I recently wrote a little book as a primer on revitalization called ReVITALize Your Church Through Gospel Recovery. This little book (88 pages) has been an ebook (and still is, only 2.99). But now you can order print copies. I have already had Directors of Missions for Baptist Associations order copies for all their pastors. And, the North American Mission Board, which has recently given much more attention to revitalization, will be giving a copy of ReVITALize to attendees of their revitalization meetings led by Johnny Hunt.

Michael Lewis, head of revitalization for NAMB and a former student of mine, has been extremely enthusiastic about ReVITALize as has Al Gilbert. Gilbert, VP for Evangelism for NAMB, wrote the Foreword for the book. You can see a video with Michael and me regarding revitalization here.

You can order your copy of the book in print form for 5.99 by ordering here.  You can also get the ebook here. You can also read reviews of the book here.

Summer will soon be upon us, which means for many of us a little more time to read. I love reading a variety of books.  Good books abound these days! Here are a few on a variety of topics I would suggest for your summer reading consideration:

APPLIED THEOLOGY: Tim Keller’s Center Church has already become my favorite Keller book to date. Rich with content on gospel centrality, contextualization, and urban ministry, as a lover of movements I especially appreciate his focus on movements in Part 8. Order it here.

DEVOTIONAL/BIBLE STUDY: A helpful read can be found in Joe Buchanan’s new books Cultivating a Gospel-Shaped Attitude. In this work Joe examines how the Beatitudes can give us gospel focus to shift our attitude to be more about the mission than our own personal misery.  You can order it here.

UNDERSTANDING CULTURE: If you want to get a better grasp on why young adults leave church and the issues we should confront to help keep young adults focused on Christ check out Dave Kinnaman’s You Lost Me. His research offers helpful information on why we unnecessarily alienate youth and can help in communicating with the Millennial Generation.

REVIVAL: The book A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories That Stretch and Stir by Collin Hansen and John Woodbridge has been of great encouragement to me. I think reading a book on revival every year is good for the soul.

EVANGELISM: The little book Unbelievable Gospel by Jonathan Dodson has been a real blessing to me personally. Check it out and see sharing Christ through new eyes.

FOR YOUNG MEN: The book Checkpoints by Brian Mills and Nathan Wagnon offers a devotional book for young men. We live in a day where men for the most part are far more male in terms of biology than men in terms of maturity. This would be a great summer study for young men.

JUST FOR FUN: Sometimes I read a book just because it makes me think. Ken Coleman’s One Question features interviews with individuals from Jim Collins to Malcolm Gladwell and from Andy Stanley to Tony Dungy. I love books like this; maybe you will as well.

FOR WRITERS: I often encourage young writers to grow. The first book I encourage writers to read is John Acuff’s Quitter. Another one is The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield. He wrote the Legend of Bagger Vance. His work has a salty tone at times, but his insights offer concrete help for writers.

Perhaps you would like to recommend some as well?

“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.” Shakespeare

Summer marks that time when people take vacations and generally pull themselves away from their normal routines. I love summer — reading books in a hammock, reclining by a pool, and taking time to reflect. Summer seems to bring out the youth in all of us.

We also see a change in the summertime in our churches as well, as many talk about the “summer slump” in attendance. But if you are in student ministry you know how the summer offers unique opportunities for students to step up and step out in their faith. Youth camps, mission trips, and other activities that focus on Christ in a season of leisure offer phenomenal times of growth. But you, as a student pastor or leader, can slip into the mindset of letting weekly, consistent discipleship decline in the busyness of preparing for those activities. I believe summertime can offer a great time of growth for students who are out of school. And I have just the resource for you.

The Gospel Project offers a specifically Christ-centered approach to learning the Scriptures. If your church is not currently using it, summer offers a time to walk through the materials and give them a “trial run” while teaching some important truths to your students. Notice the focus of the summer study:

1. Knowing God: The Role of Theology in the Life and Mission of the Christian
2. The God Who Is: The Existence of God
3. Our Great God: What God Is Like
4. The Omni God: God’s Omniscience, Omnipresence, and Omnipotence
5. Good God: The Goodness and Love of God
6. Holy, Holy, Holy: God’s Holy Righteous Character
7. Jesus’ Deity: The Son of God
8. Jesus Humanity: The Son of Man
9. Jesus Work: Prophet, Priest, and King
10. The Spirit’s Identity: The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit
11. The Spirit’s Work: The Work of the Holy Spirit
12. God in Us: The Fruit and Gifts of the Spirit
13. The Trinity: The Mystery of One God in Three Persons

You could teach this in your normal Sunday time. Or, you could have a summer Bible study where you focus on theology (as I say in my new book As You Go: Creating a Missional Culture of Gospel-Centered Students, students learn trigonometry in high school, they can learn theology in church!). You could have a Sunday evening study or a weeknight study in homes, or go outdoors, or another creative time and place.

One of the most popular features of the summer for students is going to see movies. I remember stellar movies the summer my friends and I got our driver’s licenses. Movies like Aliens, the first one with Sigourney Weaver. Freaked me out.

I love helping students see movies and their storylines from a biblical lens. Storylines we love, like a man falling in a hole and getting out (action movies from the Avengers to Transformers), rags to riches (Cinderella, Princess Diaries), and boy meets girl (Hitched, most romantic comedies), all feature a general storyline of beginning, rising action, some form of intrigue or danger, and a denouement, or a rescue/resolution/some form of heroism, ending in the ubiquitous “and they all lived happily ever after.” We love these, because there is something in the Imago Dei within us that yearns for a happy ending.

Movies weakly reflect the the gospel seen in the Story of Scripture. God created an amazing world and created man to worship Him. The fall broke creation and separated us from God. Jesus came to rescue us by His substitutionary work on the cross and His resurrection, and we have the hope of the happily ever after in the restoration. This redemptive theme is critical to The Gospel Project, which is a reason I love it. What if you taught The Gospel Project series and used it to explain our love for movies and stories and happy endings comes from our yearning for the hope found in Christ?

The summer of my youth I mentioned above offered me more than a time to watch movies. It gave me a time to grow deeper in my faith. We took a long choir tour (that was our version of a mission trip back then) where we had to memorize Scripture and songs, go through devotional work, and minister to peers in several states. We saw God change lives. I saw God change mine. Instead of joining the movement of leisure and checking out on learning, why not use the summer as a time to dig deep in the Word? The Gospel Project summer study may be just what you need.

Luke, under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, shows remarkable ability as a writer. He has a knack for helpful summary passages (most famously Acts 2:41-47, but many others fill his work). One of the more intriguing devices he uses is the stacked narrative. Some of you remember the old show Bonanza. I loved Hoss Cartwright the most. Bonanza and other shows of that era (when we had three channels and had to walk across the room to change theml) followed a single narrative throughout.  Along came the show that my entire dorm watched in my college days: MASH. This show used the stacked narrative, where a scene would occur at one place and then switch to another that one could tell happened simultaneously. This is so common now we never even think about it. But long before TV Luke used the same device. Just read Acts 8:1-4, when the church scattered after the stoning of Stephen, and then pick up reading in Acts 11:19 and following. In between those passages you read of several incidents that happened from the conversion of Saul to the conversion of Cornelius. When you pick up in Acts 11:19ff, you begin again at the same place as the start of Acts 8, with all believers — except the apostles — scattered by persecution.

The story in this part of early Christian history fascinates me. Here we have in chapter 8 Saul consenting to the death of Stephen and at the outset of chapter 8 he begins his work of persecution of the church.  But when we pick back up with the same narrative in Acts 11, this Saul (after some time) has come to faith in Christ as recorded back in Acts 9. Here we have a narrative beginning with the most zealous persecutor of the church becoming a leader of a church (in Antioch) along with Barnabas, a church planted by believers scattered by the persecution he helped to promote!

The story in summary: Stephen is martyred. Saul, the zealous young Pharisee, approves and becomes a leader of the persecution of other believers. The Christians scattered by said persecution go up to Antioch (Acts 11:19-22) sharing the gospel and planting a church that will have great significance (it is the first large Gentile harvest, it is where they are first called Christians, and it sends out the first formal missionaries). Over time Barnabas teaches and grows the church through conversion and discipleship. Meanwhile, that rascal Saul has been blinded on the road to Damascus and comes to faith. Later, Barnabas gets this now-young believer and brings him to Antioch to help him teach the people for over a year, where, as I mentioned, they are first called Christians (11:26). And the coup de grace: this church sends out Saul (soon called Paul the Apostle) with Barnabas as missionaries to take the gospel to the ends of the earth!

If that does not light your fire, your wood is wet. If that does not ring your bell, get a new bell. The dude who persecuted the church and helped to scatter believers eventually goes out from the church that started because of his persecution. The gospel is amazing.

But don’t miss this point: when the church at Antioch sent out their first missionaries, who did they send? They sent their best. The leaders. Pastor, church leader, get this point: the more possessive you become of your best members and staff, the more you create a culture that will kill the evangelistic impulse in your church. Yes, human natures makes us want to keep our best people, but we cannot lead a New Testament church based on human nature! It goes against the grain, cutes against all our culture says, to send out the best. But this is just what the early church did. Oh, and this is what heaven did for our redemption.

The more willing you are to be non-possessive and Kingdom minded, the more you will create a long term culture of life, vitality, and growth. I lead a ministry at our church (Richland Creek Community Church) in Wake Forest. We called it Young Pros, consisting of young adults from early 20s to early 30s, both single and married. We have seen a lot of growth, from around 15 to around 80 in average over the past couple of years. We have a lot of seminary students since we are near Southeastern, but we also have a lot of YPs from the community: school teachers, bankers, CPAs, and a variety of other professionals. Because of the age of the group and proximity to the seminary we send out a lot. We have seen businessmen move to DC and the coast and other places. We just commissioned seven who are going to the nations with the International Mission Board. That is about a tithe of our ministry, and I would love to see that happen every year. We also will send out a good number this year (our son and daughter-in-law being two of them) to serve churches across the region and the nation.

Do I get tempted to want to keep these folks? Sure. But I see it for what it is: temptation. We may level off in our numerical growth or at some point we may even decline a bit for a season because so many go out from us. But the greater mission matters more than simple numerical growth in our group or our church.

If we are not careful, those of us who lead churches and ministry will become so possessive we unintentionally cut the missional impulse by our overemphasis on getting people to our classes and our churches to the neglect of creating a culture of SENT people. I will fight that impulse and instead seek to impact the whole world from our ministry.  That is what the early church did, and what we should be doing as well. Track not only how many you reach, but also how many you send.

In my last post I talked about the “science” of missional, those fundamentals students must grasp even as an athlete has to learn the basics of a given sport. But, as the greatest athletes take the fundamentals and create skillfully off of them (my coach called that playing with “reckless abandon” once you have the fundamentals), students can be artists as they live out the mission of God.

Lowest-common-denominatorism in student ministry discourages artistry. I’m not referring merely to our common usage of the term as in the “arts” proper, but art in the sense of something masterful or transcendent amidst the routine, something powerful, passionate, and uniquely expressive. Every young person has been created uniquely in the very image of God. People are unlike anything else in creation, made by God to worship Him in diverse ways through the power of the gospel. Study the Scriptures and the history of the church and you will see a remarkable variety, artistry if you will, in the ways God used so many different people and movements for His glory.

What do I mean by an artist? “A cook is not an artist. A cook follows a recipe, and he’s a good cook if he follows the recipe correctly,” Seth Godin observes, adding, “A chef is an artist. She’s an artist when she invents a new way of cooking or a new type of dish that creates surprise or joy.” (from Linchpin) In other words, we help students move from regurgitating simple truths to creatively demonstrating truth in a broken world.

By helping students see themselves as artists we can help them think missionally. We already do this to some extent, but we do it in extremely narrow, safe, Christian-bubble categories. When we have a talented young lady who loves to sing, we tell her to become a Christian singer. When we have a young man who is gifted athletically we tell him to be a Christian athlete. Yet their talents and passion may be used in a variety of other ways and do not have to be confined to the “Christian” enterprises approved by the Christian subculture (see chapter 6 of As You Go).

We should not be telling them what to be anyway. We should be showing them Christ, Who after all is the Way, and helping them find their way by surrendering all to Him. As a parent, the easy thing would be to tell my children to do this or be that. The more rewarding task comes from helping them know God and His ways so they can discover for themselves the unique and personal steps leading to a life most glorifying to Him.

When a young person hits play on her iPod she probably gives no thought to Thomas Edison. But Edison invented the phonograph, which led to a revolution in recorded music, which is today dominated by downloadable and streaming music services. However, Edison did not invent the phonograph to play music; his intent was to record final words of the dying.

As Kevin Kelly observes in What Technology Wants, “With few exceptions technologies don’t know what they want to be when they grow up.” He observes how a year after inventing the phonograph, Edison made a list of its possible uses; playing music was little more than an afterthought. Kelly argues rightly that the inventor of a new technology hardly ever sees its full potential, in part because he sees it only as a means to improve something, making an old thing work better. It is hard to imagine the Chinese who invented gunpowder immediately thought of inventing the gun to go with it.

If you work with students this could be a helpful lesson in leadership. Sometimes we who are parents or who work with students want to offer a clear directory of options and then help them pick the most reasonable item from the directory we set before them. But what if we focused less on specific options and more on helping develop a trajectory out of which they can make decisions about their future confidently?

What if we stopped asking young people what they wanted to be when they grow up, and starting asking them the more biblical question of what they are discovering to be their gifts, talents, passions, all given by God, and teaching them to listen to and walk with God as He unfolds His work in their lives? Once we follow Christ, what we want to be becomes an irrelevant question after all, right? Following Christ shifts us from what we want to how we can glorify God.

What if we as parents and student pastors focused young people much more on understanding the gospel and its implications for all of life, and stepped back a bit to let them see which direction God takes them? What if that young lady who is in middle school and has a wonderful singing voice could do something more than, say, become a contemporary Christian singer? What if she had a greater ability than singing and could best use that artistic genius as a graphic designer or a creative thinker in some other venue? What if that young man who naturally leads others went to law school instead of seminary and became a champion for the disenfranchised? What if that quiet young fellow who loves tinkering with technology became the next Edison?

What if our well-intentioned attempts to help students “discover the will of God for their life” actually limited them to what we think they could do or be? What if we spent more time helping them understand the gospel is more than a vertical means to heaven, as vital as that is, but also a horizontal means to their life as part of God’s mission?

This is much harder, of course, than simply naming the great Christian colleges out there or listing typical roles and pushing students toward one of those. It will take a much greater focus on discipleship than events, and a much deeper push to understand faith, culture, the gospel, and life. It actually involves both trajectory and giving a directory, for we can certainly help students with options they face, but I think we should micromanage that part less and give much more attention to a gospel, missional trajectory.

If the generation of students we lead grasps the message of God in the gospel and the mission of God to others, upon that foundation we can build wise counsel for making key decisions in the rest of life. But any wisdom we offer apart from God’s mission and the gospel message will not help build a lifelong trajectory. And rather than funneling assembly-line Christians into factory-driven religion, we have the opportunity to release a generation of missional artists into the culture. They can punch in and out until ultimately retiring from active church duty to indulge comfortable preferences. Or a gospel trajectory can send them boldly into new territory, glorifying their Creator with a variety of talents.

If we really believe the Bible is not about us and our plans but about God and His purpose, we will spend less time simply giving information and experiences and more time helping students learn to think strategically and missionally. That would mean a central part of our disciple making would involve helping believing students develop a plan for their life to be missional.

And should that not be a critical part of student ministry?

The response to As You Go has been phenomenal: megachurch youth ministers telling me it is just the resource they have been seeking for their leaders, youth pastors using it for their D-Nows (small group curriculum will be available soon), and parents who have read it and told me they are totally adjusting the way they raise their children with a more gospel-driven and missional focus.

I wanted to offer a brief excerpt for you. I also do this about once a week on Twitter. In the chapter “Missional Lens,” I talk about both the Science of Missional and the Art. Here are some thoughts on the Science of Missional:

I want to look at helping students develop a missionary lens in two ways. First, let’s examine the science of missionary thinking and living. Science is founded on basic laws such as the law of gravity. You cannot ignore basic laws in nature and get very far in science. The same is true missionally. We must build individual or group strategies on unchanging truth. Every student needs to get the essential message of Christianity and the mission God has for us. This should be championed at every rally, event, and activity, each Sunday, again and again. As a good football team goes over certain drills every practice, the gospel cannot be recounted too often. Much of this I developed back in chapter 1 on the subject of what is missional, but here I want to summarize a few key points:

1. Thinking like a missionary means understanding the message of God and the mission of God (see chapter 2). Understanding who you are in Christ, how you are free to serve Him not out of bondage but because this was the very reason you were created, how to see everything in life from the lens of the gospel, all this is vital. The great narrative of Scripture—Creation, Fall, Rescue, Restoration—teaching the redemptive love of God in Christ must be central. The more clearly the idea is seen at the heart, the more freely one can apply that idea in life and relationships.

Missional refers to a concept, not a program, or skill set. “Being missional involves an active engagement with this new conversation to the point that it guides every aspect of the life of the missional believer,” Reggie McNeal observes.

2. Thinking like a missionary means to know what does not change (the gospel, the Scripture, the plan of God, clear biblical teaching on topics from marriage to the church to daily life). But it also means while you hold these truths tenaciously you hold your personal preferences tentatively.

3. Thinking like a missionary also means to understand culture and how to relate the gospel to people in a given culture. This means we understand our role as more than merely getting people to a church building weekly. It means we seek to add value to our communities because gospel-centered lives do that. I just read this morning about Joseph in Genesis 41. Remember him? At seventeen he was sold into slavery by his own brothers, later imprisoned because of a false accusation, and then forsaken by one he helped while in jail—the trifecta of tragedy. But when released and used by God to help Pharaoh, Joseph gave all glory to God. And because Joseph’s life was God-focused, he led the nation to make decisions that affected not only Egypt but others as well.

We have to help students recognize the extremes of avoiding culture on the one hand, which leads to legalism and the Christian bubble, or being obsessed with looking like the culture on the other, which leads to worldliness. The gospel must remain central to all we do. This will not happen overnight, but could change a generation.

A student in your ministry may not rescue a nation from famine. But a student could do something valuable in the local school that also helps to proclaim Christ. Missionaries overseas bring value by building hospitals, digging wells, and through other means. Helping students do this individually and as a student ministry can help them develop a missional lifestyle for the rest of their lives.

In my next post I will add an excerpt on the Art of Missional, something I think we need to emphasize far more than we do currently.

Mentoring matters a great deal to me. I wrote a little ebook on it called WIth that NavPress published (you can get it for only 3.99 here), in which I unpack what I call informal mentoring. This past Friday and Saturday I took a student and his wife  to a speaking event in another state. Ok, he mostly drove so it was more like them taking me! This week I will embark on a 10 day book tour (sort of, it’s more like adding a few events to fill out the calendar, but all the events relate to the theme of my new book As You Go). On this tour one of the two young men I currently mentor, a Floridian named Kevin, will accompany me. He will also help NAMB by promoting the SEND North America strategy at every step along the way. Jared, the Oklahoman I particularly invest in just now, serves as my grader and my intern in our Young Pros ministry this spring (Kevin did so last fall).

I love mentoring. I love having proteges (or mentees) who seek to learn. Every semester I take students on various trips to mentor them, meet with others one on one. Most semesters I also meet with a small group of young men. These are the young leaders I stay most connected to years to come. Probably half the speaking events I do are with the young men who went with me on trips, met in small groups, or took me for several classes to the point that our relationships was more than professor to student; it more resembled mentor to protege.

Last night I felt pretty awful as the pollen just now wreaks havoc with me.. I picked up sinus junk in SC and came home with a raw throat. Instead of teaching my discipleship class at our church, I asked Kevin and Jared to teach for me, last minute, with little time to prep. And they did an awesome job. Jared taught my seminary classes last week as I was at the Gospel Coalition, and Kevin taught a large group of adults at our church Wednesday as I preached a rally in Knoxville. But there is a problem.

When these men and others teach for me, those I am teaching seem not to miss me, which can be damaging to the ego, except for one thing: few things give me more joy than to see those I mentor spread their wings and soar.

I want to shape young men so that their are capable of teaching and discipling, so that when I miss because of a scheduled event or illness, the quality of teaching remains high. Mentoring means more than sitting in a room talking about a topic. It means engaging those we mentor in the work of ministry.

Do you mentor? Do you have proteges? Do you let them teach? I have read this week about several churches who utilize some form of mentorship/internship for those preparing to be pastors or church planters. One model had an outstanding approach except that it did not offer a chance for those being mentored to teach. I think that is a flaw.

We need to allow those we mentor to do more than grunt work, although that is good for them as well. I have not always done this as well as I should as a mentor. Being on staff at my local church and leading a ministry there has shown me how vital this is. We will be sending out seven from our Young Pros ministry this year to the international mission field, and we will (or have recently) send several others to serve as pastors and student pastors in the states. We have also sent out professionals to places like Washington, DC. Our ministry focuses on SENDING people, either into our local community or to the ends of the earth. We also place a high value on short term missions with more than a couple dozen going overseas annually to the nations.

In my new book As You Go I bemoan the reality of “lowest common denominatorism,” the discipling of students through teaching generically in such a way that all get the same training. We can teach the basics this way, but we fail in disciple-making  if we think that such an approach alone will really disciple people well. We must invest in small groups and in individuals to the point that we help each one grow in their understanding of God’s work in their lives, so that they can be more than generic Christians — they can become unique followers of Christ for His glory to serve in His church.

If you are a leader, who are you mentoring? What are your goals in mentorship? What are you allowing your proteges to do? If they are simply grunt laborers to help you get work done. If you never allow them to lead, is it really mentoring? We have a hungry generation craving mentors. Let’s help them to spread their wings.

I have tried to listen to and learn from a host of youth pastors from part timers in rural churches to suburban megachurches, both in the U.S. and as a travel globally. Thankfully, the newest book As You Go: Creating a Missional Culture of Gospel-Centered Students (NavPress), has been received with great joy by student pastors. Here are a few comments from student pastors who endorsed the book:

“What student ministry needs is what this book proposes. This is a return to a first century imperative with a twenty-first century practice. It will be required reading for our staff.”

–Matt Lawson, High School Pastor, First Baptist Woodstock and author of TWISDOM

“Alvin Reid not only understands student ministry, he loves students! His passion to see teenagers discipled and growi in the Gospel is evident in “As You Go”. Reid’s Gospel centered approach to student ministry is instrumental for engaging students to live a missional life for a lifetime. This book will be an asset for your ministry as you lead students to be more like Jesus.”

–Jeff Borton, Pastor of Students,  Christ Fellowship, Miami

“Todays student ministry is on the move and Dr Reid is helping drive that ship by pushing us towards missional living.  Today’s teenagers are more focused on the newest phone, app or social media site instead of being bothered by the world in which they live and have the desire to do something about it.  Dr Reid in this book challenges the youth pastor, volunteer, pastor, parent and teen to take a look at how we are leading and living missionally according to scripture.  Everyone needs to pick up this book and read it, but read it slowly.  I pray this book speaks into the lives of many youth pastors and leaders and challenges all of us to lead as we go.”

–Brian Mills, Student Pastor, Long Hollow Baptist Church, Hendersonville, TN

In addition, long term veteran of student ministry, effective author,  now professor of youth ministry at Southwestern Seminary Richard Ross added these kind words:

“I’ve been one of those voices calling teenagers to total-life purity. But getting teenagers through high school without babies is not the ultimate goal. I’ve been one of those voices calling youth ministry in the direction of the family. But families holding hands and singing Kumbaya in the den is not the ultimate goal. Getting the whole gospel to the whole world is the ultimate goal. And Alvin Reid’s new book proudly proclaims that missional youth groups are central to that goal. Not only that, he nails the process required. First, youth ministers, volunteers, and parents falling so madly in love with Christ that their DNA becomes missional. Then, splashing that all over a young generation. Reid’s book quickly will propel any church from Chubby Bunny to international impact.”

–Richard Ross, PhD, is professor of youth ministry at Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth. www.RichardARoss.com

It’s humbling to have some of the most effective student pastors and leaders today offer such encouragement. I hope you will be as encouraged. You can order the book here in print form and here for Kindle.

Look carefully, however, and you can see another side of things. A growing number of people I know have decided to shift from political action to disciple-making, from emphasizing differences on minor points to coming together for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the need of a broken world. I want to be a part of that movement.

I have some friend — in particular Jonathan Dodson and Brad Watson — who lead a ministry and website called Gospel-Centered Discipleship. Speaking of a revolution, I have an article at their site today on the revolution needed in student ministry. You can see it here.

Check out the site, the articles, and the resources. The book Unbelievable Gospel by Jonathan should be read by every disciple-making believer. Plenty of other outstanding books, both ebooks and print versions, will assist you in your leading of others.

I will release a book with GCD this fall so keep an eye out for that as well. In the meantime, take advantage of this great resource!

I believe that in a culture marked by decreasing biblical conviction and increasing moral collectivism, how we equip, inspire, and engage the younger generation in our churches matters more than ever. I just taught a course on prayer and spiritual awakenings this past week. One of the more prevalent themes we observed concerned how again and again in the face of declension in society and institutionalism gone rife in the church, God used young people as a significant part of gospel renewal and spiritual revival. And I believe the same will happen today should God so bless us with His Spirit in power.

In this book I simply argue that student ministry, like all ministry, must be centered at the same place as Scripture: on the gospel of Jesus Christ. His finished work is the hub of all the Bible, and must be the center of all our lives, not just our church lives. The book also argues that youth are not children but young men and women, and can and must be equipped and released as missionaries in an unreached culture while young.

The chapter headings:

MISSIONAL GENERATION: This chapter overviews the Millennial generation and the ineffectiveness of much of student ministry today. Negatively, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is confronted; positively, marks of a missional posture are unpacked.

MISSIONAL IDEA unpacks the grand narrative of Scripture, looking at the gospel less as a snapshot and more as a great epic story that makes sense of all of life. This, I argue, must be central to our worldview and our daily lives.

MISSIONAL MOVEMENT argues as I often have that Christianity at her best behaves like an advancing movement, not a maintenance operation. I argue that the Millennials appear ready for such a movement.

MISSIONAL CHURCH: Too many student ministries operate like a parachurch organization in a church building. I argue such ministries must be integrally linked to the larger church. I also confront the lowest common denominator approach to discipleship that has failed, and advance mentoring as needed today.

MISSIONAL LENS: This chapters features Morgan and her friends I wrote about here. It argues that students can and should be missionaries now and offers practical steps in creating this kind of culture.

MISSIONAL SURGERY: There is a reason students are not missional. Idolatry lies at the heart of this, so we must confront and demolish idols threatening missional lives. Along with the idols of materialism and immaturity, I specifically confront the insidious idol of the Christian subculture. And a few folks will be ticked at me for doing so.

MISSIONAL FAMILIES: We must recover the family as central to the discipleship of young people. Building on the passage found in Deuteronomy 6:4-9, practical steps for creating a missional culture in the family unit  offer help for parents seeking to raise Great Commission children.

MISSIONAL VISION: One of my mantras: if you are a student, don’t graduate from high school without getting out of the country on a mission trip. I offer practical advice on how to do this regardless of what size your student ministry.

MISSIONAL VOICE: This chapter specifically looks at releasing students to share their faith personally. Students are natural evangelists — they will talk nonstop about what they love. Helping them to see the greatness of the story of God and giving them helpful advice on how to share this story will aid in sending out missionaries.

MISSIONAL STRATEGY: This book is intentionally not a “how-to” book. We have too many of those and not enough that deal with the why. However, once you nail down the indicative (the gospel’s reality), it is time for the imperative, so I offer some practical ways to implement the book in your church.

I wrote As You Go for student pastors, pastors, adult workers, and parents in particular. I have already had several order copies for all their youth workers to go through together. Each chapter has helpful questions to assist in applying the content. I’m also already speaking at training events in several churches to parents and workers to overview the book. But it’s also for students who seek to know what it means to live a gospel-centered, missional life.

Several DNows I’m speaking at this spring have already built their theme around the ideas in the book, and with some student pastors (former students) I have small group material for this purpose. I did one last week in Mobile, and the student pastor their, Nathan Schneider, told me he was baptizing about ten new students yesterday from the weekend, not to mention many believers committing to share their faith and to live the mission, or as their theme put it, for Something Bigger.

Would you pray with me that this book will help to be a part of a larger movement of God? In the past, He has actually used books to spur spiritual movements. Perhaps, at least in some ministries, He will use this one as well.