Growing Youth Ministry in a Pandemic

all right uh with me here is jerome who is one of our pastors in training someone i've known for many years now and uh yeah i'm forever grateful to god to have known this man he shared the gospel with me he made it clear to me he read the bible with me he discipled me and most importantly he introduced crc and anyway that's a story for another time so uh jerome is going to join here to talk about youth youth ministry in crc so before all that jerome i know you're a busy man you are involved in various ministries and you have your own family you care for as well so first question is how's life been for you okay well thanks sam for uh let me just say something about your introduction because i think one of the sweetest things in our church life together is that many of us were changed and converted during our younger years right when we were in university or maybe even youth you know some of you and um we get to serve jesus together for so many years and i think it has been what 11 years if we're part of the same church more than 11 years i mean you're you're an elder and i'm certainly the pastor so it's a great joy brother that we can do this together so i'm glad that we can actually have this conversation in interaction okay to answer your question um how's my family doing and everything well family is doing great i am glad that i can have some opportunity to be at home to be part of my son's life in raising him as a dad i think you know the natural temptation and tendency is to kind of just allow the mom to do most of the nurturing but with me being at home it's important to exercise some male leadership and to be an example for my son so i'm glad that we could do that so overall as a family we are growing well we are looking for ways to serve the lord together uh even during this pandemic time yeah you're involved in uh youth ministry and um tell us more about you know your experience with crcu and uh why do you think uh it's such an important uh mission field uh in our church yeah um so i've been part of the youth ministry since the beginning of last year 2020 and it has been an interesting time because when we started we were trying to do things when things were still physical when we could meet and we had programs we had ideas and then when the mco hit i mean that just literally threw everything out the window and we had to rethink our strategy and the way we want to do youth ministry and part of the challenge is that things are still developing because as we're getting to know the youth a bit better and interacting with them the use themselves are starting to change you know i think a lot of them are still trying to figure out how they're supposed to interact um online via zoom you know how how they're supposed to learn from looking at a screen all day long what does it mean to interact with my friends on zoom you know and what what has become of that quite sadly is that many youths are now not really interacting much like even during our youth program i mean most of the kids are shy they turn off their cameras and even when there's opportunity to chat guess what they'll do they'll type right they have their cameras off and they'll rather type instead of turn on their cameras and actually talk so the way you interact with zoom uh is very different from the way adults will interact like how we're doing right now you know i suppose it's because they still like the maturity to understand what it means to have a social interaction via a medium microscope and so we're constantly thinking of creative ways on how to engage our youth and on saturdays what we try to preserve though is the heartbeat of our ministry which is that when kids come to our mainstream they can expect to know who god is know who christ is from the scriptures because our greatest desire is for them to become genuine disciples young genuine disciples who love the lord jesus with all their hearts so we have a program where we get them into the scriptures where we train them for ministry and give them opportunities to interact with each other i think part of you know being a christian as well is is loving one another and serving one another just as much as they are learning about the scriptures so we are training them to to be men and women of god who would faithfully serve this church so we're starting them young so youths coming to our yuca history well they don't expect that but they can grow to learn to love them as they keep coming to learn what it means to love god you know i mean i resonate you know there's a lot there's a huge challenge involved in trying to get youths to you know tune into whatever that's on offer especially when it comes to knowing god online right because you have all the gadgets and devices and the mco really uh it's it really disrupted everything ever since last year and you know when i think about youth and then i think about how i think the way you describe them uh it's it's almost as if it's a different generation compared to ours so when i think of it you know i'm pretty youthful as well and i'm and i'm thinking i'm not i'm not going to join you definitely so what's what's the age range of someone who attends crcu yeah the age range is from 13 to 17 but occasionally we have a few 18 year olds who will join us at some point we would encourage them to move on to ttg1 but because some of them are very unfamiliar with the scriptures and the christianity [Music] what we have in youth group helps them a bit better so they do join and stay with us for maybe a few weeks for a few months but at some point we will definitely transition them to gtg one so 13 to 17 sometimes [Music] so we're talking about 13 to 17 sometimes 18 and those are primes building years right i do remember those times when i saw a lot of things i'm exposed to a whole lot of things in the world can be good can be bad yeah i think that's that's an important age range and uh trajectories right the key is trajectory so you know where they start off from and then where they kind of end up right when you either start off well and then and they're not bad in a tough situation or you start them off well and then they'll be mature disciples even at a young age i mean we have some youths who were trained in our youth ministry and now when they're campus students university students you know instead of wandering and trying to figure out their faith they can actually be very effective in ministry and they're bearing fruit in evangelism and they're helping their peers know who crisis so having a strong robust youth ministry will impact university ministry and and so on and so forth yeah yeah and what you say is significant uh especially the fact that uh you and i have kid well we both have a kid right now um it feels weird right like we know each other as kids and now we have our own and it gives me and it gives us this burden right we need to pastor um our respective kid okay you have a son i'm a daughter so in in what ways can the church be involved in supporting this ministry i know it's definitely not just your work right it's i have this feeling where it's it's a corporate there's a corporate nature to how crcu is gonna succeed yeah yeah i mean the the primary uh disciples of every youth should be and ought to be their parents but there is a place for youth ministry right because these kids need to meet other kids who are christians as well and it's important for them to learn from a pastor and other youth leaders you know to hear from besides their parents that there are other christians in the world other adults in the world who are also striving to live faithfully for jesus so uh youth ministry is crucial it's important so one of the things that i would ask the church is to always have you know children's ministry and youth ministry to be in their mind and to prayerfully think of us and support us so pray for the youth leaders pray for the youth that would be great and another thing that the church could do to be part of this ministry is to invite more youth to come because i do believe that we have a good program going over the past year we've seen many of the kids grow in their faith and it'll be sad if you know what we have been doing and working hard every week to deliver to these kids are only given to about 20 of them we wish that we could be more like we hope that they'll be you know 50 100 kids that come to crcu so that they can learn the gospel and be converted and serve jesus with their lives so i would encourage the church to support this ministry in fact it's not so much about supporting this ministry but supporting the cause of christ in the great division through youth ministry so use what we have in our church i think we've got a great program learning so use our youth ministry invite youth that you know and pray for them pray for us that's what i say thanks jerome uh anyway guys uh that's it from jerome and myself so i hope uh we continue to work hard to support youth ministry in crc yeah thanks

Channel: Christ Evangelical Reformed Church | CERC Malaysia

Views: 112

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Keywords: cerc, cerc malaysia, christ, evangelical, reformed, church

Id: 92jLuQ5E5Lw

Length: 9min 56sec (596 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 23 2021