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Monthly youth leaders column

Resolution...

It’s now a month since some of us may have made a list of things we‘re going to change in the new year. I’ll be more disciplined in my quiet time, keep my study tidy, give my family more quality time, and so on.

For most of us, our good resolutions have gone out of the window by the end of January. So let’s think again and see if there may be another kind of resolution that all of us should set as a goal for the 11 months we have left in 2010.

Have they grown?

Each week your youth group turns up and I’m sure you have issues with the way some of them have grown as Christians in the last year. You’ve probably had some disappointments and you have, hopefully, seen some real signs of growth. So you started the new year being unable to know quite where you’ll be at the end of the year and how your young disciples will have grown in that time. You may be starting with a fresh vision for your ministry and hopefully feeling refreshed after some kind of break.

One thing

But whatever you do, be resolved to do one thing. There were terms where I changed things a little with timings and style of meetings, but there always remained a passion to do one thing. To be a faithful teacher of God’s word, to be a good pastor to the young people and to pray that each of them would grow more like Christ in the term ahead. Although it is good to inject fresh vision and to make good plans for the term, I feel the key thing that I learned in 12 years of full time youth ministry was to be totally clear about what we were trying, with God’s help, to do. That involved preparing myself for the new term and, if we were teaching Ephesians, to have read and studied the book before I ever got to plan how we would teach it.

Besides being prepared to teach well, I liked to start the new year by getting the youth team together to pray for the young people and not have a business meeting (or even planning), but simply praying that we would be faithful ministers of the gospel by teaching the word and caring for the flock. In my experience, when we got these things right, we saw fruitful ministry. I’m sorry if this is all a little boring and predictable but I profoundly believe these things to be the bedrock of gospel ministry and I tried to take a little time at the start of each term to pray that God would give me the resolve to be a faithful gospel man.

Jesus said

And that would be my key resolution: ‘ ... let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds, and praise your Father in heaven’ (Matthew 5.16).

What we say, what we do, how we deal with pressure, the quality of our relationships, our honesty and integrity, all have an effect and, if young people see in us a Christian life that is seeking to follow Christ in ‘all our ways’ (Proverbs 3.5), at least you’ve given them a chance to follow to see a faithful role model Ð and that we should be resolved to do with God’s help in the coming year.

Dave Fenton

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