For years if you were to ever ask me, "What is your youth group about?" Or "What can I expect when my kid graduates from your youth group?" I would've answered something like, "They're going to be fired up for God!" Or "They're going to love God and love people." But the real question I was challenged with was: "What does that REALLY look like?" and how can I really measure that?" For years we would measure by numbers.

And this is the most annoying question among youth pastors. The question of numbers. It would gi like this: "Hey great to meet you, how many kids you got?" And you'd hear, "50" or "100" or "300!" Then we'd be encouraged or discouraged depending on where we were at. So, as Chris challenged me  he taught me to start with the end in mind asking: "What do you want your kids to look like when they graduate?"

So I sat down with some paper and a pen, and I prayed. I began to write down everything I would hope for them to be when they graduate. I wrote things like: "Loves Jesus, reads their Bible, obeys and honors their parents...know how to share their testimony, connected to the church, bold, stands for purity, obedient to God, knows how to pray, able to lead others, not religious, loving, not afraid of the real world, strong convictions, and a few more things like that. After I looked at all of these things I felt God give me two words that represented that: Culture Changer.

I was so excited. I began to bombard ALL of my leaders and students with the idea of raising up Culture Changers.

"What is your youth group about?" For the first time in years, every leader and every student began to have the same answer, "Raising Culture Changers."

Then I was challenged to start from the end and work backwards. What does this look like? How do we get them to become culture changers? To start, everything needed to be done on purpose and for this purpose and God gave me the process. Step one: we wanted them to come out to our Wednesday night outreach service where with dynamic worship, powerful preaching, fun games and real connection we would introduce kids to the GOSPEL. Once they started coming to Wednesday nights we encouraged them to take the next step... join a small group on sunday. We called it GROW. Once they were involved in a small group we then wanted to challenge them to be apart of some of our outreaches, such as community projects, helping other ministries like our Children's classes, homeless outreach and more. We called this the GO stage. Basically, being involved in sharing God's love OUTSIDE of church. Then the last stage to becoming a Culture Changer was to GIVE. Once they started helping out in the GO stage, we invited them to a stage of leadership we call GIVE. Here we taught them to mentor other youth and get involved on our youth leadership! This was a game changer. 

For the first time I didn't measure growth VERTICALLY, but now I measured it HORIZONTALLY! Who cares if I had 500 kids Wednesday night if only 40 of those kids are in small groups? Who cares if I have 40 kids in small groups, when only 5 are helping outside of church? The goal is not to say "Hey look how many kids we have" but instead to be able to ask, "Am I reaching my purpose of raising CULTURE CHANGERS?".

One of Jesus' last words were "Go out and make disciples." I knew people who gave out pizza every week and attracted hundreds of kids, but wondered why so many kids would bail on their faith when the 1st big trial came along.  So this is my mandate from God. My calling... to Raise Culture Changers. Young people that are, "In this world, but NOT of this world." Young people that will go into the Culture and not be changed by the culture, but instead LEAD and change the culture. Young people that would stop being THERMOMETERS, and become THERMOSTATS! You see, thermometers are changed by the atmosphere they are in, thermostats set the atmosphere wherever they are!

I'll end with a quote from one of my mentors when asked about how to measure church growth:

"It's not about how many seats you can FILL, it's about how many seats you can EMPTY! " -Sean Smith  

They are empty because they were filled, made disciples and now they are SENT out to be the SALT and LIGHT in this dark world. We need young people that will write and produce the next MOVIES in Hollywood that are BIBLICALLY correct. Young people that will write fresh songs that will touch God's heart. Young people that will reach the UNREACHABLE, to LOVE the UNLOVABLE. We don't need more CELEBRITIES, we need a generation to arise that are HEROES and I call them Culture Changers.

Thank you Pastor Chris Harrell for being my friend, and for speaking into my life. Most all, for being a Culture Changer. 

Blessings,

    Chris