2021 GLOBAL YOUTH CONVENTION 3/04/2021

i called my wife katie because in 36 years we've never missed an easter together [Music] and i said so hon this is what's going on in nigeria and this kairos moment and it's a great thing and and they want me to stay and what do you think because i feel like i would need to respect her she's you know my life mate she goes ron this is our life there's no there's not even a decision to be made here and uh so it was just beautiful so it is an honor for me to be here with you today um please please be seated and dr paul i was thinking about something this morning i was up early and a couple of years ago when i um was meeting with bishop oyadepo and um was telling him of my mentor dr miles monroe he says oh he is my twin brother he's my twi and he began to go on and on how fond he was of them and then i'm i'm listening to him and i'm thinking wait a minute if you're his brother so i said it to him that means you're my uncle and then i thought this morning that means you're my cousin we're family i mean i knew we were family but now i really know we're family so so cuz [Laughter] so here you're stuck with me now all right so i want to read some verses here and pray and we'll get started but you know if i had known you hadn't spent an easter in 36 years away you know i wouldn't have suggested that i didn't know that oh oh was that right i didn't know that at all but i knew you had so much to say and the time was shot and we needed more i actually thought he could have traveled on saturday night today oh thank you we appreciate this i am blessed to be here so thank you [Applause] and i'm blessed to be i'm gonna be at all three services tomorrow because i wanna i want the full experience so we are here in um in uh see if i can find it on my phone again jesus talked about counting the cost verse 31 of luke 14 or suppose the king is about to go to war against another king won't he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand if he's not able he will send a delegation and the other is still one others a long way off and we'll ask terms of peace so jesus this morning i pray that you just turn this into a war room a planning strategy war session lord give us minds to think strategically spiritually lord how we can see an overthrow of the enemy's kingdom on the young generation here in nigeria and all over africa and all around the world lord help us to understand thoughts that maybe have never occurred to us in jesus name we pray amen so we're going to start by giving you if if you don't mind quickly just some of the science behind what i studied in my doctoral studies called strategic foresight and and guys i might need your help up here to get this to project because um you helped me yesterday and somehow it i'm projecting it but it's not projecting so i tell you what they teach us when strategic foresight is the science where they look at trends that are coming and then they um help companies plan for all the possible things that could happen i don't think it's that or maybe that so yeah and so so what they do is they hire people that have uh degrees and strategic foresight these big companies the biggest companies in the world to come and help them think okay how is for example all the trends going to affect the oil industry or the uh some other technology or the medical industry and so they plan for all the possible scenarios that could happen so they're not surprised by any right they following me so they don't just go well this is what's gonna i think sometimes christians are like this we go well these are the this is what's gonna happen so we sort of become fatalistic it's gonna or we or we come the other way well if the lord wants it to happen it'll happen you know there's a lot of things the lord wants to happen that doesn't happen and a lot of things the lord wish would happen that's not happening because he's waiting for someone to participate with him and and i think we get a little bit fatalistic because we we it's hard for us to put together the sovereignty of god and whatever he wants really happens but but there's a lot of people that are broken and hurting that you know abuse that he doesn't want to happen and so there's a role for us to play in the kingdom of god so what the science of strategic foresight does is helps you to figure out what these trends that are coming what are the possible scenarios that could happen and and i just real quickly wanted to take you down a path and then spend most of our time talking about the scenario or the plan that i think the lord has for us here in nigeria and us for the kingdom around the world so are we ready guys i saw i saw a glimpse of hope here a moment ago and now my computer is locked up the reason i use these slides is because sometimes you know one um a picture is worth a thousand words kind of thing sometimes when you can see something it's better than me trying to describe it um i was thinking of that quote this morning uh dr paul when you mentioned your moment in history like like the they didn't realize jesus was i didn't recognize him i heard another quote along those lines there's nothing worse to be on stage and not know your lines and this is this is the stage of history this is what we're all alive right now and so you're on stage and you don't know your lines and what a tragedy that is and so becoming sons of visicar we uh are learning what actions we should take so that we know our lines we know our moment why we're here and and i think how uh how beautiful that we're here in in africa and so much is going on and so much more is about to go on and i think i agree with them with dr paul what um it's not just about dunamis and about even nigeria but what could be uh uh what could emanate from here all around the world specifically it's already emanating around the world but specifically regarding reaching the of the younger generation so i think it would just make the devil really mad and i don't know about you but i like to make the devil mad we're almost almost done here i'm sorry about this so we'll get down where we need to be i think we're going to make it guys i had to reboot this yesterday too right in the middle of everything let's see if we can do this almost here we go here we go so as we're thinking about i mean just i'm gonna i'm gonna geek out a little bit on you here because i want i want to uh help you kind of think differently about how we all think about the future what they teach us in strategic foresight is to take two critical variables that are most important about your industry in the future and to plot them against each other so when we think about youth and the church and the future all the trends we talked about the other day what we did is we took two critical variables in the future of the church and plotted them that is the pastors and leaders engagement and juxtaposed it with church engagement that is is the whole church involved or is it just the pastor but or did the church catch the vision so when you plot these against each other this is the picture you get is it okay if i kind of walk down this road with you guys so you could see the on the on the bottom left is number one and it's the most probable future and the reason we put that is because that if if all the trends continue the way they are if nothing if no outside forces changes change that then it's the most plausible future and we call that that's where the the church's engagement is low and the leadership engagement is low like nobody really cares and nobody really is doing anything and just a lot of activities but not a lot of impact okay and so we call that teaming titantics and we'll we'll describe that story to you what it might look like in in a few years and by the way you know we talked about the accelerated rate of change the other day how fast everything's changing like never before think about this this describes it best between now and 2030 just nine years there's going to be so much change in the world they're saying it will be as equivalent to the entire industrial revolution crammed into nine years so imagine right now we're driving horse and buggy and in nine years we're going to the moon that's how much change is going to happen in the world this is the moment we live in and i i have a feeling that it will feel even faster than that in africa because some parts of the world have already changed quicker than africa has so you guys are going to get way cut up real quick and it's sort of like that ocean metaphor i used the other day it'll feel like you're really an ocean the second is the possible future and that's where the the leadership is not really engaged but the church is like we gotta reach young people doesn't happen very often but it has happened before the third one is is um is a uh is this one here it's a uh plausible future where the church is not engaged but the pastors really like the leaders are like yes we need to reach and we call that one tired tugboats and the last one is the preferred future and that's where the leadership the pastors are really engaged and the church is engaged and we call that jet-powered surf boats so let's just real quickly kind of look at what these four look like just so we understand you might be in one of those quadrants as dunamis but the rest of the church might be in another quadrant we need to understand the field in which we're playing so teeming tank tandex imagine you woke up in a few years and it was on all the headlines of all the papers thousands of massive ships full of thousands of people like the titanic are all sinking all around the world and no one knows what to do it'd be enough if there were just one and a few thousand people died but imagine it happened around the world like tens of thousands of these well but this is what a lot of churches this is what's happened to a lot of churches right now and denominations they're like this huge battleship this huge was supposed to be a battleship it turned into a cruise ship the whole sermon right there we cared more about our comfort than going to war and it's going down but you know what they're doing they're um they're having a worship conference on the way down they're rearranging the furniture on the deck of the titanic hey we got a new book release hey guess what pay no attention to this it's sinking we have very few young people we're closing down churches pay no attention to that we got a new book out we got and and people um say to me ron how how's the church doing in america and i'll say well you know america is the land of hollywood we make things that are really bad look really great we can take somebody who's a alcoholic and make them look like the best father in the world on a movie and and i'm afraid we've kind of hollywoodized the church in america i'm sorry it's true where the data is really bad but pay no attention to that look at this conference we did it shows the crowd or it shows you know one youth conference a year rather than all the youth that usually aren't they're teaming titanics and it's if all the trends continue this is what we're going to see we think the grain of the church we saw those trends do we think it's bad now it's going to get really bad i'll tell you one thing um dr paul some of the trends watch this because medicine is increasing so quickly they're saying by 2050 100 years old will be the new 60. in other words how you feel right now at 60 both your health your vitality you'll feel that way at 100 years old because health medicine is developing so fast so imagine what what could happen just that trend alone it could give a false positive to churches churches go hey we're doing pretty good we're not shrinking but they're getting older and older and they're not monitoring it because people aren't dying as quickly and then when those people do die the church is evaporated so it's important to have multiple measurements not just you know a couple indicators so the second quadrant we'll look at real quickly here is this diverse diggies this is where the church yes yes reach young people but the but uh the leaders aren't involved or caring about it this happened in the 1960s in america they called it the jesus movement lots of young people got saved there were druggies and long hair and tattoos and they started wandering to churches and the churches didn't want them so they started little clubs and bible studies and colts started and this is what it looks like diverse dinghies those little boats that are floating around those are all little bible study groups that have no real leaders no real mentors no real pastors pastor last night called them maybe bastards spiritual bastards spiritual vagabonds and so but and that's what happened some ended up in church but many churches didn't want them but people in the church were just like we got to reach them somehow and so they start like rescuing them getting them saved getting them baptized didn't know what to do with them so we don't want that to happen the next scenario here is the it's a plausible one where the pastor and the leaders of the church yes let's reach them but people are like yeah come on we don't like that music we don't want to lose young people you know in america i'll just speak to my country sometimes every once in a while you'll find a church that would really get excited about young people and they would start getting saved but they don't look like saved kids at least not at first right they don't smell like them they don't act like them in fact they might get in the church and the people the church people go and they're walking like this away from they're scared you know people can tell if they're wanted people can tell if they're valued if you're like plugging your nose while you're walking by somebody if you're flinching or something and uh so this is this one though uh looks like a tired tugboat this is the pastor saying to the church come on you guys we need to reach him we need to reach him come on you guys we need to reach them and after a while it gets tiring wasn't meant to work like that the church is not wanting to come church not wanting to get go along and so it's important for us to think and we talk a lot about when we're training churches on how how to implement the second rail remember the first rails everything you're doing is right that works right now the second rail is the exponential rail we talk a lot about change management and how to bring people the whole church along the path with you you don't have to you know some people think if i'm going to reach young people i need to look like them and so okay i wore jeans today because we're in a youth building is that okay with you guys but you know i'm not trying to look like a teenager completely i don't have any tattoos and i don't care if i ever have them you know and you don't have to people know if you love them you don't need somebody to be like them they need somebody that they would like to be like worth emulating right and so uh you know you we don't we don't have to you know juggle swords please come to church and try to get them tonight every week begging them begging them begging them we might first have to do some things to attract them as we'll see but then they keep coming because jesus captured their heart now finally we're going to talk about the preferred future this is what we're going to really camp out on this morning how do we do this this jet jet-powered surfboard this is where the pastors and the leaders are engaged the whole church is engaged and we're like we're going after them and we're not unapologized for one thing and so this kind of leadership looks like this where the pastor and the leaders are seeing the waves of change that are coming they see what's happening and they're they're not intimidated they're surfing the waves of change and then they found these things called surf boats i don't know if you've ever seen these before but people go out in these boats on on and and they and they surf the waves back in so this becomes the church of the future where the pastors and the leaders can see the waves at the trends the chains that are coming and then the church says you know what we're going to get on those waves we're not just going to be some old stale boat that gets tipped over in a in a in a huge uh tidal wave but we've learned to surf the ways but this really is not enough for the church of the future because we're going to become these jet powered surf boats where we've got small groups in them and we're suffering the weights of change and the enemy's not going to intimidate us and doesn't matter how many pandemics and trends come against us and we're grabbing people left and right and rescuing them from that are drowning in sin and and from hell and we're discipling them and growing them and giving them their own boats so they can rescue people how many can get a vision for this for the future so here we go team we're going to talk about how we get there this morning now how many of you remember hearing maybe in your history books when you learned or read about world war ii how many remember the uh the term or the event called d-day anybody remember that so let me just uh tell you real quickly so you know hitler was marching and and just him and mussolini and he was getting other allies japanese or just killing people and killing people and just killing and going uh you know just destroying everybody in their path and it looked like no matter what england did or anybody else that they had no hope for the future they had no hope for how how are we ever going to defeat this guy so finally uh churchill came over to america because they hadn't attacked us right yet japanese hadn't and convinced us to like were begging us to get involved in the war then he went over to stalin and said to the russians hey we all need to join together in this thing and so there's they're they're like what can we do and they and and hitler had fronts everywhere he's attacking russia he's attacking france he's attacking england he's attacking africa he's attacking all over the place muslim he ganged up with muslims and he ganged up with japan and now they're bombing us and everything and so no one really had any clue what what are we really gonna do so they started they had this idea they called um they ended up calling d-day it wasn't called that at first and they said what if we got really smart what if because this guy seems like he's outwitting all of us and the future of the world is at stake here i mean we're all going to be speaking german and we're all going to be under this this dictator so it took two years to plan and what they did they said let's get as many men and and many fighters and as many planes as many boats as many oh and and make a concerted effort to focus an attack from england because he was starting to attack england then attack at one place and let's so overwhelm him that at least we get established because he we um that the allies couldn't have any of their people on europe themselves i mean they couldn't even get they would were onto the land they were the closest they get was in england and so they took two years to plan it somebody say two years so for two years there was a war going on people are getting killed all the time so meanwhile so you can see a graphic here of what what it kind of looked like they started thinking like if we got really smart about this part of their part of their thinking was we need to we need to trick hitler into thinking we're going to come from this way so literally what they did watch this they literally made a whole bunch of fake armory and and and set it up so that hitler thought they were coming from another direction look at these these are all tanks you'll see here that uh this is amazing that are made out of plastic look at they blew them up they inflated these tanks thousands of them so when they so look at like four men are picking this one up um so when hitler would take satellite views he goes oh they're coming from over here they were all they would put a lot of thought into this right because they they realized the future of the world is at stake anybody feel that pressure right now anybody feel that sense so they're putting all this planning watch what what ended up happening after these two years of planning and focusing and they had to change the date again and again because of weather and so forth you can see some of the different pictures here but uh they ended up i've got the data here where it's literally a fine tuned uh process somebody say process of invasion so look what they did they had they had people landing on normandy thousands landing on normandy beach meanwhile they had planes flying people in to and dropping not bombs yet but they were dropping some bombs but then dropping thousands of parachutes in and meanwhile they were overwhelming them they were killing them at the beach but because they came in the beach that they weren't anticipating they overwhelmed them and finally they ran over all the guys that were you know uh uh you know trying to keep them from coming onto the beach and as a result they captured the beach within a month so you'll see some of the numbers here they they launched this invasion with 129 000 soldiers 3 900 fighter pilots 670 gliders 4 400 bombers 1300 air transport look at all the ships um 23 000 parachutes 1500 tanks 1200 12 000 vehicles all the different ships so all these were just invading and within a month after they took the first thing they had 850 000 more soldiers in in france and they started marching within a year the war was over so they took two years to plan and boom many years of agony were just gone so i wonder what it might look like for a spiritual d-day that's what we're talking about here jesus referenced you know if you're going to go to war make sure you got the got the right men and the right plans and the right strategies and and all of that so this is what we're here to talk about this morning as i prayed about war room here so what i'd like to do is is give you an idea of when you're thinking about how do we plan the second rail of implementation this exponential rail is a process first we've got to put the plan together and so how many how many of you are from dunamis right here in in abuja you're part of the the big mothership here how many are from other churches around the country somewhere you're a pastor you're a leader okay because i want this to apply to you as well because it the the principles we've learned from these churches around the world because they're principles they can be applied in in many different environments if you've got a church of 100 or a thousand or if you've got church of tens of tens and tens of thousands the principles still work so the implementation process looks like this first there's a quiet phase then there's a public phase there's a deep impact phase and then there's a continuous improvement so you keep doing everything you're doing at church that's this rail the second rail is what we're going to talk about how how do we get that remember this picture that we talked about the other day how many guys remember this so what we're going to talk about here this morning as we're planning this war strategy is this part right here where the youth are getting uh getting uh more and more this little process right here where they're getting more and more uh on fire we're reaching we're discipling we're turning them in leaders this little tornado on the left the bottom left here that we talked about that's the process we're going to kind of dig into and talk about well how do we it all happens under the silent phase of the process so what i want to do is take you down this path and so that we can kind of so you can see a clearer picture i've given you the best practices um at least five of the best practices but let's talk about how do you take those because a lot of pastors and leaders like what does that mean for us what how do we look and feel and taste different so the first thing we do is we we call the first year of implementation of becoming an exponential church project 13 because we're focusing on 13 year olds and up now in nigeria we can test a little bit to see which which is the actual sweet spot because i know 18 to 30 year olds are qualified as youth right but then there's 13 to 18 year olds that are like teenagers so between 13 years 13 and 30 which is the sweetest spot are they all the same sweetness or is it better to get like to 19 or to 17. in japan for example um they have to go after them in college because the younger ones the teenagers they they're not allowed i mean it's such a rigid belief system the parents won't let them out of the house they can't do things but when they're in college they're kind of in university they're they're able to choose their own thought process and that kind of thing so this project 13 starts with a task force it's five different leaders and they have five different responsibilities and we have what we're going to review some of what what they do um the first here is um they they learn uh how to build these epic events we're talking about that that these epic events for for young people um we'll talk more this is what i did for years and years for decades in america and now other places around the world and so there's five different roles i'll just go through them real quickly one is the leadership buy-in that is that is somebody's got to make sure and it may not some of these will apply differently to you and in nigeria than other places around the world some churches have a real problem if the pastor has a vision it's a real problem to get the rest of the leaders on board i have a feeling that's not an issue here because people honor dr paul so much but in some in a lot of churches pastors have to like negotiate with the leaders no please love my vision please please please i don't think you'd want to be a pastor in that church but but then there's other but there's other people that will say and and it's not i'm not disrespecting them maybe they're not a leader in the church maybe they're just a volunteer or a leader of a department and they're and and in their mind they're thinking this is the way we've always done it why are we changing now and it and it it just feels different you know humans don't like change and so we have to walk them down the path of change management and to get them to buy in rather than we're just doing it that's why and so this person kind of oversees that and helps woo people down the path of of the the vision like this is why we're reaching this is what we want to see happen in the next five and ten years and this is um you know how there's a whole strategy on how to get people to buy in asking them to pray telling them stories about the youth and the data and this is how many girls or guys are messed up in our country or in our community and this you know we have a heart for them and we've got a strategy to do something about it and so the second job description for the task force is building the pathway do you remember we talked yesterday about one of the key uh best practices is that once these young people come to christ you have to have a clear pathway you know we throw the word around too often uh get disciple get discipled but no one knows how to do that well just get in the word well that's what i did that's what dr paul did probably many of you did this is what i think and i'll speak from experience in america churches is so when i got on fire for god i'm 16 years old i'm a total heathen i come to church i get on fire and i'm like i'm crazy and i'm like i didn't know it was okay to read your bible if you weren't in church but i thought i'm gonna sneak and do it anyway and i thought i wonder if it's okay with god well then i started reading my bible i'm like whoa i understand something i couldn't believe it i thought you had to have the pastor to explain everything and i'm like god you could help me understand this is so cool i'm gonna and i got addicted to it so what happens is we think a lot of people that end up in ministry they're evangelists they're tv ministers they're pastors of big churches they got like they they got mentored by god and then sort of accidentally got mentors around them later right they never went through a process of discipleship and a pathway of growth they kind of just dove into the bible for themselves and so we sort of think well everybody ought to do it god could do it with me why do they do with everybody and we don't maybe understand that the early church they were all meeting in groups and they all didn't have copies of the bible so they had people teaching them the torah and scriptures and passing galatians around and ephesians around when paul would write it and stuff like this and they were they were meeting together and i think again i refer to america we're so used to the lone ranger christian just get on fire and stay on fire if you were really on fire you'd be reading your word rather than you know maybe people like me people like dr paul or roberts other people who are just firebrands uh or anomalies maybe most people really need to grab hands and have people grab their hands all together let's all go together let's do this let's take them down a path because otherwise what happens is that people feel guilty they're not reading their bible they're not really repenting they're not living a more pure life and they feel guilty they don't come to church they're full of shame they come back they repent yes now really really really get on fire and then they read their bible for a little bit longer and then it dries out again and then we crank them up again then we crank them up again and that and that gets tiring right i asked one pastor a friend of mine in america i said how what percentage of the people in your church do you think live the kind of christianity you preach he goes maybe six percent and then he goes and then you come and steal them all to work with your ministry because we used to have this big internship that young adults would come for a year and you know a lot of what's happened in the church so i i i led a para church ministry for many years 30 years parachurch is supposed to be for the church supposed to help the church what happens a lot of times a para church ministry is necessary because the church is not doing their job so we had all these big events pastor mentioned we called them acquire the fire and that's what we wanted kids to acquire the fire of god and i don't think it was because we were so great like we're great at marketer marketing i think it was because people were so dry they're so desperate they see something with a sign of life and they let's go and so then the young adults in churches didn't have a place to get fire so they would come to our our campus for a year for an internship but it was all a substitute because the church should have been doing all this so building the pathway then is like okay yes we want the fire of god yes we want the presence of the holy spirit without a doubt but what if most people like the early church have to get in a group and say let's go this is the path run it the first step second step third we're all doing it together and if somebody misses those wells don't come on get back in here you know what these churches that i've seen that were so refreshing these exponential churches it's like watching an eagle in flight like doing what they were born to do they're like actually taking disciples like in mass lots of them that get saved and like lots of them coming out at the end of the pipeline the other side i mean like end up 20 and 25 years old they're just they've been discipling people watch this if if after you get saved at 13 or 14 after a year you're now you're leading a small group and you're disciplining others so you're in a group being mentored and disciples now you're disciplining others now you've been teaching for six or seven years by the time you get out of university your roots are so deep you're not going anywhere in your faith you're just getting stronger and stronger you don't have to worry about that guy or that girl are you following me here so you're creating a process where i mean you can get out but it's very difficult you got to really want to leave jesus because you've created a a a culture where they love each other they care about each other they're helping each other now some of these guys they're in each other's weddings they graduate from university they're god parents to each other's children they've gone through the worst seasons the most challenging seasons teenage years college years of life together crying with each other praying with each other encouraging each other exhorting holding each other accountable are you following me so it's creating a pathway and so uh somebody has to own that pathway like somebody's gotta like this is my job i'm gonna do that now some churches have developed their own some say well i'm gonna find some off-the-shelf things i was sharing the other day uh that we have developed some and i actually brought some copies here uh just uh as samples it's called pathway to freedom so this is the first four weeks and it's something for youth to do every day in their quiet time for four weeks each week is a different thing the first like when you first get saved what needs to happen and then there's small group um discussion guides at the end of each week there's a video for each week so watch this it's taking the it's like a newborn a newborn comes out of the womb you can't say hey have a good life you know hey just come back hope you can find a bottle somewhere hope you change your diapers change your own diapers you know um you know uh and then um so but you're taking them right out of the you know part of our problem i'm going to try to identify some principle problems you can tell me if it's similar in nigeria or not i've seen it all around the world especially in america is we don't have a paradigm for growth so for example in the military if if you join the military i don't know what the the levels are here in nigeria but the first entry level in america is your private and and then you might become a lieutenant and then a colonel and then a captain and then and keep going up to be a general right and if you're going to spend your whole life like 20 years or 30 years or 40 years in a military career and you retire after 40 years and you're still a private you are a laughingstock what is wrong with you how could you possibly spend all those years and you're still at the entry level because we have a paradigm a paradigm is if you're going to spend your life there you're going to grow in the church we don't have that we have just get saved and go to heaven stay saved go to church so think about it like this i know one pastor of an exponential church introduces a paradigm like this to the new believers right the very beginning using a process of life so for example there are some things that are normal for an infant to do newborns that they just do talk about what those are and then a toddler what they do that is normal for a toddler to do they fall down they stumble they get up and then children things that they do their own they play they do this they do that and then and then teenagers and then young adults and then adults all things that are normal at different stages of life and then he goes back and uses that same metaphor well so you're an infant right now you're a newborn in christ this is what will be normal for you to go through and then as a uh as a toddler these are some things you might stumble in and fall you might you've got to get back up you've got to learn how to walk and as a child as a teenager all the different things that would happen along the way you take more responsibility for your own growth for your own food like if you're 13 years old and you're still pooping your pants there's a problem are you following me if you're like 25 years old and you don't eat a meal unless your mom makes it for you there's a problem people like well if i don't have a perfect sermon i'm not going to that church what is wrong with you you get your own food go kill your own meat you know cook it you know and you still need to feed yourself but quit being such a spoiled little brat so what he does is kind of helps them see the different process of spiritual maturity just like the process of life and then he asks them to self-identify so where do you think you are well you see we're just saying well of course they know their newborn they just came to the lord but you just planted a seed in their mind but i don't want to stay there how do i get to here how do i get to here how do i get to here are you following me so when we create a paradigm of growth it creates hunger for that growth so this is the person that kind of owns that and whether it's getting things off the shelf as i mentioned the first four weeks and then this is the first trimester and this is called how in jesus impacts every part of my life for the first 12 weeks and again it's something every day in their quiet time we're working on it so people can do it online as well the point is not about that it's about it's it's a it's a real plan so then there's trimester two and trimester three we're already developing trimester five and six and seven and then there's leadership trimester so we'll talk about that in a second so this person is thinking about the pathway really in coordination with of course senior pastor and leadership being like where what if you could think about it this way if you could pre-engineer what you would want someone to look like as a imitator of christ how what would you want their first year of their walk with the lord the second year the third year it doesn't mean everyone's going to be perfect that way but it at least provides a pathway and then the leaders are trained like this is what this is what we want to do and what we want to train others to do so it's not an a nebulous yeah did you read your bible today did you have a quiet time and this kind of thing and we'll talk about it a little bit but you know um then there's there's measurements along the way how do you measure whether somebody's actually growing in the lord becoming more christ-like and we want to uh uh make sure that we're not turning them into pharisees because if we only use measurements the pharisees use then they'll just act like pharisees and they'll be whitewashed tombs full of dead men's bones so it's very important that uh when you're thinking about the pathway very very important and hopefully we'll get to it that that this becomes normalized now remember we there's two there's two uh rails this the rail for that you have already is like you don't have to force all the adults to do this you don't have to force all the people that have been christians for 20 and 30 years you don't have don't worry about them just let them keep staying on fire the way they are but we're building a new rail here and we're going to teach them a new norm this is what followers of christ do that's what we do we're hungry and we're thirsty and we're we're we're meeting together and we're seeking the lord and we're and we're holding each other accountable and we're in the word every day and oh did you and we're studying the same thing and we're talking about what the lord's speaking to our life this is what we're doing because why we want to put these guys on a hyper growth path this pathway as i mentioned the other day is not like you know hope you get your mind renewed after 40 years well sure after 40 years i still have parts of my mind i need to get renewed but why take so long why not take them on a deep dive that's what the pathway is about and you know the the great thing about uh young people the more intense it is the more they like it so watch this you know um you notice they always send the young people to the front lines of the battle it's always uh they're the most you know willing to take a risk um you notice in in uh tell me this is true for sports here uh in america um coaches they aren't there to counsel their kids and coddle their kids they're there to coach them and make them great players right and so we hear this a lot in america like a youth leader somebody will say we plan this big thing it's going to be awesome god's going to move and my best guy my youth group called me up the day before said i can't come i i got a sports thing i'm playing football or something and and the youth pastor is so frustrated like what this is my best guy and he's not even there and i can't believe it and my counsel as well it's probably because the coach demands more of him so he feels more allegiance to that coach the coach says we're gonna eat nails we're gonna sweat blood and all the team goes yeah you know they're out of their mind but they gotta coach and then they end up going to the championship because the coach pushed them so their allegiance is to the coach because he made them better than what they were are we guilty of asking less out of a young generation than a coach is well what did jesus do he didn't cuddle he said eat my flesh drink my blood he's the only guy i ever knew that had an altar call for people to leave him anybody else want to leave i see that hand i see that hand as the choir sings i'll fly away anybody else want to leave there's 12 left what about you guys you want to leave he like gave an extended altar call for the 12. do you guys want to leave choir's still singing and and peter just said where else could we go you have the words of life you know and there's so many messages in that but we're teaching them that even when there's things that they don't understand because i mean that's a pretty hard thing eat my flesh drink my blood like that'd be hard to swallow right sounds like cannibalism right but peter said you know we don't understand but we do know this you have the words of life you've changed us on the inside and even though i don't understand the words you just spoke i know you're the one to follow so even when i don't understand i'm still gonna follow and you know what they found out this is my body broken for you this is the new covenant if they would have just stuck around everybody else would have found out he was talking about communion going to the cross so we're teaching people to endure and um and it doesn't i'm afraid sometimes what happens if we think we have a little belief in our christian systems if they were really really committed they would stay committed no matter what but they've never been put on a pathway to teach them how to get their roots deep all i know is if i just commit harder next time maybe i'll stick better i'm tired of playing that game wouldn't you rather get them and then get their roots really deep and so it's you know if the devil's gonna try to steal him he's gonna have to work overtime so the next one here is the leadership training job description in the in um uh project 13 task force and these are this is your so part of reaching and discipling that's what we're focusing on reaching and discipline part of discipline is you've got to raise up leaders to do this so you've got to have people that you trust over other people this is what gets a little bit janky sometimes in churches they don't want to trust people with that because they're afraid people are going to take them down the wrong path but there's a wise way to do it so first of all you gotta have leadership training i was listening to dr paul the last few days everything he was teaching was great leadership training in fact i leaned over to him last night i said you know all these young people that are here we are going to need them for what's about to happen to be leaders we need all of them think about this what if all of those young people in that auditorium yesterday last night were leading a small group of ten that'd be like 30 000 people on a pathway of growth hey so you but you but you got to train those because this is what we're doing is we're not a disciple's not somebody who learns a lot a disciple somebody who multiplies themselves dr paul talked about that last night and it's one of the metrics you can use are is somebody really being disabled are they multiplying how do you do that is it magic no you can see if it happens people are meeting with them people are listening to and and so one of the things that we try to do to take some of the uh confusion away because some people might say well what if that leader doesn't know enough to teach well when you provide a pathway of growth they don't have to come up with all the curriculum they're not the one the weight is not on them to figure out what to teach right that's the father of the house like what should be in this to make sure they're developing the way we want and then the leader then is just helping to facilitate them learning that so they're carrying themselves with character they're carrying themselves beyond reproach they're leading in a way that represents the dna well of the house and then when they're meeting with their group they're saying hey what when you read this this week when you read these scriptures that we all read what did the lord speak to you would the lord speak to you what did you pray about the lord convict you of something hey let's pray about that together anybody struggling with anything right now let's pray about it you see we're holding hands we're going through life together are you following me when the believers were meeting together every day talking about the word we're training these leaders how to do this so i was doing a little math dr paul even before you mentioned the uh filling the glory dome with young people so it depends on who you're going after if we go after 13 to 30 years old then we need 5 800 of each age group 5 800 13 year old 5814 year old 15 15 16 17 all the way to 30. you have 410 000 of just 13 to 19 year olds here in abuja if if you're just going over to going for the we can talk about this 13 to 19 years want to fill it with that well then it's about 14 000 of each of that age group both are doable the bigger challenge is when they come rushing the altar and thousands get saved these people that have been trained as leaders got to be ready for them because this is what's happened i could tell you if you counted all the ministries that had all the crusades all over africa and how many people got saved all of africa has been saved about 40 million times because people's hands have gone up again and again and again and again because they're not connected to a process so they're thinking i just want to make sure i got say or i stay saved or i get saved again because i had a few sins and then they're just still babies they're like 30 years old i prayed the prayer but i'm still messing myself so we're going to train these guys literally so watch this just imagine a thing of beauty here the glory domes full and amazing presentation of the gospel people come streaming forward and say i'm just gonna make up a number say 30 000 come forward right because you can hold a lot of people over there right i mean i just thought it's big and so imagine you've got thirty thousand well maybe got three thousand leaders that have been trained between now and that event you know you've been taking through courses maybe going through uh leadership uh training that dr paul's uh put together or you're taking things off the shelf there's all kinds of leadership books out there i wish i would have known about them when i first began becoming a leader because i had to really learn they don't teach you about this and you know bible school and stuff so uh so watch this they come down and then all the leaders come up behind them i know you kind of do this already because ushers and prayer partners and stuff come up right and so but they all have like red shirts or green shirts or whatever kind of shirts or hat or something so everybody can see so after the prayer time pastor says listen we've got something amazing for you because we want you to keep growing and so you set them up with first of all remember we talked about the other day how you present the gospel so it's not just a one-time decision i'm choosing to become a follower of christ tonight's just my first step i got a lot of following that i get to do not have to get to do after this we want to help you keep doing that so you see all these guys with the red shirts on we want you to walk out with them right now and they're going to help you understand the next step so watch this they walk out right you start in their mind at the very beginning this is what we do this is normal we followers so you they go out into the lobby and the guys over here the girls over here and you assimilate them in just groups of ten and maybe they're in the lobby maybe they're in the parking lot it doesn't really matter it's an ad hoc group it's a quick group and it's only like 10 minutes long it's not for a long long time but it's it's just to get them used to and you find out each person's name you get their contact information you introduce yourself and you're teaching in the leadership training what to do to make them feel affinity and connection with you right and then you say listen next week which is what we do we're going to meet we're going to do this every week see this awesome event we just did do you realize we have something awesome like this every week it happens right here at the glory dome oh yeah and we're going to meet we're going to meet each week like the service starts at this time but we want you to come an hour in advance because we're going to meet in a small group before the service starts each week because we care about you growing in the lord getting stronger are you following me so you have the big celebration in fact one of the interesting best practices that we've seen all around the world watch this and uh is that instead of having a youth group meeting this is real important after you start this process never have a youth group i mean don't even call it youth group anymore actually a group the using the group is sort of a it's like a death knell because people grew up in the church they're in the group and then somebody visits well you're new to the group or you're not in the group i was born in this group what are you doing here and so it's it's an anathema so what we do what we've seen churches do over and over again is they'll once they have a big event and we encourage a couple big events a year you don't have to do them every weekend couple big events where you really focus on the harvest right get them in the building and then you follow up and you get them in the building and then you thought that's the process we talked about that's a quiet phase and the public face and the deepening phases that's what happens right after that and the deepening phase you're pulling them in you're taking the first trimester and then you open up to another big event you do a couple big events a year and but what changes is that instead of saying come to youth group you're saying come to church we actually have a youth-oriented service that's part of our main service so watch this pastor matt's ola in moscow russia leads word of life church there and he's about 60 years old he's one of the case studies that we studied he's got the largest protestant church in moscow has 17 different campuses and he changed from having a wednesday night youth group he moved it to a full-blown weekend service so right now he has two services on saturday for youth that are 30 and under and three on sunday for everybody else and he preaches all five services he does he's like 60 years old he's not young he's not cool it doesn't matter they know he loves them that's what matters so watch this um you know those young people that grow up and go off to university and come back the reason they feel like that's not my church that's my parents church because they haven't been sitting under the pastor's ministry so they haven't received from the pastor he's not been involved in shaping them spiritually they don't feel connected whatever that's my parents deal that's their thing dr paul do you know um pastor agu from england who leads rccg there so pastor aguto tells me you know they haven't he leads an rccg church all of the rcc churches in in england and he's got a big church there and he says um ron i mean my kids love the lord but they're not like i was 30 years ago he goes and we're trying to reach we're trying to reach a young generation and we we he he said he goes ron i don't the young generation they're not he said these words to me he goes when they look at our churches they think well that's my parents thing that's not my thing my parents got caught in that and he's one that really began to endear me and help me understand that that that there there's it i i feel like one one of the things you know there's some pluses things that we can really leverage technology for one of the negatives is that now we have everybody that's more committed to the the posse or the uh the people they feel connected to on this that have nothing to do with their culture so where they whereas they might think whatever culture i'm living in that's my parents thing that's what they do i'm a part of the cool guys and we're kind of in the 21st century and we got all this stuff and we're all techno awesome and amazing and like you guys do your thing but we're not gonna do that so what we're doing at the very beginning when people come to christ what what pastor matsuola did is he moved it that's what he said he goes we wanted to send a message to all the youth you're so important you're so valued you get a full-blown weekend service we want to send a message to the adults that we value the young generation so much they're going to get a full-blown weekend worship experience now he preaches this is what's remarkable the same sermon to the youth and to the adults he just uses some different illustrations he doesn't try to address any he might have a little bit different worship band or something up there for them but he's the pastor of the whole church so they love him and so it's a different way of thinking particularly in america where we're we're so used to ice this sounds a little bit crass maybe but um pastors don't love young people they they subcontract their love out to young people to their youth pastor you know what that means subcontract i don't have to love them that's what i pay you for somebody say ow so but it's true so this so we're training these leaders so that at the very beginning they've met with them and then what will happen after that may not be their permanent group of course how can you do that but in the next few days you've got everybody sorting out which leaders which age group who's going to be the best for who and within a few days all those new converts are contacted hey i'm johnny i'm your connect group leader i'm so looking forward to this weekend you're they're texting them you're calling them and hey this coming sunday we're all gonna meet at whatever time an hour before the service and we're gonna sit down we're going to get to know each other we're going to start you on this pathway this is something that you'd give out that very first night we're going to come back and talk about it or you get them to download it on their phone so that hey we're all going to go through this together you're texting each other are we hey what's the lord speaking to you what's the lord speaking to you and so um you're training these leaders i would say ultimately watch this ultimately you'll develop a system to train leaders at first you've got to find the best ones you can that you know have some kind of character because they've proven themselves take them through training take them through leadership training and as well as like the the first trimester of what you're going to be training the young people in right so that when you have the first big event they've already gone through it even though they've been safer while they've kind of refreshed their okay this is what we're gonna this is the path we're gonna walk people down are you following me and then maybe for the second big event you'll need to do the same thing find more leaders kind of ad hoc like that that are around the church that have been around for a while ultimately what you want get a vision for me because we're talking five we're talking strategy for five years 10 years 20 years can you can you can you dream that far ahead ultimately what we want to see is a young person who gets saved at 13 or 14 they go through trimester one and then trimester two on on trimester three they're encouraged why don't you start trimester one of leadership as well so now they're taking two doses of growth before before the service they're meeting with their trimester three after service they're meeting trimester world of leadership are you following me so within a year they've gone through trimester one of leadership and now when you get on year two of doing your big events for all the unsaved that are gonna come streaming in the building you've got people that have just been saved a year they've got some deep roots and you don't have to wait till they're like a rocket scientist to be able to lead right because you've already got the pathway you've got it all written they don't have to preach every week they don't have to come up with sermons all the pathways there you're just helping them to facilitate because a small group is about facilitating relationships and making sure that they're absorbing content that they really are growing and that's a that's a nuanced approach in terms of how do you how do you measure that how do you make sure we can talk about that at another time but um but that's a new answer but so so track with me because i'm not interested in just filling up the glory dorm one time with young people would it be great if it was full of people that have been disciples been through discipline and so and so it was filled when you've got like a hundred thousand young people in small groups before the service and then and after three or four years that's what exactly what could happen and then you don't have enough room so you may have to have a second service for the young generation and then the third are you following me because we the body of christ have been doing events for years and years and years and years but all the trends are still negative so that demands a different approach so let's talk about these epic events so uh somebody's in charge of making sure there's the the marketing side of how do you get people there and then there's the uh implementation like what actually happens at those events now you guys are no stranger to events what i would encourage you to think about is like what's going to make it really unbelievable for a young person in terms of capturing their attention making sure they're engaged they're probably not going to be sitting there with their books open taking notes like those young people were this weekend i was so impressed from the very first night this this week with the conference because they were all taking notes i'm like obviously these people are serious they've been around for a while because if you're just raw off the street you're not doing that you're like what am i even doing here what's happening you know god who what you know like this and the great thing about these big events and maybe you heard me say something about this the other day something about big events that creates an environment of faith and uh we would call it um have you ever have you ever been to a movie before you guys watch movies here right you ever been to a movie at the end of the movie you go and you still think the movie's on or you're like it's dark like what day is it you get in the car it was a car movie when you were you think you're in the movie they call it temporary suspension of reality well when you create a big environment like this where all these young people come in and it's about god and this and they may be atheists may not have anything to do with god we call it temporary suspension of unbelief like i don't really believe this but maybe it's true look at all these people singing to jesus maybe he's real it's like an onion you start taking the layers off until you get right to their heart and the onion layers start peeling off the moment they walk in the building this is for us what what's going on here and so how do you get them there there's a whole you can you can do a there's a whole kind of a marketing strategy that you can implement we did this with our events it was no accident we would show up and there'd be like fifty thousand people or seventy thousand people there or ten thousand or whatever was there because we would we would look at it really clearly and go okay how many churches are in that region and we literally had a call center we would call every single church in america three times a year every one of them some of them hung up on us they didn't they don't want to get their kids on fire and uh but we call them and call them and call them we just bug them and we'd mail stuff to them that's before a lot of email was popular and texting it was for digital marketing and but we would we would kind of do the math so watch this so we would reverse engineer like if we want ten thousand people at this event how many churches are there how many times are we gonna need to call them because we had our own data we have to call this many times before they pick up the phone if they said yes i'm interested we call them back send them some stuff this many more calls before they say they would commit and bring the group this many more calls before they would like actually register are you following me so we reverse engineer if it takes that many calls to get this many people to register how many churches do we need to call how many times are you following me so it's a this is how marketers do it with businesses it's a matter of math so you go i know it sounds on spiritual so unspiritual i hate it when the people of the world are more shrewd than the people of light so if you go well we've got 411 000 13 to 19 year olds in abuja if we want to get let's be conservative let's say let's just say we want 80 000 there okay we don't have to like have overflow room how many times would we have to contact you know they say you need seven exposures in order to buy something you see it you see it you see you find you click on it you buy it whatever so if that's what marketers say if so if we were going to contact seven times not eighty thousand we'd probably need to do like 160 000 just to be safe how would we get to them you start doing that you get some smart people you got a lot of people in church i guarantee you've got a little smart people they could like reverse engineer this and then a lot of guys will do to just to get people in the building because when you create the environment of faith it's sort of like do whatever you have to do get them in the building and then create the environment of faith so people will give things away because kids like free stuff well everybody likes free stuff right but especially young people who don't have much money they really like free stuff so give them something they really really want we have a church right now working on a big event and they're giving away a whole package at disney because disney's in in florida and they're in florida and uh so uh you know for a weekend with you and a friend and you know a guardian or something like that um uh some people are doing crazy things you want to hear some crazy ideas you're going to think he's crazy give a car away what most most of the adults don't even have a car why would we give a car to i don't know it's crazy that's why you want to get people to find somebody that'll donate a car even an old car is awesome for somebody who doesn't have any car who who's not even old enough to drive yet you know like i got a car and i can't drive for three years but i got me a car but you got to be there to get it are you following me you get him in the building now i can tell you story after street let me tell you one youth pastor comes to me and says ron now this guy had been in youth ministry he was really good and he came to be the youth pastor at this church he had probably 150 200 kids in his youth group it's a big church and um his the mom of this kid came the first time uh he was there first week he was there and said this is my 15 year old kid fix him a lot of parents do this basically that's a hey i failed here now you do something with him okay this is not a setup for a good job for a good experience so she says i'll get him here every week but you you get him on fire she's a single 15 year old kid so she'd get him there he's sitting there he hated being there or he didn't want to be there every week and he's a great youth pastor other kids are going to find this kid's ah he just doesn't want anything to do with it right he's just sitting there so watch this came time we were coming through town we did a big event acquire the fire event there's like 13 000 kids came right there's bands and speakers and things like this and he was one of the ones that came he came with the youth group they had like 120 youth come so he's leading the whole group he can't know what every youth is doing so he's got leaders and things like this the next week this kid comes to see him brings all these secular cds and puts him on his desk and says i'm done what what are you talking about he goes i'm done i don't want him anymore he goes what are you talking about he goes well i want to acquire the fire last weekend and jesus changed my life i don't want anything and and so watch this um i i had not preached about give up your music give up satanic listen anything nothing like that but when jesus starts convicting your heart you know you go well i need to clean stuff out right so this kid gets on fire and and the youth pastor said to me ron i did every trick in the book to try to get that kid on fire but there was something happen in that environment of faith that where god grabbed his heart that that was bigger than what just me and my service could do i'm just telling you get them in the building because when you create environment of faith and of course you know your father of this house knows how to create an environment of faith right you create an environment of faith that's what jesus did on the side of the mountain right fish and loaves and you know parables and like wow really i'm going to follow this guy he's creating an environment of face this is what we do get them in the building and so there's all kinds of things you do how do you set a theme what's the program for the evening you know youth's listening span is shorter and shorter so how do we make sure that we're getting it in there i had to go i used to be the guy at our events i would speak at every session and lead all the worship so literally by the end of every event for a weekend i'd do it every single weekend my fourth would be horse i'd preach all the sermons all the leadership sermons all the youth sermons and and lead the worship and little by little i started giving it up let other people do it and um uh i i realized that it i i used to be able to preach for an hour or an hour and a half straight and kids you know they were captive audience low threshold entertainment you know like uh sure but now i realized as it got later and things developed i could only go like 20 or 25 minutes so i better make sure they are potent they are memorable so use lots of visuals things like this you know um if you can put something in front of them that they just that is very difficult to forget and it represents it's kind of like eye candy it represents something in the bible though it's scripture it's a principle that is unforgettable and then finally the last job description here is um is measurements and logistics and so this is something that we talked a little bit about yesterday but this person owns the metrics looks at the spreadsheets we've got four different spreadsheet templates that people use it's some of it is about what's going on in your community so you know what's happening for example do you know how many schools are in abuja how many junior high or middle schools or high schools and universities how many students are each in each one of those how far away from the church are they like just really knowing your area um how many uh unwed mothers that are teenagers or in your community i mean really knowing right so part of it is knowing uh your regions part of it is knowing your yourself uh when i say yourself you as a church now i'll give you some data i'm not sure if this applies here but i'm just going to give you two for example in america for a long time the ruling standard was this if you're how do how to know if you're being successful at youth ministry this is the standard if you have 10 in your youth group everybody calls them youth groups of of your adult attendees that come on sunday you probably have all the youth who belong to the parents that go to your church are you following me if you have less than ten percent you're not even reaching the kids who belong to your parents if you have more than ten percent you're probably reaching outside the church are you following the math there of course in america most aren't even get 10 10 they're like at four percent so a church of like thirty thousand thirty nine thousand and they have a thousand they're usually whoa we're great we're high-fiving no it's not don't high-five about that people say different things a friend of mine who's a pastor in india he loves youth and he goes ron 30 of our church is youth and i'm like that's great that sounds good right except the national data in india is 55 of the nation is youth so he's actually celebrating while he's going backwards you have to look at it all in context right so um we teach about how how to use these templates the the agile this is the agile template and all the uh the agile measurements how to get those measurements how do you make sure like especially once people come to the small groups you're really measuring that carefully if they miss one time you're all over the missed two times i mean i mean every the everybody's swarming around them like okay you got to get back here you got to figure out something's going on in their family something's going on in their life whatever and then uh and then there's the intangible measurements you're trying to like okay i don't want to just mark are they here and did they do the study did they read the scripture did they memorize the verses that could be an indication that good things are going on but there's other things you can do for example i'll just give you a couple examples because you're trying to figure out how do we measure intangibles so maybe every few months you do a little poll in the small groups and you say things like on a scale of one to ten how close do you feel to the people in your group ten is like your best friend one is you're still acquaintance you better know each other name and then you might say as opposed to friends at school and then you do that six months later and you see is it getting better are they feeling closer because they're a little more vulnerable they're praying for each other are you following me because what we're trying to do is give them a posse this is who we're doing life with we're trying to help them be endeared to each other in the journey as they go and so you're trying to find ways to measure that um so i'm gonna i'm gonna wrap it up in just a few minutes here let me just kind of um paint this picture this second rail it doesn't happen you don't flip a switch and all of a sudden you're exponential it really takes 12 months to implement and so these different phases here the quiet phase is probably four to five months it's planning it's putting the pathway together it's putting the leadership training together it's planning for the first big epic event and so you're you're putting that those thoughts together those plans together the strategy and in fact you don't even necessarily make a big deal about it around the whole church yet because we're in the war room we're doing the planning right here we're wrestling with what's the and the this committee uh this subcommittee has got other people working on it and so they're working on the pathway they're working on the epic thing and and then they get run into a barrier that we come back together and we meet we how do we wrestle through those things and how do we make sure the leaders are really gonna develop like we want and so that's all the quiet phase the public phase happens a month maybe two months before the big epic event you announce to the world now all of abuja guess what's happening for the young people of nigeria young people of abuja we've got this big thing happening and before that of course you you share it with the church you start giving them the vision you use change management you don't have to get them to go okay we're all going to join small groups or we're all going to act like we're young you don't have to do that but you can say hey we've got a heart for the young generation how many we got this big event coming up how many would pray for this big event so you let them dip their toe in the water i'm afraid of young people but i can pray for them i don't want them to kill me but i'll pray for them you know people some old people are just afraid of young people right they're afraid they don't know what to say they get awkward and all of that and then maybe you could say how many would also pray but you actually know somebody that's 13 to 19 and you'd pray for them by name lift up your hand write their name down okay we're going to put them all in a prayer board we're going to pray so then they dip the second toe in right how many of you then you you woo them a little bit more how many of you actually have a car and you'd be willing to bring some 13 to 19 year olds to the glory dome on that night like you've got some empty seats you might fill and bring would you be willing to do that because we want to start praying over your car right now and those three empty seats so you left could write that down are you following me here so you're allowing them to get in as deep as they want to get they don't have that if they want to just pray then that's great we don't what we don't want to say is we're becoming a youth church that's not the message we're becoming a church that's going to last for generation after generation after generation we'll become an abraham isaac jacob church that's where we're becoming we got this rail and you guys are awesome but you know what we care about these guys and so we want you to understand so so you get them you announce to them the blitz starts happening all the city you start getting you know your your own social media for whatever the events called you know you get people signing up to follow you use the youth that you have to like and share you have maybe have some contest in advance who's going to bring the most blah blah blah the big thing that you're going to give away and you're getting kind you're using the math that you've developed for the marketing side to make sure people are signing up and they're going to come and you've got buses or people bringing people on that kind of thing you've got it all coordinated it's like it's just like d-day that's what it is baby it's like you got the prayer force you know over you're flying not the air force the prayer force and you know you got the ground troops and you got people bringing the vehicles you got people bringing them by boat whatever like you're we're we're all coordinating here you're following you got the leaders being trained up so they're all ready to be deployed that um that night and then there's the deep impact phase where that starts immediately as i mentioned the big event happens we start going deep and then the next season the first trimester we're all going deep making sure that these are all functioning like they we think they're functioning we are famous for this in the church we do things we deploy things and we never monitor is it doing what we actually think it's doing but we're not going to do that we're going to watch especially the first iteration and then where the the number four is the continuous improvement where we're like figuring out okay how do we how do we make it better for the next iteration of all this so i'm going to um to pause for a second and give you a chance to breathe does anybody have any uh questions or comments we had some good questions the other day about some of this and i just want to i've got a lot more to share here but i'd love to let you process a little bit out loud if there's something you don't understand or i said too quickly or doesn't make sense or you think won't work here in nigeria or something like that i am open to your comments or rebuttals or rebukes or whatever you might have for me anybody ends up going up everywhere maybe you didn't realize he's gonna ask this so let me just take you down the path here just take get a little vision for the future okay so this process happens again and again it'll happen this process will probably happen twice two times a year so you plan you go public you go deep you reinvent and you do a second event a year and you but you have greater impact because now you've already got people in the pipeline that are being discipled and then you're reaching more and then they're going to be discipled the real payoff begins to happen on year three and four and five because now you have so many people in the pipeline you find the sweet spot i told you some countries they found the sweet spot is university age singapore is 13 years old we think in america it's 13 years old something about 13 the reason we called it project 13 is sort of the bar mitzvah age it's sort of like a cha the the i can own my faith for myself i'm not just doing it because my parents are telling me to or i can believe what i want to i have a little bit more freedom of my time what i can do with my time and so um and you know that that kid is going what am i i'm not a kid i'm not a child i'm not an adult what am i i'm a teenager and instead of letting the world define them you know the other thing that we find with with this is the message that the church sends to the whole culture is that we're the guys we everybody knows you are in trouble everybody does there's drugs and there's this and there's that and but nobody knows what to do about it there's this program and that but by and large people don't know so when they hear what dunamis church you guys have something so you become the problem solver for parents who just got teenagers who don't know what in the world to do because now they're connected to all these youth all around the world who are influencing them shaping them their values and so i've just given several different views of what these these growth curves look like here's a here's a better one because this this is actually more accurate because you build one curve builds on the next builds on the next builds on the next until it becomes exponential but of course all these curves represent people so there's more and more people involved at each phase that continue they get involved they're learning to lead what the real magic the real secret starts starts to happen when the 13 or 14 year old gets saved and and then they come out of the leadership training and so now now you've got a regular pipeline of leadership that are growing and you might get to a point where some have done this some start real simple and you can grow more and more sophisticated in your systems how many classes how much training but for example if they if they graduate from the leadership training they don't make them a leader right away they make an apprentice to a leader in a small group and they do that for a trimester or something and then if they have proven themselves then the next time they make them a leader and this is even a more accurate picture here where in between each one of these there's a reinvention process like let's keep making it better one of the things the church has not done well around the world is we haven't reinvented ourselves remember the rate of change is happening so fast we have to keep asking what do we do what do we what can we do better we're measuring against ourselves i'll just i'll just give you a couple ideas say for example you fill up the glory dome and you find and you find that maybe you fill up with 13 to 30 year olds but you find that the sweet sweet sweet spot is 15 years old because how do you find that because everybody that comes they get saved you measure if you find a way to measure how many 30 year olds 29 year olds 28 year old you know who's there right you figure that out this is not hard to do you can do it and then then you see the people that come forward i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna jack with your christian thinking a little bit okay we're trying to find those most likely to come to christ in nigeria right so then you have the altar call people get saved they fill out the card in their small group and you go hmm you find out what's the highest percentage of which age group that came that came to christ are you following me so then you go well if that's 15 we're going after a whole bunch of 15 year olds next time are you following me because that's better investment we're going to find out what really attracts them better roi trying not to get too uh geeked out on you here with numbers but i just feel like we just we do too many things in the name of we'll just do it and the lord's leading us and and i feel like one of one of the challenges we have in the body of christ body of christ in niger is probably the most humble in the any part of the world i would say mostly the american body of christ we don't like to learn from each other we're like well god's just going to speak to me he's giving me my own strength really you know every business every industry in the world they have best practices conferences they send their people to if they can go learn best practice why in the world wouldn't we well god's going to give us a new wheel a wheel that's never been invented really is that the road you want to go down is that the sword you want to die on and i don't think so so the big question is how do you start well the great thing is you all you guys have so much prayer going on here already you've already started and you know one of the one of the biggest challenges i have when i go to a leader of a church as soon as i get back the day after i get back i'm going to the one of the biggest baptist churches in all of america to talk to him about this and he loves young people but a new paradigm is really difficult for leaders to get their mind the biggest challenge i find is getting leaders to buy you already got that and you got lots of prayer going on but there are some things to decide up front are we gonna things like are we gonna use off-the-shelf pathway are we gonna develop it in house leadership training or off the shelf there's several things to um to decide up front to start the pathway identifying who are the five members that'll be a part of that that team that project 13 implementation team and each of those five members will need a team under them so everybody has a place here but i like to think of it like this a blueprint um we call this blueprint for exponential i know it's too small to read here but i actually have a blown up copy of this uh dr paul that i'll give you a big a big one a poster size and it's 12 months that you can see you can we call this blueprint to exponential uh growth and so it maps map uh month one month two month all through month 12. and so you can see okay you wrestle with okay when do we want to have our first date of our first big event when might the second one be so you put those two you plot those on the map of the timeline and then you say okay those are the dates what this is the first date when do we need to recruit the leaders because we need to have them trained when do we need to have the leadership development finished so they can go through that when do we need to have the trimesters the pathway built so that are you following me so we plot each of the five members along this one year implementation line so that it's there's a process to everything that we're doing and so it really is like a different operating system it's the same dna of the house it's just a different way of getting it way down deep inside to a whole bunch of new people any questions now you've had a chance to think about it comments so we talk about this i'm going to close with this and then i'd love for us to pray and then before we end pastor i'd love for us all to be able to take a picture together like with you and i and mrs here and the rest because this is historic moment this is the beginning of d-day right here and i want to i want to remember this moment because we're going to look back in 10 years and go oh my gosh you know there's one pastor in bogota colombia his biggest problem he doesn't have enough space and enough time for enough meetings every weekend because he has so many young people in small groups his biggest problem i showed some of you guys the pictures the other day is that he has three campuses all seat 3000 he fills them up all seven times every sunday and during each service there's a line of young people around the building thousands of the way to get into the next service can you imagine that here can you imagine a few years of glory dome being filled over and over and over and over again on sundays every sunday with a crowd waiting on the outside having small group for the next service and the next service and the next service this is not this is not revival this is sustained revival that's what this is and so i will say this whatever you're doing right now in ministry whatever job you have you have to create margin if you're going to be on one of these teams to help implement this that is margin in your skill and so that you're meeting to what do what we call invent the future if you don't spend time inventing the future and planning for the future and anticipating the future learning to all kinds of tools to help you learn how to look at what are trends that are going to affect you and things like that then the future will make you you can invent the future that you want or the future you think the lord wants you to have as a church or the future will just invent you i think the lord gives us a choice we can do and be involved with what his ultimate desire is for the kingdom or we can just kind of take the easy path if we're going to be those jet-powered surfboats we got to be willing to roll up our sleeves and do the work i know you guys aren't lazy because you got a bachelor's not lazy and you've he's trained you in that way it's just a matter of let's use our energy and our focus to implement a battle plan that'll reach a generation and keep reaching generation after generation because i believe dunamis church will never lose focus on the next generation amen let's pray so father right now we just come to you can we just stand to our feet right now and let's just i know i've said a lot of stuff could we can we just ask the lord just to cement stuff in our own minds and our hearts and re reshape our thinking father right now we lift up our minds and our hearts to you lord i pray for your spirit to infuse everything that i've said that really you want to grab a hold of for them to grab a hold of the lord i just pray in jesus name that we together will be a part of a force of historic proportions lord that history books would write about that would spread around the world as people that took a risk that did something that seemed really unconventional but became legendary lord as a model for the world to follow [Music] we just lift over hands and say lord use these hands touch your lips say lord use these lips to say lord use my life in ways i never anticipated to do something that would bring you ultimate glory in jesus name lord we submit all these plans and ideas to you and we ask you would breathe lord and that we could give you maximum glory not just some glory but maximum glory with our life lord that we could be the best stewards we possibly could be with every breath that we breathe in every year that we live thank you for dr paul and dr becky lord thank you for the anointing on their lives and on this house for them being willing to step out in this direction in faith anoint them give them wisdom as they lead this movement into the next generation in jesus name amen [Applause] [Music] lift your hands and let us worship [Music] is changing and changing [Music] ever true [Music] [Music] oh me [Music] [Music] [Music] father will give you the prayer we give you the honor we give you the adoration we give you the worship we give you the dominion we give you the sovereignty the supremacy blessed be your name all not to your name adoration to your name in jesus christ one more time further let these words translate into action to resolve into practicality lift your voice and let's speak to god powerless is translated into practical actions practical results practical manifestations let these words translate [Music] we give you the honor we give you the adoration be thou glorified in jesus precious amen for me uh what this less instructions from ron has done is to take us all the way back to memory lane all the way back to university days where us we set ourselves on fire and the impact of that fire is global [Music] but this is a shift to the next level as a young man when we're 16 17 18 19 20 21 university undergraduates and those kind we had what you might call a house fellowship but it was more like it's a quality fire group where you will come take scriptures shake on each other it was very that to me was my bible school most of it and then when i mentioned that just now accountability groups it just takes me all the way back and i want to let you know that we have seen a lot of things here but we are god has shown us prophecy revelations visions that in this season we are in is our season of what release recovery replication oh yes that is the announcement for the year 2020 that is a theme so there is a release of fresh fire and youth impact there is a recovery of the things i was just telling you about and then a multiplication a discipleship process a replication process a people multiplication process and nothing stops it we may be having close to maybe um how many of the satellite churches we have in town f city almost a hundred what you will call campuses within abuja alone over 100 some run up to four services a sunday right over some up to two thousand some three thousand some seven thousand within fct alone and i can tell you what we are about to do is going to it's like not the glory dome is a a branch is um a that's what it is among like 100 other campuses within abuja and this is going to be multiplied everywhere oh yes so it is a practical blanketing of this city and the territories beyond what what you call special events maybe every sunday maybe actually every single sunday you know and how many of you see what i'm talking about something is about to glow you know i was telling dr mr nicholson i said when i saw the impact of our worship songs on the youth i was my life again now they sang it with a different meaning than what you heard in church general church people sing on you on you i mean by the time we went on it over and over that was discipleship enough that was discipleship you know out [Music] all of you none of me and then not my will but yours be done and all those kind of those were discipleship by the time and i saw the youth i saw them weeping i saw that in all manner of mood i said wow we are set for something the songs took a diff a new meaning for me when i saw the impact on the children i'm sure you know this is jesus culture in america right they have some form of singing ministry that is that very very highly impactful on youth in some in some measures and now god is not just giving us that now but the word and then every other single thing i saw the talent thing yesterday and the impact of it and how the possibility of his growth something is definitely said to happen the youth in nigeria and africa and the globe shall be rescued and if you believe that along with me lift up your hands unless i appreciate him one more time father we give you the praise we give you the honor we give you the adoration we give you the worship we thank you because of this this season of release and season of recoveries and season of replication multiplication discipleship season where everything will escalate in very unusual dimension exponentially father we give you the praise we give you the honor i will give you the adoration blessed be your name in jesus precious name amen we'll talk uh beyond this on our follow up on the things uh action plan uh going forward we'll have the snapshot now and then we can be true [Music] i thought this [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] and now the lord bless you the lord keep you the lord caused his face to shine upon you the lord be gracious unto you from this day and forevermore in the precious name of jesus father thank you and thank you and thank you in jesus name now for the sake of the fact that we had a youth conference this week and is that i've had it from monday all up till friday i proceed that we should finish it up altogether on sunday and so with that purpose we'll have the thought service dedicated completely for the finishing of the youth convention so we'll do our praise worship with our singing we do our everything in that time so involve your friends and if there is a way in which we can publicize and multiply this that the grand finale for the youth will be tomorrow at the glory dome in the thought service and then we can have how many of you are excited about that i think you should be unexcited in the thought service so you get your your things ready your praise worship things your your your your settings ready and let's have the time in god's presence the lord bless you and the lord keep you cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you from this day and forever and now the grace of our lord jesus the love of god and the fellowship of the spirit he had abandoned us now forever amen and surely his goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives as we dwell in the house of the lord forever and ever amen god bless you have a most wonderful

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Length: 102min 39sec (6159 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021