See You At The Pole has been around more than 25 years now and deserves thoughtful consideration - does this still work? Is it still a good idea? I recently read an article from back in 2008 that strongly said "no, it's outlived its usefulness." I have encouraged students to participate in See You At The Pole for the last twenty years and I recently had to ask myself, why am I still doing that? Here are five reasons why I think it still matters.
See You At The Pole, when done well, helps our students to remember several important things - 1) The body of Christ is bigger than our own congregation/denomination. We don't often encourage our students to do anything with believers from other churches, but when students pray with students from other churches in their community, it's a reminder that they are not the only believers in their school - they need that encouragement! It's a reminder to students that the family of God is bigger than they realized in their own community, let alone the world. And there's a lot of learning, growing, encouragement, and kingdom work that can come from that! 2) We live in a big world and God cares about that world. We generally do "God stuff" with our students at church, unless it's a mission trip where we go somewhere else, but what about the world right around us? I believe See You At The Pole is valuable because it reminds us that the world is bigger than our own little bubble. Our community, let alone the world, is bigger than our own four walls. There are people out there not connected with our church or any church and God cares about them! At one time, the church was the center of our communities. Over time, schools have taken the place of the church as the center of community - just go to a Friday night football game or a spring musical. Praying at school matters because that's where the people are and it's a reminder that our faith is not meant to be kept to ourselves. We are blessed by God to be a blessing to others. See You At The Pole should be a reminder to students to love and serve those we are praying for. 3) God loves the people around them and He wants to show His love through them. By attending public school, students are surrounded by others with different beliefs, attitudes, convictions - and that's a good thing. What a great place to apply the commands of Jesus such as "Love your neighbor", "be salt and light", "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" (paraphrased). It's easy to be a Christian at church. Anyone can do that. But if students can be like Jesus at school, that's a good indication that their faith is genuine. See You At The Pole should be a reminder that God's love for them is meant to be shared, it's meant to be given away! Students should be encouraged to pray for their fellow students at SYATP and follow that up with loving, serving, and blessing them, especially those who are different from them. 4) We can't separate the sacred and the secular. In 1 Corinthians 10:31 Paul says "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God" (NIV). I believe we have a tendency to compartmentalize spiritual activities and "other" activities. But we shouldn't - EVERYTHING we do should be done for God's glory including academics, sports, friendships, leadership, music, art, language, etc! When students pray at their flagpoles, it should be a reminder that everything they do it that school building has spiritual importance (just as much as at Church) and should be done to the glory of God. 5) It illustrates publicly something we desperately need But why do kids have to stand outside the school around a flagpole? Why is a public display necessary? Well, we certainly can do a lot of praying privately behind closed doors. However, I don't remember a time when people were more desperate for answers for the confusion, fear, and turmoil in our world today. Things in our country and around the world have gotten pretty crazy to say the least. I think that the public display of humble, quiet prayer gives people a glimpse of hope in the midst of the multiplicity of tragedies we've seen in recent years. What are people supposed to do in these times? I think teenagers in our country need to see with their own eyes people who have a source of hope that's bigger than the problems we face. In years past we used to use phrases like "take a stand for Christ", "be bold about your faith", "set your school on fire" and so on when we talked about See You At The Pole. While these were helpful at that time, I think some better ways of expressing it now might be "show God's love to your school", "be a blessing because God has blessed you", "don't just tell, but BE good news in your school". However we encourage it, I believe that students who follow Jesus still need concrete, tangible ways to help them remember that following Jesus is an all-the-time, everywhere kind of thing. We take Him with us wherever we go, even to school. For that reason I'll keep encouraging students to go to See You At The Pole.
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Last week, I had the privilege to challenge over 300 teenagers to make this coming school year a 9 month mission trip. Here's the essence of what I shared with them:
1) Your school is a mission field - every public school is filled with students who need to hear the Gospel. There are 26 million teenagers in America, the majority of whom are enrolled in public schools and are unchurched - that's a huge mission field! 2) You are the best person to reach that mission field - no one can reach teenagers like other teenagers. No one else speaks the language, knows the culture, or has the street cred to share the Gospel with students who don't know Christ. If you are a Christian student in a school, God wants to use you there! 3) You don't have to do it alone - Students who want to share Christ in their schools have help! They aren't alone. In 1984 Ronald Reagan signed a law called the Equal Access Act which allows Christian students to meet on campus and to use the resources of the campus the way that other clubs do if the group is student initiated and student led. And that means Christian students can work together easily to share God's love in their schools. And it's more fun that way. 4) It can actually be fun! I shared with students in the workshop many examples of students in the Pittsburgh region who've done fun, creative things to share God's love in their schools. Things like making a spaghetti dinner for the football team, a pizza party for the basketball team, a Christmas party for the band, an after-concert party for the choir, and much more! When students find creative ways to serve their fellow students, it can actually be a blast! And by serving they break through some of the barriers that keep students away from God. A new school year is coming school, or as we like to call it a new 9 Month Mission Trip. Please help us challenge more students to serve God in their schools this coming year. Visit our instagram or our website (www.9monthmissiontrip.com) for encouragement or more ideas. 1) We have a great diversity of churches here - everything from the mega/cutting edge church to the small town community church can be found here. We've got urban churches, hipster churches, rural farming community churches, and churches of every theological stripe within a hundred mile radius. 2) We have a rich history of youth ministry innovation here - Fellowship of Christian Athletes had its beginnings in Pittsburgh, Young Life has been here since its beginnings and gave birth to the Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation which has given birth to leadership foundations in other cities. The oldest youth ministry network in country, the Pittsburgh Kids Network, was born from that same legacy. The Silver Ring Thing (nation-wide purity ministry) was also born here. 3) We have strong youth ministry networks here - youth pastors in Pittsburgh and all around the city love to connect with each other. There are 8 youth ministry networks functioning around the region currently in connection with the National Network of Youth Ministries. 4) We have active campus ministry organizations here - Youth For Christ, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Young Life, Youth Alive, and Teens For Christ all have a strong presence on high school campuses around the region and are reaching students far from God in creative ways. 5) We have beautiful camping facilities - when it comes to summer camps, fall retreats, and winter weekends, there are a lot of options (at least 12 that we know of) for helping your students get away and get with God. 6) The activities are endless - amusement parks, water parks, bowling, paintball, mini golf, skiing, rock climbing, obstacle courses, and much more is all here and very affordable. 7) The concert / music scene is better than ever - some years ago Pittsburgh was a blackhole of Christian music, but no longer thanks to Generation Exodus, Winter Jam, WORD FM, and KLOVE. Chris Tomlin, Casting Crowns, TobyMac, Skillet, Hillsong United, the Newsboys, Lecrae, Tenth Avenue North, and others have filled our concert venues here for the last several years. 8) We've got excellent service project / short term mission organizations - we have amazing organizations that will help your students serve the community in creative ways like Urban Impact, The Pittsburgh Project, Light of Life Rescue Mission, World Vision Pittsburgh, The Dream Center, Living Ministry, YWAM Pittsburgh, and more. 9) We have a ton of other great resources to help your ministry - there are excellent local bands, several highly recommended professional Christian counselors, talented local speakers, and some awesome t-shirt/graphic design guys in this area. 10) We have the Steelers, Pirates, and Penguins! And if that's not enough, we have Primanti Brothers, Quaker Steak & Lube, and pizza places out the wazoo! So if you're not here already, consider coming to Pittsburgh to do youth ministry! BTW, that's my son Micah in the picture above at the water steps on the north shore. A good bit, though not enough, has been written about youth pastors serving as a resource to public schools (here’s a recent article by Adam McLane). But I believe that public schools are a great resource to youth pastors.
Generally, a youth pastor’s top priority is to help the students in their churches learn to follow Jesus. But the fact is that your students spend five days a week, seven or more hours a day, 180 days a year at school – at least five times as many hours as they spend at church. School, not church, is the environment they spend the most time in. Becoming followers of Jesus must include following Him all that time they spend at school. But that’s not a bad thing. Here’s why: 1. If your students can live their faith at school, that’s great evidence that their faith is genuine. Scripture speaks a lot about the testing of our faith. In fact, it’s been said that an untested faith is no faith at all. As we all know, anybody can be a Christian at church – that’s easy. But school forces students to decide every day to honor God, or not. School is second only to home as an indicator of how real a student’s faith is. 2. If your students can serve God in their schools, they’ll be able to do it anywhere. We all know Jesus’ pattern for the growth of the church in Acts 1:8 – “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Your students’ schools are their Jerusalem! Whatever God has in store for the rest of their life, nothing will prepare them better than being a witness right now right where they are. In fact, if they can do ministry in that environment, they’ll be ready to go anywhere God sends them! According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 90% of American kids go to public school. This fact alone makes public schools a great mission field for your students. 3. If they face challenge of living and sharing their faith at school, they will feel the need of what you teach them at youth group. As Greg Stier points out, evangelism fuels and creates a hunger for discipleship - “…challenging our teens to take the risk of evangelism can lead to the reward of our teens growing deeper in their faith faster than we could have ever imagined. Evangelism, especially among one’s friends, makes you desperately dependent on God’s Spirit. And it is this dependency which produces spiritual growth (John 15:1-8.).” I believe Jesus sent his disciples on short term mission trips for this very reason. They came back wanting to learn more! Obviously, public school is not the right place for all students, but I believe that encouraging your students in school to live their faith there is one of the greatest ways to apply everything you teach them. Here are just a few practical ideas to help them live out their faith. • Carry their Bible to school (a great conversation starter) • Sit with the kid at lunch who is always alone • Ask their friends, “How can I pray for you?” • Pray over their food at lunch time • Start a campus ministry (a great way to develop their leadership skills) • Lead outreaches on campus Do you want to make sure your students are following Jesus after they leave your youth ministry? Public schools give you a chance to help them follow Jesus when you aren’t around right now. We've heard the mantra of 'separation of church and state' for so long that we often think there's nothing we can do to make a difference. In fact, there's a lot we can and should do!
Prayer Ideas 1. Organize prayer walks at local schools (www.reviveprayerwalk.org) 2. Pray as you drive near/through school zones (www.prayerzonepartners.com) 3. Start a Moms in Touch prayer group (www.momsintouch.org) 4. Make sure Christian students know about See You At The Pole (www.syatp.com) 5. Adopt a School (www.everyschool.com) 6. Claim Your Campus (www.claimyourcampus.com) 7. Copy pages out of a school's yearbook and ask adults in your church to pray for a page. 8. Dedicate a bulletin board in your church to encouraging prayer for schools. 9. Create prayer magnets to remind people to remember schools in their prayers. 10. Plan a commissioning service at your church to pray over, encourage, and support Christian teenagers in your church as “missionaries” to their schools. Outreach Ideas 11. Encourage Christian students you know to start a Christian Club, prayer group, FCA, Youth Alive, Club 121, or First Priority Club at their school (www.gocampus.org, www.catchthis.net, www.campusmissions.org, www.fca.org, www.fpoa.org). 12. Buy resources to help students have a successful See You At The Pole event (www.syatp.com) 13. Buy Bibles, Gospels of John, tracts, etc. for Christian students to distribute at school (www.ibsdirect.com, www.pocketpower.com, www.bookofhope.com, www.atstracts.org). 14. Buy tickets to Christian concerts that students can give out to friends at school. (www.genexconcerts.com – western PA only) 15. Buy pizzas for the Christian club at a local school to do an outreach to their friends. 16. Help bring school assembly programs to local schools (there are many out there sponsored by Christian ministries – www.feelthepower.org, www.reachyourcity.com, www.thesevenproject.com, www.sevenfaith.com). 17. Encourage Christian students you know to participate in Fields of Faith outreach event (www.fieldsoffaith.com) 18. Encourage Christian students you know participate in MBA day on January 22 (www.teensforchrist.org/mba.aspx). 19. Equip Christian teenagers with knowledge of their legal rights on the public school campus (www.aclj.org). 20. Become a mentor to a teenager (www.mentoryouth.com) in your church or in your community. Serving Ideas 21. Join your school district's PTA group. 22. Organize parent meetings on a regular basis to pray for schools, communicate prayer needs, resource needs, and volunteer needs. 23. Meet with school administrators and ask about ways to volunteer. 24. Run for election on the School Board. Ideas for Youth Pastors 25. Make an appointment to meet with principals, guidance counselors. Ask them what help they need. 26. Work with other youth pastors to bring school assembly programs to schools. 27. Become an assistant coach for a sports team. 28. Do the Campus Checkup your students and other youth groups. (www.everyschool.com) 29. Sponsor an evangelism and/or campus ministry training event with other youth pastors in your community. 30. Connect with other youth pastors in your community to share ideas, create a common strategy, etc. If you have other ideas about what adults can do, please comment below. To download a PDF version of these ideas, please go to www.teensforchrist.org. |
WHO I AM
I'm a follower of Jesus, husband to my lovely wife Judy, father of Evangelina, Micah, Josiah, and Jeremiah, missionary to the northeast United States and advocate for all things youth ministry. WHAT I DO
I am the northeast regional coordinator for the National Network of Youth Ministries. I've worked for the last 24 years as the co-executive director of Teens For Christ, a ministry that equips teenagers to share their faith in their schools. I also served on staff at Cherry Tree Alliance Church for 15 years as youth pastor and family life pastor. My Websites
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