Tag Archives: discipleship

Programming Like Jesus

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We did a guest post over at Churchm.ag you should check out. Here is a link to the full post and below is a snippet:

During my days as a Computer Engineering student in my undergrad, I struggled with the idea of how to use my gifts for the glory of God. This career seemed like a far cry from the holy office of being a pastor or the humbling life of serving as a missionary to African orphans. Of course, I planned to give a generous portion of my healthy salary to the local Church, but I wanted to utilize my gifts directly for Him.

I actually found a few fun ways of turning code into references of Scripture. My favorite is the 1 Thessalonians 5:17 C++ code and posted in my programming lab. while(true) { cout << “Pray. “; }

While fun to be creative, it did little to benefit God’s people and Kingdom.

How can I program like Jesus?

Code With Integrity

I know a lot of programmers that love the coding life. Wake up at 11AM, write some code till noon, play XBox 360 for 3 hours, program til 6PM, and then bill the client for 8 hours of work. The greed behind these actions do not reflect the love of Christ and if found out, you could lose the respect from friends and clients.

Youth Ministry and Coding

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We did a guest post over at Churchm.ag you should check out. Here is a link to the full post and below is a snippet:

Some of the best Christian business practices in youth ministry do not make someone money at all. We can be creating new products while teaching teenagers how to develop skills and not making any money off what is created. One of the ways we have done this at seventy8productions is teaching teenagers how to program in creating actual products. Teenagers can learn how to learn great program concepts for business models, learn useful skills, and they may able to use them to make money in college and maybe actually create careers out of these interactions. Yet, the products themselves will never ask ago for sale.

This school year, we have been interacting with a couple of students on how to write WordPress plugins. It started with coming up with a strategy, then teaching him PHP and MySQL instructions, and finally showing them the WordPress framework. We gave them a WordPress plugin request, showed them the details of what we wanted, and asked them to come up with it. Obviously this is a time-intensive process as we need to field their questions, guild them as we go along, and allow them to figure out the programming dilemmas themselves that we could spot a mile away. But eventually they contributed amazing material and we came away with some amazing stuff.

Here is the process we went through:

  1. Plugin Request: Create a youth ministry games WordPress plugin that allows registered people to submit games for review by administrators. All accepted games will be displayed to everyone via a browse link, top 100, and that will be searchable in the future.
  2. Viable Structure: We needed to thoroughly construct the database elements, how the WordPress admin will look, and what kinds of ways we will want to filter the games.
  3. Execution of Code: We started with creating the databases with all of the elements. From there, we created the administration aspect, including how to approval/disapprove game submissions, edit the, and delete some. Then we created the user display and added the proper filters to sort through a possibly huge database.
  4. Wishlist: When finished with the base product, we came up with five items that we would like to see in the 2.0 version. Should we ever revisit it, these will be the aspects we focus on later.

Links of the Week

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Good Moms Seem to Help Poor Kids Become Healthy Adults
Poor children are more likely to become unhealthy adults — vulnerable to infection and disease — than kids from higher-income families, according to a new study. However, the study findings revealed, some disadvantaged children grow up into healthy adults. Their secret: a nurturing and attentive mother.

5 Ways to Communicate with Parents
It is so important to communicate with parents. Here are 5 ways to communicate with parents.

Lifeguards and Parents
Lifeguards have a duty to save children in the ocean. But are parents upholding their responsibility as discipleship leaders?

“Not My Kid” – Parental Delusions
Teens are getting into a lot of different things, yet parents are denying that their children are not the ones doing it.

Based on Perceived Beauty
Statistics on perceived beauty.

Rethinking Discipleship : Relational Discipleship

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Over the past three weeks, I have shared a how-to for “Writing A WordPress Plugin” series with readers who are curious on who to approach creating something for their website. While it is fun being creative and using both sides of my brain for this task, the real project served a much different purpose. The past two months, I have met up with a student from my youth group, teaching him how to program this WordPress plugin.

The past year has been hard for him. He has had to make some decisions that were contrary to what his mother wanted him to make and he stood up for what he believed was right. Because of this, he has lived on his own and struggling through school. So I kicked up a relationship with and found out that he wants to go get a degree in programming to make video games. My undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering has since come in handy.

While he is probably loving the new skills that I am teaching him, in the back of my mind are the questions that I want to ask:

  • How is school going?
  • Have you talked to your mom lately?
  • What’s going on this weekend?
  • Anything tough going on right now?
  • Need to vent about anything?
  • Are you getting enough sleep and eating three square meals?
  • How are you doing to get into that college?

So, I hope that these skills get him into college or get him a job on campus or simply get him a free meal at McDonald’s while I teach him a bit about making a WordPress. There is no “spiritual” talk or have you read the Bible now. Instead, I am building the relationship with him, hearing his heart on some of the probing questions, and just hanging out with him.

So how do you approach relational discipleship?

Avoiding Cookie-Cutter Discipleship

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Yesterday, we posted the idea of rethinking discipleship and how Jesus saw it. Today, we wanted to share what led us to this decision and why cookie-cutter discipleship can cause youth ministries to fail to go deep.

We assumed students would relate. Youth ministry is running well at USAFA Club Beyond. We are impacting a lost group of military teens and sharing life with everyone. The problem came when we added new volunteers to specifically do discipleship with teens that wanted to go deep but who had never interacted with students. The concept of discipleship itself is not wrong so there is nothing to change with that. It is all about the delivery. We need to foster relationships with these volunteers before the students even know they want to be in a discipleship.

Getting rid of the cookie-cutter volunteer model. In many circles, setting up a discipleship looks the same way. The equation:

Find a willing volunteer + training + willing student + going deeper + living life together= discipleship

Four-fifths of that is beautiful. The part of the equation we are rethinking is the living life together. We do not want anything to seem fake, artificial or forced. Unfortunately for volunteers and leaders, it means a longer and deeper commitment on their part.

Tomorrow I will share with you our first draft of the plan and would love to get your comments.

Rethinking Discipleship

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A couple of weeks ago USAFA Club Beyond had our last monthly volunteer training for the school year and we processed the year. One thing that came out is that the “cookie cutter” model of discipleship will not work at our youth group. So this week we will take a look at how we can reform discipleship to fit our mold.

The first step we took was to look at how Jesus did discipleship. These are a few of the passages we pulled out.

  • Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life- he cannot be my disciple”
  • Luke 14:27 “And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”
  • Luke 14:33 “In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.”
  • John 8:31 “If you hold to my teachings, you are really my disciples”
  • John 13:34-35 “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this, all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
  • John 15:8 “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

What other Scripture do you hold on to for your discipleship program?

Slowing Down

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Last Saturday, I had a meeting with all of my volunteers serving at the Air Force Academy Club Beyond youth group, whether that is the discipleship program or our large group and small group settings. This is the first time that everyone has been together for a meeting and it was exciting to see everyone enjoying themselves, sharing stories about ministry, and praying for each other.

The only agenda that I had for the volunteers was to make that hour and a half time together to be one of rest and refreshment. We are half way through the school year, life has happened, and I know that they could use the time to just enjoy some fellowship together.

I opened the night talking about Henri Nouwen, a person whose end of life was devoted to slowing down. Just weeks before he passed away from a heart attack, Henri Nouwen wrote a book called Adam, God’s Beloved, about the death of his friend Adam Arnett, a severely handicapped young man from his Daybreak Community who could not speak, or even move without assistance. Gripped by frequent seizures, he spent his life in obscurity and yet for Henri Nouwen he became ‘my friend, my teacher and my guide’: it was Adam who led him to a new understanding of his Christian faith and what it means to be Beloved of God. In Adam, God’s Beloved, Henri Nouwen has found a new way to tell God’s story and the story of all human creatures, broken and yet beloved, who live in a world charged and alive with the mystery of the incarnation. It becomes a poignant and precious gift.

The next hour was followed by food, friendship, laughter, heart-warming and heart-breaking stories, and simple community. It was what they needed, it was what I needed and I feel God was in that place refreshing our souls and inspiring us into the second half of the year.

The Action

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The Action

At Discipleship

We want to provide very specific goals for the students to get to know these 5 people’s stories.  The reasoning behind this is we hope that through this process they will begin to develop a heart for them and thus will naturally share Jesus.

  • The 1 person they know DO know Jesus, find out their story, how they accepted Jesus, where they worship, and any basics of what they believe.
  • The 2 people they know DO NOT know Jesus, find out why they are not Christians.  Do they not like Christians or God?  Have they just not heard about Jesus or do they believe in something else?  Find out their story.
  • The 2 people they are unsure what they believe, find out what they believe.

During the discipleship tier, we will be walking along-side the students, checking up on their process. Here are some great questions to ask:

  • Who are the 5 people on your list? How do you know them?
  • Have you talked to any of the people? If so, what did they say?  If not, why not?
  • So you have had a conversation (whether positive or not).  What went well?  What could you do better?  Where do we go from here?

2-2-1 Evangelism

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2-2-1 Evangelism

This month at USAFA Club Beyond, we have had a huge focus on discipleship as we have begun our Discipleship program. The disciple-teachers have been trained, their disciples paired up with them, and next week will be the first week that they will start meeting!

One of the aspects that is also launching with this discipleship program and the lesson at our main youth group and small group meetings is the topic of evangelism. What is it, why is it important, where and when can we do it, and how can anyone, and specifically teenagers, do this? As we have looked at all three tiers of ministry at USAFA Club Beyond, we have been able to put together a strategy for this evangelism topic, specifically called 2-2-1 Evangelism.

Through the rest of this week, I will share with you guys what this strategy looks like, the reasoning behind much of it, and the different levels of implementation through our ministry. I look forward to your comments and questions as we go forward in this unknown.

Beyond Club : Discipleship

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I know what you are thinking, “Jeremy, you messed up the title. Isn”t it suppose to be Club Beyond: Discipleship?” Actually, I did not mess up. Youth for Christ – Military is starting to clearly define two different components of our ministry: Club Beyond and Beyond Club. The first, Club Beyond, is our outreach program. That includes dodgeball tournaments, going paintballing, and even service projects. But in the last several years, we have noticed that there is a very clear ministry of in-reach with Bible studies, small groups, student leadership, and ministry beyond high school. We have come to define that as Beyond Club.

United States Air Force Academy Club Beyond (or USAFA Club Beyond) is actually rooted in the Beyond Club ministry, running a high school and middle school club that looks more like a Bible study, a Sunday small group, and now we are adding a discipleship program. January 15th, we had a three hour training session to look at what discipleship could be, how Jesus did discipleship, and how we as disciple-teachers can learn to be active listeners with the students.

Along with the training, I required that all of the volunteers read 99 Thoughts on Leading Well by Reza Zadeh. Here is a quick excerpt that speaks to where I am at in my faith and ministry:

93. Get people together – and send them out.
The old adage “strength in numbers” rings true in ministry. Think about what would happen if you got a handful of trained leaders together from your ministry and commisssioned them to go out and find ways to spread the good news of Jesus, either in word or deed. When people serve alongside at least one other person, their work is multiplied. Unite a couple of passionate Christians together, and their potential is limitless. Be kingdom-minded and send people out together into the community to spread the good news of Jesus. (p. 93 of 99 Thoughts on Leading Well)

Please continue to pray for these students, volunteers, and this ministry, that God may be clearly visible, present to their needs, and received by many students.