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| Credit: Creative Commons (John Lewis) |
It's an understatement to say that you're tired. Because you're not just putting in extra hours at some side job. You're pouring your heart into something that you care about very much: the lives of teenagers who desperately need Jesus. I get it. There's not a Sunday night that I don't think about what happened that morning and think, "Did I do enough? Was the sermon clear enough? Could I have prepared more? And why did I forget that new student's name again?" If this is where you find yourself today, I have good news for you.
The Gospel is enough.
Really, it is. However, many of us in youth ministry act as though the Gospel were not enough. As though students won't come to know Jesus without the right program, the right event, or the right leaders. We act as though what God has to offer is incomplete, lacking in some way. As though the Good News--that though dead in our trespasses, God has provided life for us through Jesus' work on the cross--is not enough. Sure, we love the Good News, but we find ways to dress it up, as though God has an incredible product that just needs some better marketing.
I'm not saying that ministry tools of any kind are evil. Heck, even Paul used tools: parchment, a pen, a collection of books, and transportation, to name a few. And you'd be hard-pressed to make a case that in lieu of Facebook, he never employed a strategic method of letting people know he was in town and that they should come hear him talk about Jesus and have a spirited discussion with him afterward.
However, many of us work and plan and work some more as though the Gospel, in fact, were not enough.
I know, I know. Paul worked his behind off. He gave is last living years to telling people about Jesus, and eventually his dying breath. And that's where this strange tension exists. You see, God asks us to tell as many people as we can about Jesus. You don't think he expected his followers to make disciples of all the nations without lifting a finger, do you? Yet in all our efforts, it is not us doing anything, but really the Holy Spirit is doing it all.
Paul, in all his hard work, was very clear:
And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (1 Corinthians 2:1-5)
When I read that passage today, I have to confess that I didn't believe Paul. Really, Paul? I thought. Have you even read your letter to the Roman Church? How can you say that you've got no lofty speech or wisdom? And then it hit me: Paul isn't just trying to downplay his role. He's making a very simple statement:
The Gospel is enough. Christ crucified is enough.
My prayer for you is not that you would stop working, or stop trying. Because for some reason, God in his wisdom has given us the work of putting shoes on the Gospel. While it is God working all the while, he uses us to carry the important message of what Jesus did on the cross, and how he beat death three days later. So please, don't stop working, and don't stop trying. Because if you've got to fill your time anyways, you might as well do it joyfully bringing the best news anyone has every heard. No, my prayer for you is this: to understand that the Gospel is enough. That you don't need lofty speech and wisdom, that you don't need to "crack the code" and find that one, killer event that will bring thousands to Christ, and that you don't need to every get to the point where you don't inadvertently say something silly during every single sermon you preach. Because the Gospel is enough, and it isn't your work or your brilliance that will save the students you love. It's God's Spirit and power, which is good news for you and for me.
