Heart-Heavy: Settling for Lesser Gods (2)

When I read Galatians 4:8-20, it is easy for me to replace a pleading Paul with a youth worker and the struggling Galatians with students in a youth ministry. That comparison is what this series is all about.

Here's the section we'll tackle with this post:

“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? (4:8-9)”

The plea Paul makes to the Galatian Christians becomes our plea to our students: “Remain with the One, True God! Resist the enticement of lesser gods!”

Our culture is full of lesser gods. And our hearts are heavy when our students turn away from God, whom they have come to know and, more importantly, who knows them, and return to unworthy objects of worship. One of the great challenges of youth ministry is setting before our students a vision of God and the God-life that is expansive enough to make lesser gods seem worthless and undesirable. However, instead of making more expansive, we often limit.

We limit when we stress the moment of conversion to the neglect of the journey of discipleship.

We limit when we too narrowly define what is spiritual in contrast to what is secular. 

We limit when we talk about good Christian behavior, but not about bold kingdom living.

So let’s be more expansive! Being a Christian is not about making one big decision. It’s about making a million little ones. I was reminded of this recently while watching an interview my friend Robbie Mackenzie conducted with Scot McKnight. McKnight is fed up with a thinned gospel which tells people that they're safe once they make an initial commitment to Jesus. Instead, we should be teaching our students that "Jesus wants all of them, all of the time, forever." Jesus is not just Savior, He is Lord. Jesus is not just Messiah, He is King. Jesus doesn’t want a one-time commitment—he wants a lifetime of discipleship.

Let’s be more expansive! Our students see full-time ministry as the only spiritual profession while everyone else in church has a secular job. Instead, they should come to see, in the words of (the increasingly controversial) Rob Bell, that “everything is spiritual.” Young people should know that whatever they do in life, they can do it in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him (Colossians 3:17).

Let’s be more expansive! Our students don’t just want to know how to behave correctly; they want to know where they can serve boldly. Here I go again with Scot McKnight. Listen to what he says in another interview: “The next generation, the next Christians, are looking for a place where they can serve, and not a place where they have to sit and be quiet and watch old people do everything. They’re looking for a place where they can find fellowship and immediately participate in what goes on in that church. They’re looking for service. They’re looking for a wholistic understanding of ministry.”

The plea we make to our students is, “Remain with the One, True God! Resist the enticement of lesser gods!” Expanding our vision of God and the God-life can prevent our students from enslaving themselves to lesser gods.