Free resources for youth pastors:
1 – OT Storyline of the Spirit (mp3),
2 – NT Storyline of the Spirit (mp3)
3 – Make War – Holy Spirit’s Help (mp3 by Brian Metz)
4 – Fruit of the Spirit (mp3)
Persecuted Church: Holy Spirit (ppt)
Persecuted Church: Holy Spirit (Schedule)
Persecuted Church: Holy Spirit (Brief Preaching Notes)

 Our students walked into an almost completely dark student building.  Most of our lights were turned off, and a few of our led’s were turned to red and yellow to look like torches and turned down low.  The mood was set to look like many of the churches meeting around the world in secret, danger, and fear for their lives…as well as many churches like that back in church history.  We stripped away all of the bells and whistles.  We did 4 sessions (each an hour long) of 5 minutes of singing, 40 minutes of teaching, and 5-10 minutes of prayer.  Amazingly after 4 hours of sessions centered around teaching doctrine, our students simply asked, “Its over?  That’s it?  Can’t we stay longer?”  Now that is the joy and purpose of the Persecuted Church.  Here’s more about our Persecuted Church event… 

We started something brand new for us this September that we’ll definitely continue on for many years to come.  It all started when I took about 10 of our students down to Dr. David Platt’s church in Birmingham to an event they called “Secret Church”.  Secret Church there at The Church at Brookhills was Platt’s opportunity to teach theology to his church and the surrounding community.  He literally taught deep, engaging, clear, and relevant theology to about 3,000 people (most under the age of 30) for six hours (from 6pm – midnight).  Our students loved it!  This is one reason we started our own “Persecuted Church”.  The other reason is because we used to go through systematic theology together in our student ministry every Sunday morning.  It was going well, but we decided to meet a greater good by moving to pure small groups that discuss what happens on our Wednesday worship services.  I was missing theology in our student ministry, and so were our students.  So coupled with an awesome experience at Secret Church and our void of systematic theology from moving to small groups, we decided to start “Persecuted Church” twice a year that would teach systematic theology to our students.  We did it on a Saturday night from 6 – 10pm.  The schedule, powerpoint slides, and mp3s are at the top of the page.  Youth pastors, teach your students systematic theology in a Christ-centered, clear, convicting, and life-changing way!

I did let a very respected local youth pastor, Brian Metz, come in and teach session #3.  I want to involve more student ministries in this event in the future.  So prayerfully the future will be a packed student building, and then a packed church auditorium full of students who desperately want to hear and live more theology from their lives!