Stopping to Think

Here is the post I promised at the end of the last one.  What I want to discuss is how do the five points I drew from Romans 1:1-7, relate to youth ministry.  Honestly, I believe they relate to all ministry this way, I simply am going talk in youth ministry terms because that was the initial spur behind me looking into this text. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you an...

I ought to be in bed right now, being as I have a presentation to do in the morning, but alas, I am suffering some insomnia.  So, I will share with you all something of what I will be talking about tomorrow morning at the Rocky Mountain Bible Mission's Shepherd's Conference here in Missoula.  Wayne and I are splitting a session, sharing with people something of our philosophy of youth ministry.  Youth Ministry takes a lot of shots from more conservative, reformed, and rural people (not because any of those are necessarily connected or related).  Much of this, honestly, is fair criticism.  I recently read the book "Giving up Gimmicks: Reclaiming Youth Ministry From an Entertainment Culture" by Brian Cosby.  Excellent book, if you can get past a little Presbyterianism.  I wasn't quite sure how infant baptism worked into youth ministry, but anyway.  The gist of his book was that youth ministries cannot be divorced from the local church.  N...