was read in English a Bible verse. And just say, hope you’re okay. And pray for him. Right? I think that speaks volumes. Not only for the dad. But it spoke volumes for my pastor’s wife.

My sister’s pastor’s wife. Because of the fact that it showed that you care. Right? And so that you know that you’re just there. Right? So often I think for language barrier communities, I think action speaks louder than words. I think so often we put more prevalence on words. But I think that just being there is absolutely huge. Because you’re limited. No matter what, you’re going to be limited in that way. But that’s absolutely huge.

Now, if there’s an issue of discipline, if there’s an issue of hardship, that’s when you need to get the senior pastor involved or the session involved, the elders involved. So one of the other ways that you communicate parents better, too, is that if you feel like there’s a big parent situation, a family dynamics are really bad, you need to get the senior pastor involved, right? The senior pastor needs to be able to speak to that member and say, hey, you know what? Your children are falling apart here. And he needs to be aware of that situation, be able to speak into that situation.

But in my life experience, I’ve always known that your presence matters more than anything. I’ll tell you what, people won’t remember what you said, but they’ll remember that you were there. They’ll remember that you were there. You know, as a senior pastor, you have funny stories about dumb things you have said, right, in those hard moments, right? My other assistant pastor, there’s an assistant pastor that I was working with, served with me for 16 years, and now he’s a lead pastor, like my little brother.

And when his wife was about to pass away, she had cancer, and she was one of my closest friends, and she was about to pass away. I was the last person to see her who was not family. And I was like, oh, my gosh. What are you saying? What am I going to say in that moment, right? He’s like, this is going to be the last time I’m going to see her while she was alive. So I thought, you know what? I got this. I got This. And I go in and I see her, my dear bro, who is an assistant pastor, he’s there. And I said. Hey, Maria, what are you dying do to? And I was like, I didn’t know I said that.

I was like, what are you dying to do? Right. Like, whatever. Right. Yeah. Whatever. I said, what on? What on? What on? What on? Right. And it was leave when I got out of that room. And then my sister pastor came up and goes, hey, James, thanks for being here, but I just wanted to know, you know what you said when you came? I said, what did I say? What did I say? You asked Maria, what are you dying to do? I wanted to die in that moment. I was like, no, I did not say that. I did not say that. But again, you’re so stressed out, but I think what she saw was my heart.

More than the words that I loved her, I cared for her, I was there. And that’s what it is. And I realized it’s moments like that in ministry. So often we’re so worried about the things that we say, and I think we should say the right thing, and we want to say the right things. But I think your presence speaks volumes. And I think that they know that you can’t speak well, but they know when you’re there that you care. So that’s why don’t let language be a barrier. Just show up. Just show up. And by showing up, they’re saying, wow, this person really cares.

This person is willing to overcome that barrier and to show up. So one of the things I’ve learned about ministry is presence means so much. Like even as a pastor, right? Your kid’s not there, it hurts you. But when they’re there, it means so much. Same thing. Just show up and just act in that way. Any other questions that you want to ask? Yes. I appreciate your point about enhanced communication with parents.

And I think my question is if you have any thoughts or guidelines about what things should be confidential So that’s the thing right so one of the things that that takes much wisdom right and so because you have to understand to for a kid you’re also their safe place, right? And you have to keep that confidential level there too, right? I think that it’s important. Now, it’s a matter of a safety issue. You have to be able to discuss those things, right? If it’s a matter of, and that’s the thing.

I think if it’s one of those matters of where you feel like safety issues or like gender issues, they want to have those talking, you need to inform that child, hey, I know that this is how you feel, but I want you to know eventually you need to talk to your parents, right? You need to let them know, hey, you need to get to that point where you feel comfortable. Right? So my whole thing with the law about, you know what, you’re not allowed to tell the parents. Right? I’m saying no. I say, you know what, maybe for a couple days so the kid can kind of digest it.

But eventually, you need to tell the parents. Right? In my opinion. Right? When it comes to the teacher. Right? That kind of stuff. In the same way with a kid, you need to keep that confidential level with that kid. Right? But at the same time, knowing that your hope is for that. You’ll never tell the parents. But you want the kid to get to that point where they can share with their parents and to let them know. That’s going to be your goal. Your goal is not saying, yeah, you know what? Whatever you tell me is going to be private. It will always stay with me.

But you can’t have the mindset, well, that’s where it’s going to end. No, you want to say, okay, now that I know this, how can I help this child to help eventually get to that point where they can tell their mom and dad? That’s what you want. You don’t want to be always the last guy that they feel confidentiality. You’ve got to figure out, how can I get to that point where they will tell their parents, right? Well, they’re their parents.

And it’s kind of funny because, so, you know, I told you about the three friends in college, right? So the three parents and I are all part of the same church. And they’re like, hey, hey, I’ve got to tell you something about your kid. But you can’t tell your kid, right? Because they tell their parents about their friend, and then we get all the 411, right? It’s great. We love it in that way, right? But again, you want them to be able to express and share on their own. But again, at the same time, that’s why the whole idea, the confidential will be confidential, right, on those matters.

But again, my hope is that you will lead them so that they can eventually be able to tell their parents on their own without you having to tell them. Again, if it’s by law, like if it’s abuse or whatever, then you have to do something. But when it comes to, like, struggles or, like, temptations or addiction, like even, like, let’s say pornography, like I’m having an issue, right? you can help guide them in that situation, but then you need to also help them so that they can maybe talk to their parents in that way, in that manner for that. And so that’s why it’s important.

That’s a very great question. Yes. Yes. I just want a question. I can’t hear you. Oh, sorry. You know, where do you feel like a larger group say, so like students maybe, like my church, like 70, 80 students. Yeah. And sometimes I think it’s a little harder to reach out to your families and your students and your parents. So I’m wondering how we can train the teachers or your thoughts on how to approach them in larger churches? So for like larger churches, I think that’s where you have to utilize the teachers, right? You have to be able to have the teachers now be able to go.

But again, it’s just saying the same thing, right? It’s not about what you’re saying. It’s about being there for them, right? Or having that communication with the parents itself because you can’t. But I would try, like if you have 60-80 kids, right? you have 365 days, you have 52 Sundays. So if you actually think about it, if you do two kids a Sunday, that you can do it two kids a Sunday. That’s the thing.

I think there’s always a way around that, right? And so, because you got to think about senior pastors, right? Is that, you know, you have a couple hundred, right? But yet you got to visit, administer all to all 200 whatever kids, parents, I mean. So the same way with the youth group that big, I think that you have to be able to find ways to meet with the parents, but at the same time is to empower the teachers and equipping them. Like, what do you do when you visit? Like, read a verse, pray with them, and just talk. That’s all it is. That’s simple. That’s all it is.

But just being there, I think, will speak volumes for the family itself, right, more than anything else. Yes. Any other questions? Questions. So I think the big takeaway from here today was you need parents, and they need you. They really need you to partner with them. They can’t do this on their own. I know that I love my youth director. It’s going to be sad that when they go. And I think one of the things is that at our church, I want to encourage you to stay there as long as possible.

So one of the gifts that people always ask me, like, why are your kids the way they are today? My kids, by God’s grace, still go to church. My kids are doing well in school. And I tell them that one of the secrets for me was that my kids have only known one church for 23 years. That’s our church. And they’ve only known one city for 23 years. There’s never been a transition in their life, right? It’s always been that stable, constant family for 23 years, right? And I think that’s what it is. It’s creating a sense of stability and safety for their students. I asked my daughter that one day.

I said, what is it that you feel like your mom and dad gave you, you know? And she said, you gave us stability and confidence. And the reason why we gave them confidence is because we never moved. We stayed at one church and we never moved to home. And she said, because of it, my kindergarten friends are my friends to this day. You know, that’s huge. And I think the same way to create that sense of stability for your youth ministry is a very important thing. So I want to encourage you to stay and hang in there, work with your parents. They’re there for you as well.

So let me just close this in a final word of prayer. God, I thank you just for these individuals here today. God, God reminds me, Lord, when I was in their seats working with kids, and I felt like I was a kid trying to help kids. But God, I thank you for their hearts, and I pray that, God, that they would know that you’re your servants and that, God, that you are using them. And, God, there will be moments where they may say the wrong thing, they may mess up here and there, but, God, it is your grace that covers them. Your grace is sufficient for them.

And I pray that, God, in those awkward moments of dealing with parents, Lord, with language issues or age issues or cultural issues, Lord, that, God, that they will overcome it by reminding ourselves that, God, we’re all children of God. We’re all brothers and sisters in Christ. And I pray that, God, that we can develop that unity and share in that unity and really support one another. So we thank you, Lord, just for everyone that’s here. Bless everyone here today. I pray that our time at this conference will truly be a blessing. And in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Thank you, guys.