DEVOTIONAL FROM PASTOR DAVE MAY 24, 2023

The Rev. Dr. Brad Hyde is one of my very best friends. We were classmates at Emory & Henry College. Brad grew up here at Signal Crest United Methodist Church. He was the speaker at our district clergy meeting this week. He shared with us some of the things he learned while he was working on his doctoral dissertation about congregations where individuals, especially youth and young adults, experience and respond to a call from God into Christian ministry. I wanted to recap his presentation with you, because Signal Crest has been just such a congregation for Brad, and I hope and pray it will continue to be so in the lives of others.

In his doctoral work, he set about to discover what were the best practices of congregations where young people discerned a call to ministry. To try to answer this question, he interviewed hundreds of people—young clergy in our conference, staff members of churches from which significant numbers of people have entered ministry, summer camp staff, conference leadership, and many more. He discovered the following five themes that kept coming up. These are the top five things that congregations do where young people discern a call into Christian ministry.

1. They simply ask the question, “Do you think God is calling you into ministry?” They ask this question, as Rev. Adam Hamilton put it, “early and often.” They ask it when they hand out Bibles to their 3rd graders. They ask it in Confirmation Class. They ask it on mission trips and graduation Sundays. Whenever someone sees someone else in the congregation who might have the gifts for ministry, they simply ask the question.

2. They provide mentoring for their young people. Brad found that 90% of the young adults serving in ministry could point to someone in the congregation they considered to be their spiritual mentor. Maybe it was a pastor, maybe a youth director, maybe a Sunday school teacher or Confirmation mentor or small group leader. Young people who discern a call into ministry usually have someone in their congregation who models faithful and authentic ministry for them.

3. They provide leadership opportunities for youth in the local church. For example, Brad found that 100% of the young adult ministers he interviewed had served as acolytes. Many of them had served on a youth leadership team or on a ministry team. Many of them helped lead worship in a youth praise band or on Youth Sunday. Opportunities to lead in a local church become opportunities to discern a calling to lead a local church.

4. They provide opportunities for youth and young adults to put their faith into action through things like mission trips, short term service projects, and other local outreach opportunities like Mustard Tree and the Firewood ministry.

5. They connect young disciples with the larger church beyond the walls of the local church. This happens through large youth conferences like Resurrection, through the Confirmation retreats and the middle school mission weeks at Camp Lookout, and through occasionally combining with other youth groups like we do for fall retreat.

I am so glad that Drew was also there to hear Brad’s presentation, because we both saw that so many of these five things are already happening at Signal Crest. We are so grateful for all the adults who serve as mentors, officially or unofficially, for our young people. Drew and Rachel both provide leadership and service opportunities for our youth and children, often in cooperation with other churches and area ministries.

But if there’s one area in which we have the most room to grow, maybe it’s in the first one—asking the question. I’ll never forget when I was in high school and my tennis coach asked me out of the blue one day after practice if I had ever considered going into the ministry. I hadn’t breathed a word about it; how did he know? I don’t know. But I do know that apparently he saw something in me, so he said something to me. And I can’t begin to tell you the difference that made.