Getting us there

Guest preaching is a small part of the job description for "Young Adult Pastor to the Presbytery" but it's an important one. Aside from the obvious importance of delivering the Word of God to gathered congregations of people, and aside also from the importance of providing support for pastors who are away from the pulpit, the importance that has struck me recently is in hearing the Word which applies to the Ignite ministry.

Take last Sunday, for instance. The sermon was on Matthew 16:21-23 where Jesus begins to lay out a plan for heading to Jerusalem, suffering at the hands of the religious leaders, dying, and then being raised from the dead. This is a huge turning point in the Gospel not because it was the creation of some new plan but because it was the transformation of the existing plan to better accord with what the plan has always been. God has always wanted a faithful kingdom and so he created humanity and when sin entered and humanity was separated from God he reached out to his people with a covenant and a law and a dwelling place in their midst and discipline for sin until the fullness of time came and he sent his Son, God incarnate, Jesus Christ, to proclaim the kingdom and to reveal the Triune God and to re-cast the identity of humanity which he did fully and effectively in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ which is then given to us through the gift of the Holy Spirit who unites our hearts with Christ by grace through faith (GASP) - that was a huge run-on sentence.

One of the things I take away from that message is the need for a plan. Not just in a business management self-help kind of way, but a real and genuine goal of ministry. Ministry in general, and especially young adult ministry, slips into maintenance and then it slips into 'doing it just for the sake of doing it' and at that point the prevalence of insider talk and coded language begins to replace actual language which has a direct coherence with the real world. Case in point, for a long time the Ignite ministry hasn't had much more to describe it other than "ministry to young adults" - with 'ministry' being the coded language to describe a thing which hasn't actually been described. As we look forward to sustaining a ministry and growing that 'ministry to young adults,' we have to transition to a place where goals, details, and plans are incorporated.

So here's the plan for the next little bit:

• Continue to teach the Gospel and lead discussion at weekly gatherings in bars, coffee shops, and homes.
• Get more involved with missional expressions of our faith by partnering with local (and not-so-local) organizations. Even if those organizations aren't explicitly Christian ministry, our service will be compelled by our faith.
• Forge a connection with W&J through free yoga classes for students. It's a huge repository of young adults right in our backyard and we barely know them. The first step in getting to know them is meeting them, so we are offering a yoga class for free, no strings attached.
• Explore new models of ministry that might be replicated by Ignite, such as the Waynesburg Intentional Community. Experimenting with this ministry for a while might prove to be the catalyst for a similar approach to ministry in Washington.

The plan for Ignite has always been "ministry to young adults" but now we are starting to work on the specifics of what that plan might entail. These ideas and plans (and others that are still cookin' on the back burner) are being rolled out in order that we might continue to faithfully present the Gospel to young adults and be part of the growth of that faith.