Core values — Strategic Investment
By George O. Wood
Excerpts from General Superintendent George O. Wood’s book, Core Values, will be featured in The Council Today. The complete book is available from GPH.
Take a look at our Annual Church Ministries Report and you may be pleasantly surprised to discover that the U.S. Assemblies of God counts approximately 1.1 million young people under the age of 25 among our 2.8 million adherents. Many church organizations would be absolutely thrilled to have some 30 percent of their constituency that young. Our Fellowship is blessed with a new generation of believers poised to impact our world.
But are we doing everything we can to prepare them for that mission? Every year the Assemblies of God sees some 60,000 young people graduate from high school. As they leave home and community for college and career, how many of them are holding to their spiritual foundations? Fewer than you or I want to admit.
We must think strategically of what the Assemblies of God will become if Jesus tarries 30, 40 or even more years down the road. We must lay a good foundation for this church to continue to thrive and prosper.
But how will we conserve that harvest? How will we evangelize and disciple the next generation? How will we help young men and women navigate the critical transitions from elementary, middle and high school, and on to college and the work force? I believe four key lines of investment in their lives will make all the difference in their future.
And their future is our future.
INVEST IN LEADERSHIP
Young people need lots of loving care and attention. Some churches try to meet that need with lay ministry rather than paid staff. Sometimes that can work if youth sponsors are uniquely gifted. But a paid staff better enables lay ministry to grow in a church. A dedicated youth pastor will administer and grow ministry so more lay people can be involved.
We need leaders to guide our young people into spiritual growth. We also need young people to respond to God’s call to spiritual leadership themselves. The Assemblies of God faces a potential shortage of ministers in the years ahead.
Do I have the solutions? Not yet. But we are a Pentecostal church; we depend upon the Holy Spirit to give us answers. We need His guidance to strategically invest in a new generation of leaders.
Our senior pastors should be mentoring the young ministers on their staffs or in their congregations. I hear horror stories of how staff are treated sometimes by senior pastors. Senior pastors must build relationships, not merely give job assignments. And relationships take time.
INVEST IN CHURCH LIFE
Our churches need to put a floor under young people’s feet. One of the temptations in youth ministry is to simply gather a crowd and fail to give young people sufficient flooring for their faith once they get away from that Christian crowd. You can always collect a crowd — just bring in a Christian band or some hot speaker. But the discipleship component is critical. Young people don’t just want to be handed something; they want to be a part of making something.
But too often we in the “established church” look at their efforts doubtfully. We need to begin recognizing the wealth of gifts our young people have to offer, and open ourselves to viewing ministry through their eyes.
The older generation in the Assemblies of God needs to be able to say to the younger generation, “You are free to use the models that effectively reach your culture and we are going to affirm you.”
I don’t care how you do church as long as people are getting saved, baptized in the Spirit, called into ministry, healed, delivered, effectively serving Christ, reaching the lost and discipling people. It’s end results we need to be looking at, not means. We need to stop being hung up on means and get to end results.
INVEST IN EDUCATION
National studies indicate that evangelical churches lose 50-70 percent of their young people who go to a nonevangelical college. Evangelical schools, however, lose only about 5 percent.
Why has the Assemblies of God been so successful in its international growth? Certainly, first of all, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. But partnered with that Pentecostal distinctive, our educational philosophy has focused on preparing men and women for ministry around the world. Currently, of our 60,000 high school seniors each year only about 2,700 are entering one of our 19 endorsed schools.
We must make our schools a matter of priority. Either our young people are important or they are not. You have to measure worth versus cost. If you simply evaluate something by its cost and not by its worth, you are using the wrong measurement.
Assemblies of God colleges are the power plants of production for the workforce that is going to be in the kingdom of God in just a very few years. We have got to make a strategic investment in this harvest; we have got to be more intentional in our churches about raising the level of support for Assemblies of God higher education.
INVEST IN RELATIONSHIP
One thing this Fellowship is facing with younger ministers is that they are less enamored with ecclesiastical structures, rules and regulations. Younger people tend to ask more questions. We cannot let that be viewed as being rebellious or disrespectful. We need to be mature enough to take a punch, so to speak, and if young people have hard questions — whether doctrinal, philosophical or organizational — we cannot be defensive about that.
In one sense, our older generation has a parental responsibility toward the next generation. As spiritual “parents,” it is not our job to force young people into a mold. It is our job to motivate them to become all that Christ would have them to become.
If we are going to win and spiritually nurture a new generation, if we are going to raise up young men and women to partner with us in reaching a lost world, the old adage holds true — honey is much better than vinegar. We will never attract young and vibrant Christians into our pulpits if we are seeking to repress anything in them that does not quite jell with our established sensibilities.
But if we will commit to doing all things in love, and if we will commit to recognizing and sacrificially supporting the gifts with which God has endowed the emerging Assemblies of God, I see an amazing future for this church.
The choice is ours.