The church where I had been on staff for five years had hired a new senior pastor a year before. But things for me were about to change drastically. This was just a trial run, and our plan was to begin in earnest after the holidays. I couldn’t believe what God was doing right before our eyes. We invited everyone who had ever come to the Bible study and made a general announcement to the young adults at church. But in time, we decided to start an alternate service for 20-somethings. This is what churches should look like, I thought. So come Sunday morning, a number of young adults with tattoos, various body piercings and neon-dyed hair found their seats in the back of the church, while senior citizens with costume jewelry and lavender rinses in their gray hair sat up in the front, in their time-honored seats. The extra two-and-a half hours of sleep was sufficient motivation to bring most of them to the later service. with full liturgy, geared toward their grandparents. (aimed at people their parents’ age) or a traditional service at 11 a.m. They had two choices: a contemporary service at 8:30 a.m. I became the host pastor while Reese Roper, Five Iron Frenzy’s lyricist and lead singer, led the study.Īs time went by, people from the Bible study became interested in attending our Presbyterian church service. I volunteered the basement of the church, and suddenly I was responsible for a burgeoning 20-something ministry. As the band’s fan base grew, it became apparent that the Bible study needed to move out of an apartment and into a church building. They began a Bible study to which they would invite people who attended their concerts. I introduced myself one Sunday and found out they were involved with a fledgling ska band called Five Iron Frenzy. It began innocently enough with a few 20-year-olds checking out a neighborhood church. This is not unusual, so we had a 40-something group and a 30-something group.īut then an odd thing happened: younger singles started coming to church. I landed a position as a singles ministry director in a traditional Presbyterian church in the Capitol Hill District called Corona.ĭuring the first year of my tenure it became painfully obvious that in order to have an effective singles ministry, we would have to divide the group by age. When my wife and I arrived in Colorado and I was enrolled in seminary, I began looking for a part-time job in a church. It is my hope that this article (taken from my book) not only encourages people to dive in but also prompts others to take care of those who have. Nothing could be more inspiring, invigorating and fulfilling. God is at work today, same as He has always been, preparing the hearts and minds of young people all over the world for the ride of their lives-if they will only give themselves to Jesus. God was at work in our small, humble community, and I had the pleasure of watching. She didn’t know whether to “wish it, or say it, or pray it,” since she had never done anything like that before. Friday thought Melanie was “being an emotional girl,” but it got her thinking about the new friends she had made and their faith in Jesus.Ī few days later, after thinking about it for some time, Friday decided to ask God to make Himself real to her, too. Melanie was crying for Friday she felt deeply that God wanted to touch her life. One night, after watching a movie with a few others, she got a call at home from one of the girls from the church. She didn’t grow up with any religious background, but the way people at Scum loved her drew her relentlessly to Jesus. She was a waitress at an all-night restaurant our group would go to after Bible study on Monday nights. Normally she wore black nail polish, black clothes, whitish make-up and dyed-black hair with purple bangs. One of the first women to come to Scum of the Earth went by the name Friday because she looked like Wednesday from The Addams Family.
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