“Teaching Young People To Teach The Lost”
Jesus told His disciples to,”Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19). All of Jesus’ last statements before His ascension had to do with saving souls (Matt. 28:18-20; Mark 16:15-16; Luke 24:46-49; Acts 1:7-8). The apostles were charged to preach this message throughout the world. Young Timothy was charged to carry this message of Good News (2 Tim. 4:1-2). The question is, was this charge only given to adults? Are we to wait until we are adults to learn how to teach our friends the gospel of Jesus Christ? I don’t think that any would say this is the case. Then what are we doing about teaching our young people to teach the lost?
Good habits must start early in life. The last generation has not been well trained in evangelism. Much of the training came late, and the habit of soul winning was unnatural to them. We have a new Youth Minister now and one of the things we want and expect Brother Ahren to do is to incorporate evangelistic training in our teenage classes. This will go a long way in curing the problem of no-evangelistic churches.
Great materials for personal evangelism are numerous and available. Open Bible type studies can be taught and will serve the dual purpose of teaching our young sound Biblical principles while giving them the arsenal needed to tell their friends of Jesus and answer their questions. Training of the young in these areas is not new, but has been overlooked by most of us. Too much of the material being taught to our youth is selfish in nature. It centers on their problems almost exclusively. But to make ourselves feel better, we sometimes take them on field trips to clean up someone’s yard, work at the youth camp, or help a widow in some way, but it still doesn’t fill the greatest need – TO WIN SOULS TO CHRIST! We cannot wait until they are in their thirties to get them involved.
There is no greater thrill than hearing the confessing of Jesus Christ as Savior by one with whom you have been studying. We should not rob our teenagers of that thrill. Training them now and building their zeal to win souls will be a great benefit to them and the church. The Lord could not be praised more than by our young and old alike teaching others and winning souls for Him. So let us all along with Ahren, teach our young to be evangelistic in their daily lives.
Submitted by Gary Culbreath