SPEAKING MINISTRY: NEXTGEN YOUTH IN GROVE CITY- AUG 2021
I love to see the Lord move in the lives of young people. Oftentimes, the youth in the church have an authenticity about them, and it is a blessing to see them genuinely respond to God. I had that chance last Friday at a Back to School event for the NextGen Youth Ministry at Connection Pointe Church in Grove City, Ohio. About fifty people joined together, made up of the students and leadership of youth groups from two churches. The visiting youth group provided the worship team for the night, and we had a great time worshipping the Lord together. A guest musical artist named St. James shared a couple of worship songs with an island feel. Then I spoke.
I preached a message about the woman at the well in John 4 called, “You Have Something to Offer the World.” I spoke about Jesus’ willingness to cross over cultural boundaries, and minister to a Samaritan woman. Then, in response, she went and shared Jesus with everyone she knew. And the amazing part about the story is that the people respond and believe in Jesus!
I know from my personal struggles as a youth that many battle with feelings of insignificance and often struggle through their teenage years to find their place. I shared some of my own testimony of looking in all the wrong places to find where I belonged. And it wasn’t until I came to Christ that my search finally came to an end. Jesus sees value in each of those young people and desires to use them to share the Gospel with those around them to make an impact on eternity! They need to learn to find their sense of worth and significance, not in the world, but in a relationship with Christ.
The students were very receptive. A couple of them prayed to either receive Christ or rededicate their lives to Him. We had a great time of prayer over each student to prepare them for going back to school with a missional mindset. I felt like the Lord was desiring to minister to someone who had battled with feeling overlooked and insignificant. I asked the students to raise their hands if they needed prayer for that specific issue. Several responded, some with tears, and the leaders and students gathered around them to pray.
The youth pastor told me afterwards that he had a couple of his students who were able to walk through repentance and connect with Jesus. It was a great time of ministry to the next generation, and I’m so grateful for how the Lord moved in the lives of these young people.
Thank you to everyone who is praying for and supporting Make Way Ministries financially. We are seeing the fruit of your support, and lives are being touched and changed by the power of the Gospel. You are a crucial part of this ministry and we truly could not do what God has called us to do without you! God has been so faithful to touch lives through our speaking ministry, and we are humbled to be a part of what He is doing on the earth!
DUSTIN RENZ is the President of Make Way Ministries, a non-profit organization that exists to see the world changed one Christian at a time. He has a passion to see the Body of Christ find rich intimacy in their relationship with Jesus and step out in faith to share the Gospel with the world around them. He is the author of Pile of Masks: Exposing Christian Hypocrisy and Something Better. He resides in Dayton, Ohio with his wife and three daughters.
