by Josh Liu
In light of the recent Thanksgiving holiday, I’ll take a moment to reflect back on this past year for Lumos: I began serving at the beginning of August; met with the staff on numerous occasions to plan, coordinate, and bond; Lumos hosted a few events for the staff and youth to fellowship; resumed Friday night Bible studies in September; hosted its first Gospel and game nights in October; and launched the first of hopefully many Saturday seminars in November. Simply amazing! God has been gracious in pouring out many blessings! I’ll mention some:
The blessing of a faithful, servant-hearted, like-minded staff. As I shared in my last post, the staff is passionate about ministering to the youth. It has been an incredible blessing to serve along side with them. They humbly serve and patiently follow my leadership; they are very willing to sacrifice much for the youth. All of this stems from their genuine love and passion for God and the youth. I believe their counsel is God-exalting and biblically founded. I trust them very much. They contribute much joy in serving.
The blessing of Bible study. In my limited experience, it appears that many other youth ministries do not focus on preaching the whole counsel of God’s Word in their discipleship programs. It is an enormous blessing to have our youth nights center on God’s Word; and it is an enormous blessing to see the youth enjoy it! Fellowshipping over the study of God’s Word guides us to retain a Christ-centered and gospel-centered youth ministry.
The blessing of special events. Even though we may take breaks from our normal Bible studies, our special events provide other opportunities to present or reflect on the gospel and to deepen relationships. A gospel night, which is a night devoted to reflection on the gospel, directly reminds us of God’s good news. Like Israel in the Old Testament, we are prone to forget God and His righteous deeds. Setting aside time to reflect on Christ’s life, death, and resurrection and man’s sinful condition refocuses our hearts on eternal things, confronts us with challenging introspection concerning salvation, and encourages us to witness to others. Gospel nights provide youthies with the opportunity to actively reach out to their friends and family. Another opportunity for youthies to invite their friends and family to church is our game nights. A game night helps build camaraderie within the youth group and novel, and perhaps unorthodox ways (e.g. Jeopardy), to interact with God’s Word.
The blessing of Saturday seminars. We are privileged with opportunities to host special training and workshops. Cesar started us off with an introduction to the foundations of the Christian worldview – quite important! It is encouraging seeing the youth excited for these workshops and sacrifice a part of their Saturday to be at the church! These Saturday seminars allow us to continue teaching the whole counsel of God’s Word on very specific and relatable topics.
Those are just a few ways we have seen God pour out His blessings to the youth ministry. We continue to depend on God to grow what has been planted, to save souls, and to raise up a generation that will stand as His witnesses. I give thanks to God because He is good, not necessarily because of the good things He has blessed us with. To borrow C.J. Mahaney’s words, we’re doing better than we deserve, for all we deserve is God’s wrath for our sins. Yet because of Christ’s death and resurrection, we can have forgiveness of sins and eternal life with God – the greatest blessing; anything more is grace upon grace.