Praise God that the church landscape has been shifting in recent years to include a greater emphasis on church planting. I grew up in the church, but I never heard of church planting until I was twenty years old. It wasn’t until my junior year of college that I had the missiological lens of a disciple-making, church planting church, taught to me for the first time. What I discovered at that time was that church planting was anything but unintentional, and recent graduates were anything but unstrategic.
As a young person, I had previously felt like I didn’t really have much of a place in the church other than twice a week attendance, and frankly, nothing else was asked of me. All this changed when the Lord brought me to a church that saw young people, and recent graduates in particular, as an essential part of the mission of God to take the gospel everywhere to all people.
Do you have college-aged members of your church or ministry? I encourage you to start seeing them as the most “sendable” people in your context, and I want to encourage you with five thoughts around how to mobilize them as kingdom agents in the world. This will be especially true for college students at university, but broadly applicable to the stage of life many young people are in.
Most college-aged Christians I interact with have an interest in an intentional discipleship relationship. Do you have something for them to step into in your church or ministry? We want to take our investment in them beyond a weekly worship service and invite them into a space where they have a leader investing individually in them or in a group of peers. The pathway does not have to be elaborate or fancy; in fact, the simpler the better. You just need a godly leader who knows where he is leading them to, and a plan for regular, predictable investment in the direction of Christlikeness.
What captivated me in college when I interacted with a missionally minded church for the first time was their God-sized vision for seeing college students reached with the gospel in our generation. I’ve heard a friend describe it as churches “playing not to lose, not playing to win.” Understand the point of what he was saying. No, we don’t think church is a game, and that was exactly his point. The Master Jesus spoke of in Matthew 25 is coming back one day. What would we have done with what he gave us? Communicate a vision to your young people to take ground for the kingdom that reflects the reality that Jesus is reigning now, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion (Eph 1). Many of our young people have never heard a vision like the Great Commission, contextualized to their lives today, and how they can leverage their lives for something greater than themselves. They are hungry for this vision.
This is simple, but extremely impactful. In my church, we prioritize taking trips during Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Spring Break times for the purpose of serving together somewhere, or taking “scout trips” like the twelve spies of Numbers 13. There is nothing that can quite replace the experience of seeing gospel need in other places for yourself. Every time we have taken a trip to a new college campus and begun sharing the gospel with the people there, a desire to go and call has followed. Whether it is an international trip or a domestic one across the state, make mission-oriented trips a regular part of the ministry young people experience in your church and ministry. Take trips together to get a picture of what it could look like to be sent out for the sake of the Name (3 John 7).
It would be a tragedy if young people were not getting leadership opportunities in our churches. Once they catch a gospel vision for their lives and the spheres of influence around them, they begin looking for ways to invest and participate in the mission. If you don’t give them leadership opportunity, someone else will and they will go there. Invite them into a process of watching a leader in a certain ministry environment. Next, invite them into helping lead that ministry under the guidance of the more seasoned brother/sister. Eventually, we need to place our trust in them enough to release control and allow them to lead ministry contexts themselves.
It will never be comfortable or easy to send away the leaders that we have raised up. Sending for the sake of the gospel always costs something. The church in Antioch certainly felt the absence of Paul and Barnabas, no doubt two prominent leaders, when they obeyed the Holy Spirit and sent them to start new churches (Acts 13). As the New Testament church the Great Commission is our mission. This means we need to not just release people to new ministry callings, but we need to be sending centers like Gaius was in 3 John 6, when John declared, “You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God.” Are you known for sending out young people for the sake of Christ and the sake of the gospel? We have to be as faithful servants of Jesus Christ.
Wherever you find yourself at in a process of mobilizing college students, recent graduates, and other twenty-somethings toward planting churches, making disciples, and taking the gospel to the ends of the earth, know that it is worth the effort. I am a church planter in Colorado because of people walking me through the experiences mentioned above in my college years and then sending me out. We cannot out give God, and “There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, an din the age to come eternal life.” May the Lord bless you as you make His name and his renown among all people the desire of your soul.
