Joining Brian this week on the podcast is Greg Stier. Greg is the founder and CEO of Dare 2 Share Ministries and is passionate about seeing every student, everywhere, hearing the gospel from a friend. In this episode, Brian and Greg talk about some reasons why students don’t share their faith and some resources to help equip them to do so.
Reasons Why Students Don’t Share their Faith:
- Fear of losing social equity and impact – Mentioning Jesus raises the potential to lose friends and followers.
- Fear of being considered extremists – Sharing their faith could marginalize them because of political and social stigmas.
- They don’t know how to bring it up or explain it well – A lack of gospel fluency, urgency and strategy.
What We as Leaders can do to Equip our Teens to Overcome these Hinderances:
Don’t start with training, start with inspiring. “The way to the brain is through the ribcage. Grab the heart and the brain will follow.” We need to break our students’ hearts for the gospel. First, is to pray for them.
To inspire them:
“We don’t really have a how-to problem with evangelism we have a want-to problem.”
Help them face some realities in order for them to understand the urgent need for the gospel in their peers’ lives. For example, explain the hopelessness caused by the pain of a fatherless society and a literal Hell awaiting the unsaved.
God’ responsibility is to save, our responsibility is to share, and their responsibility to believe. We need to do our part.
Don’t use fire and brimstone tactics all the time. Just enough for teens to understand the urgency, for them to be burdened for people.
We cannot motivate our teens to act on what we ourselves do not believe in. If they don’t see their youth leaders being motivated, why should they be motivated? Teach by example.
Sharing the gospel is a privilege and honor that we need to embrace.
Practical tools:
- App – “Dare2Share” free, video-based evangelism training tool: How to share your faith, in a way that will engage and not enrage.
- App – “Life in 6 words:” evangelistic app produced with Propaganda using spoken word. It asks people to choose 6 words to describe their life, giving 14 to choose from. Then ask them why they chose those words to hear their story. Listen and then lead the conversation to how the Bible describes life in six words (in accordance to the app and Propaganda’s spoken word). This is the most effective tool Greg has used. It is also available in Spanish: “vida en 6 palabras”
- Event – Dare 2 Share Live: A simulcast evangelism training event designed for the satellite sites. Consists of both satellite and in-person interaction with their worship band and MC or trainer. It energizes teens, equips them, and involves them in the process right away. This year it will be Oct 13, with 95 satellite sites currently (praying for 100 + satellite sites). Learn more or join at Dare2sharelive.org
Teens need to be equipped to share the gospel where ever they go. Not all teens come to us, so we need to go to them.
Wrap Up:
Really start praying for the lost. “Intercessory prayer is vastly underrated in the evangelistic process.”
Dare 2 Share’s process is Prayer, Care, and Share: When students pray for the lost, they begin to see the lost everywhere. This prayer ensures that their fuel comes from the Holy Spirit, who is “the biggest thing we have in our outreach budget.” The Holy Spirit has the power to give us boldness to preach the gospel with clarity and boldness, and for our students to do the same.
Further Resources:
Read More: “Gospelize Your Youth Ministry” by Greg Stier Buy it HERE
Episode 10 of the Multiply! podcast has more resources from the Dare to Share website.