2019 Princeton Forum on Youth Ministry

A South African friend told me they had a church-joke in the 1980s. He said, “There are two possible solutions to our crisis here. One is realistic, and one is miraculous. One solution is that God will come down and sort us all out. That’s the realistic solution. The miraculous solution is that we will sit down and talk with our enemies.” Sitting down and talking with our enemies is an act of living as if the Gospel is true. This is also why we once told our Associate Pastor for Children, Youth, and Families, “If you start a youth group you’re fired.” If the mightiest word is love, it would cause us to re-think and re-structure what we do and how we do it. It would change the way we live, move, and breathe. It would change the way we do youth ministry.