Kids still do need the Lord

Some of the churches in Eastern North Carolina came together for a pretty bold adventure recently. It started it in the heart of Jacob Meetze, Youth Minister at Piney Grove Church. It grew into the Freedom experience. It attracted over 3,000 kids and saw right at 300 make a surrender of their life to follow Jesus.
The awesomeness of those numbers pales though when you begin to hear some of the individual stories and know what real life transformation took place in some lives.
I had the privilege of guiding one 11 year old who had watched his own father commit suicide just a couple of years ago. Other counselors told stories of kids praying for parents addicted to drugs, asked for help to get out of serious abusive situations and just generally were overcome that some folks actually cared enough about them to sit and talk for a while.
I know the music and the bikes and the skateboarders and the illusions attracted the kids, but what made the real difference was one on one acts of love and compassion.
My genuine prayer is that our churches will get the message that it is not about changing music styles, it is not about more and more youth activity stuff. It boils down to a generation that is intensely in pain and longing for someone to flesh out Jesus.

We all tend to act out our mental images. Sometimes those images are even more powerful in our lives than reality. You know like when we walk past a mirror and realize that outfit we thought made us look so cool just a minute ago now looks like it belongs on someone else, maybe a size or two smaller.
One area in church life that I believe that is going to have to undergo a major mental image change if we are going to survive in a healthy manner into the next decades is the role of the pastor. No matter what current model we may think we are exhibiting, the primary way in which pastors are viewed, both by lay persons and pastors is that of a chaplain. In the Chaplains role the primary focus is on pastoral care to the church family. This is not a bad thing, however it is not the Scriptural base for the primary role of the pastor. Problem is that the Bible does not write our paychecks and let us continue to live on in the parsonage. So we are profoundly influenced as to where we can afford to put our time and energy.
Don't hear me being critical, just hear me saying this is where we are, but we can not afford to stay here. Chaplaincy ministry always bears the mark of decline in the life of the church because it fosters inwardness.
So what do we need to change that image to, the chaplain must become again the pastor/ teacher, leader of Ephesians origin. Building relationships that will transform lives into ministry leaders must come to the top of a pastors priority. Pastors must come to grips with being threatened by others giftedness. The shift must come from seeing "how people can help us" to how we can help them, by empowering them into ministry.
I recently heard one of the speakers on CCN say that a pastor is not the guy who "leads" the church, he is the guy who "speaks God into the lives of empowered leaders"
The number of churches that I go into that have no participation in worship by anyone other than the pastor and maybe a music leader is growing by leaps and bounds and it speaks to impaired leadership not empowered leadership.
So mostly for pastors may I ask this question to get you started on revisiting your own mental image, are you building an audience or empowering people?