Philippians 2:20-22, 1 & 2 Timothy, Mark 6:8

Consequently Timothy had great impact on the present church.

Teach young people to start today.

Early in my youth ministry at Abundant Life church in Bradford, I introduced three simple but effective principles. At that point we had less than 20 young people in church. After 15 years in youth ministry in the same local church I am only now realising how powerful these are.

1. Every young person needs to get involved in church on Sunday.

My goal was to help every young person not just attend a youth service, but to love being involved on Sunday with the whole church family. Our youth ministry met on Fridays, so we encouraged our young people to plug into Sunday church.

2. To have every young person serving in the life of church.

Rather than have attendees, we worked hard to find the skill of each young person and plugged them into any area we could. We quickly found we didn't have enough opportunities for some of these young people, so as leaders we got busy creating some.

We created room for extra musicians and singers. Space was made at the back of the auditorium for young people to stand next to adults who were running the sound and lights. They joined the stewarding teams, counted offerings and began to park cars. Some began to Mc meetings and bring the verbals and be presenters on church news. Others started to make TV programmes and run cameras.

Occasionally, a young person would emerge who lacked confidence and had no idea of where to serve. So one of our awesome loving youth workers would kick in and buddy them on the welcome team to greet people on the door as they entered the church building. I remember a youth team meeting where somehow we invented a ministry of watching people's cars while they were in church. I can't remember who suggested it, but I remember how excited the young teenagers were as Sunday rolled around and they were on the car park telling everybody where to park, they loved it!

3. Teach young people to have a giving lifestyle.

What if young people gave their friendship, their time and their finance to further God's work? Living to give I call it. Tithes and offerings are a part of this too. I believe that youth ministries funded by young people to reach people will have an outstanding quality of endurance and effectiveness.

I could go on all day about some of the individual young people who 15 years ago started with some of these basic principles and are now doing incredible things in life. They are people I greatly respect and have the privilege of still working alongside some of them nearly every day.

I wonder what church could become if every young person could do these three simple things this week!

In closing, if you forget everything else, remember this. The future depends on you taking your place today. God is depending on you...young people and their families are depending on you.