Gospelize is the old English word for evangelize. It just sounds cooler.
Years ago, Dare 2 Share funded a research project that revealed seven key principles that were an essential part of the most successful Gospel Advancing youth ministries. For the purposes of the survey, we defined “success” as having at least 25% new conversion growth, meaning that a quarter of the group’s annual growth was from new believers coming to faith.
We cross-checked these seven values with a thousand pastors and youth leaders from 10 regions across the United States and were given a resounding thumbs-up. I then cross-checked these values with the New Testament and was shocked at how prevalent each of them was in the early Church. Eight years ago, I wrote a book called Gospelize Your Youth Ministry, based on these seven values. Just a few months ago, I updated it with more insights and global stories of implementation. You can download the book for free here.
But even before you read the book, let me give you a brief glimpse into these seven key principles. None of them is earth-shaking. All of them are biblically obvious. But sadly, most of them are not being relentlessly implemented by the typical youth ministry.
Here are the seven values of a Gospel Advancing (“Gospelized”) youth group:
1. Intercessory Prayer Fuels It.
In 1 Timothy 2:1, Paul told his young protégé Timothy:
I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede on their behalf…
In doing so, Paul was giving Timothy the most important key to building a Gospel Advancing culture in the church of Ephesus, where Timothy was leading at the time. In essence, he’s telling Timothy that “before we talk to others about God, we must talk to God about others.”
If we want our teenagers to reach their friends for God, we must train them to talk to God about it. Our research project demonstrated clearly that the teens who reached their peers for Christ prayed for their salvation.
I urge you, therefore, to first of all make intercessory prayer a top priority for your youth ministry. Why? Because God desires everyone, including teenagers, to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:3-4).
2. Relational Evangelism Drives It.
From our research, it was clear that teenagers who were equipped to reach their friends were far more likely to actually reach them. This seems obvious, but it’s surprising to me how few Christian adults, let alone teenagers, know how to effectively share the Gospel.
To start, teenagers need the answers to three questions:
- Why should I share the Gospel? (Gospel urgency)
- What is the Gospel? (Gospel fluency)
- How do I share the Gospel? (Gospel strategy)
