Free file for youth pastors:

Doctrine of the Church (Outline)

Jody is a youth pastor in the Columbus area of Ohio.  He’s one of my best friends.  But what sets Jody apart is his passion to preach and teach Christ to his teens through the means and mixture of the Word and theology.  Youth pastor reading this right now with a frappe in one hand and your ipod in your other, if you’re wanting to give your students a good look at what the church is (identity) and what the church is supposed to do (mission), I’d urge you to take a look at this document to see how Jody is going to teach the doctrine of the church to his student ministry.

“Its not about the church, its about the world.  We need to get outside these walls, and hit the streets.  I don’t care where my teenager goes to church, just so they’re being discipled.  We need to stop feeding the insiders, and start reaching the outsiders.”  I hear these statements all the time by other youth pastors, other Christians, and Christian authors.  Honestly, I don’t agree with them…not fully anyways.  Do I believe we must reach the world with the gospel or Christ?  Absolutely…yes!  Do we need to put less of an emphasis on the church to accomplish that?  Abolutely not!  If we are not growing our church to reflect the Kingdom of Christ, then what do we do with the world once we get them saved?

With all of the teenage church hopping, visiting a different student ministry every Wednesday night, and youth ministry looking less like a part of a church and more like a bunch of games, a cool video, and a brief 10 minute video…as youth pastors we need to take another long, hard look at how we view the glory of Christ in the church.  I won’t go into detail now, but we must see the church as: a committed covenant community of Christians who profess, worship, and witness for Christ.