The school year is almost over. Our church recognized graduates this past Sunday. This is a common practice among some churches in the U. S.. We asked our graduates to stand during the worship gathering, gave them a brief challenge, reminded the church to pray for them, and had a time of prayer for them as they plan to enter the marketplace or additional education.
While this is good practice, more is needed–much more, and long before graduation day.
Here is a PSA (Public Stewardship Announcement) that I often remind myself of:
Pastors, we must shepherd our members to the field. The stewardship we have with the students of our churches is a great trust.
Long before graduation day:
1) Lay the Foundation. Give your students the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27). Teach them a biblical worldview (2 Tim 2:2; 4:2-4) and how to study and apply the Word.
2) Develop Disciple Making and Church Planting Skills. Yes, we must do this for everyone. Everyone needs to be taught how to make disciples. And since church planting is a small step from that (Remember, your church is closer to planting than you probably think.), we should teach them how to plant churches. Not everyone will be a church planter, but we will enable them to say, “I can do that!” or “I can help a church planter do that!” If our churches are only providing biblical knowledge, then we are only halfway there. We must teach students obedience to all that Christ commanded (Matt 28:20; 1 Tim 4:11-16), and this includes how to make disciples.
3) Provide Guidance Counseling. Yes, our churches must absolutely do this, too. It is part of the great stewardship we have received. We must call our students to marketable skills and degrees. Why would we ever leave one of the most important decisions in our students’ lives to the whims of youth, unbelieving guidance counselors, or peer pressure? If we have been giving them a vision for God’s glory among the nations and helping them understand God’s world, then we need to be shepherding them into the marketplace where they can make the most impact multiplying disciples and churches across North America and throughout the world. We must show the connection between their vocations and God’s global mission!
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The United States and Canada contain the third and fifth largest numbers of unreached people groups in the world, respectively. Check out last Friday’s episode of Strike the Match ( iTunes or through RSS) to hear what some people are doing to discover and engage these unreached peoples.