Enter Iron Man 2 – easily one of the most anticipated sequels of all time. I know I was ready for it during the closing credits of the first one, and now Tony Stark is way back and way badder than ever.

Yes, cool gadgets – sarcastic banter -megaexplosions and effects abound and create a Wal-Mart of eye candy, and just like the first time, I would just about give my right arm to suit up and dominate the evil dudes in Iron Man fashion.

Obviously that is not going to happen, but there is an armored suit available to Christians that in many ways provides the same protection and weaponry, one that lights up the spiritual world like Stark in a village full of terrorists. Here is the description of the conflict we face and the incredible “suit” you have hanging up in the closet of your soul:

A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.

Therefore, put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm. Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of God’s righteousness. For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News so that you will be fully prepared. In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil. Put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere (Ephesians 6:10-18).

The war that Paul describes here is not against earthly terrorists, communists, or anything that is flesh and blood. This conflict is in the spiritual arena – and it is definitely not for the weak or the wimpy. Every day the unseen forces of Satan and his army are arrayed against you. They are firing off the missiles of deception, discouragement, temptation, and opposition, so you’ll give up the battle and your calling from the Captain of our Salvation: Jesus Christ.

But let me tell you as one who is stationed on the field of battle in Northern Kentucky, that suiting up and engaging the enemy is more exciting than any movie I’ve ever seen.

Don’t believe me? Then I triple dog dare you to take your armor for a test run this week. And to make sure that you are properly fitted, let me walk you through the steps that Paul gave us:

First, put on the belt of truth – which means speaking/ living truthfully and with integrity.

Next, position the breastplate of righteousness – which is living in obedience to God’s will and Word because He has completely forgiven you.

Don’t forget the boots of readiness – which is a willingness to share the gospel message with anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Raise up the shield of faith – which is hiding behind the promises of God when Satan sends a onslaught of lies and temptations your way.

Protect your mind with the helmet of salvation – which is a constant remembrance that the penalty and power of sin is broken in your life , so don’t believe the negative messages from the Devil that you are guilty and worthless.

Finally, be sure and draw the sword of the Spirit – which is God’s Word. Along with prayer, this is your offensive weapon to strike the heart of the enemy with incredible force. So powerful in fact, that this is the result:

We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).

Picture an army of believers who are protected with the very armor of God and armed with His living Word. God uses this mighty force to stop spiritual terrorism and start a revolution for His Cause – making disciples who make disciples!

As a strong believer of the bible, I believe that we are wired to live life in our community, and I believe that there are biblical one anothers that we must fulfill. One of those one anothers, being to love one another and to be there for one another. That being said, I do not want this blog post to have the result of “oh poor pitiful Ryan”, and I do not need text messages and e-mails and phone calls from people asking me to talk about this. I’ll take your support, and I would love your prayers; that is all I want and that is all I expect from you.

So to start, the last two weeks have been hell for me. Last Monday I received a phone call from my mother at 8:30 am. If you know me, to call me before noon, the world must be ending. And with the news that this phone call brought, my world seemed like it was ending. My mom informed me that my parents were splitting up. No warning, no signs, just a separation that will eventually end in a divorce. It was a gut wrenching call because my mom was hysterical. I hope none of you ever have to take a call where you feel so helpless and so shocked and so upset because there is really nothing you can do to make the other person feel better. Saying “everything is going to be alright” sounds so cliché because after the last 25 years of marriage, to split, everything is not going to be alright.

Sure down the road life goes on and moves on. You rediscover who you are as a person and you learn that there is life outside of your spouse. But those facts don’t help today; they didn’t help a week ago. I said a prayer with my mom over the phone; hung up, and just reflected on the past, shocked at the news I was just told. Life goes on…

So I spent the week reflecting, keeping myself busy working on the Youth Foundation and hanging out with close friends whom I talked things out with. Christina and I spoke often on the subject and reflected as well. I imagined I could keep this bottled up by just releasing the steam every so often to close friends I know I could talk to. That attempt has failed today.

Today I got news that a friend of mine from Thomas More College, was killed in action in Afghanistan. I haven’t seen him in 5 years but, as I’ve stated to many people before, one death brings back so many memories of people before him. I really miss my friend that died many years ago. I keep thinking to myself that I’m over it, that I’ve moved on, that I can deal with losing someone so close to me at such a young age, but I’m not there yet. And every death of a friend since, I am reminded of that. He’s the reason I do ministry. He’s the reason I counsel people. He’s the reason I am who I am.

The third part of my troubles is that my very good friend is moving in June. Although I do not know where he is moving to, he isn’t sure yet either, it could be a very far distance away and seeing him will be very difficult. I’ve had plenty of come and go relationships and we always end by saying “we’ll stay in touch” or “we’ll still see each other” but that never comes to fruition. It’s very sad to be losing such a great friend, but I know that the opportunity he is going to will be such a great thing for him. Just with all of these other difficult things ongoing in my life, it’s difficult to imagine not having him to turn to when I need a friend.

So, I guess you can consider this my cry for help. Not as drastic as most but, I need your help. I need your prayers. I need your prayers for my family, for my parents, for my sister who is up north and isn’t here during this family changing time. I need you, to be a friend to me because as we know… life goes on, and time will continue to turn. My birthday is in a week and I don’t see much to be celebrating. But, because I have great friends like you, I’ll make it through this troubled time. I appreciate you, I appreciate your friendship and because God doesn’t give someone more than they can handle, I know, I’ll only become stronger because of these experiences.

With Love,

Ryan

A lot of people have asked me over the last two years why I do what I do. Why I go and do ministry at NKU, why I write this blog, why I minister to kids in City Heights. Why do I do all of this without getting paid… My question is always, if I don’t do this, who will?

Did you know, that in 2007*, in our three NKY Counties of Boone, Campbell and Kenton, that over 6,000 kids were affected in a negative way by adults. Did you know that 1,731 kids were victims of neglect, 593 were victims of physical abuse, 211 were victims of sexual abuse. Over 3,000 kids were charged with offenses! And all these numbers are higher than previous years.

What are we as a community doing to make this better? What can we do? These questions are what keep me going. These questions are what keep the 10 Board of Directors for the Northern Kentucky Youth Foundation passionate about making a difference in this community.

Perhaps the hardest hit during this time of economic crunch are the young people, who often lack after school supervision and cannot afford extracurricular activities. This combination can create victims of peer pressure; a slippery slope often leading to drugs, violence, crime and even loneliness.

We are making a difference one young person at a time. Words cannot express the amount of gratitude I feel for all those that have helped and continued to help make what goals we had, become reality. The Northern Kentucky Youth Foundation is launching this Monday because of all of you. I may have orchestrated this, but you made my dreams, reality.

A letter is going out on Monday to over 2,000 individuals and businesses in Northern Kentucky to ask for donations to this wonderful cause. Together, as a community we must work at bringing our numbers of neglect, abuse and criminal activity lower than they ever have been before. Together, we must work to look after our young people; they are our responsibility.

For the full letter, to make a donation, to get involved or to sign up for the NKY Youth Foundation mailing list please visit: http://www.nkyyouth.org.

Here’s to the future,

Ryan Courtade

*For the full statistics package visit: http://www.nkyyouth.org/media/Statistics_Final.pdf

Do you know this word? The dictionary defines it as:

“An event that brings terrible loss, lasting distress, or severe affliction; a disaster” (www.dictionary.com)

As you know, the earthquake in Haiti was a calamity.  A catastrophe of nature that is responsible for death toll numbers that are beyond shocking and impossible to get our minds and hearts around.  The images coming from the already impoverished nation crush our spirits and even disorient the foundations of our worldviews.

But…having our worldviews disoriented is not always a bad thing.  Calamities change our perspective and drop us to our knees.  Disasters refocus our priorities and more clearly define our vision for life.  The earthquake and subsequent loss of life, disease and homelessness should at the front of our prayer line, and most of all, we beg God to empower the gospel to go forth and bring millions into His Kingdom.

I would encourage one more thing…

Remember that calamity is always a possibility coming our way.  It’s easy to feel safe when you don’t live near a fault line or along the hurricane belt, but trust me…that feeling is a false sense of security.  Disaster can strike anytime, anywhere, and as someone once said, “Nobody gets out of life alive.” That should cause us to think about issues more important than physical disasters.

That is why the Bible is abounding in warnings about a spiritual calamity, including a very clear admonition from Jesus Christ:

“The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him” (John 3:35-36).

Another version of the Bible phrases that last sentence this way:

“All he experiences of God is darkness, and an angry darkness at that.”

Jesus is crystal clear in His warning of imminent calamity for those who haven’t trusted in Him as Savior.  The original word for “judgment” actually means “punishment,” which is why life without Jesus Christ really is a repeated cycle of “angry darkness” from the God of the universe.

Am I trying to scare you?  Yes!  God’s wrath is something we all should be afraid of, but there is great news for those who have trusted Christ for forgiveness:

“Because God’s children are human beings – made of flesh and blood – the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying” (Hebrews 2:14-15, NLT).

The Bible makes it clear that God loves us, but because He is holy, His righteous anger against sin rests on those who refuse to accept the free gift of salvation that cost Jesus His life.  But what amazing news that believers are “set free” from the “fear of dying”!

In reality, you can divide the entire human race into two parties and two destinies.  There are those who have humbled themselves before God and realized they can’t be good enough to please God and enter heaven. They have kneeled at the foot of the Cross of Jesus and trusted Him alone for salvation.

Their destiny is forgiveness, restoration, and paradise.

Then there are those who run from God, even though His presence is seen and felt as clearly as a hot sun in mid-July.  They refuse to let go of their pride, because they have placed themselves on the throne of their lives.

Their destiny is calamity, despair, and punishment.

Ironic, isn’t it, that it takes a heart-wrenching catastrophe to wake us up to the real nature of life on this fallen planet?  Even more ironic is the fact that many Christians are more willing to jump on a plane and fly to Haiti than they are to bring up the gospel and the question of eternal destinations with their friends.

Pray for Haiti and give till it hurts, but let this horrible tragedy remind you that there are spiritual earthquakes happening everyday in the lives of your friends who don’t know Jesus.  You are the relief worker called by God to share the gospel and rescue them from God’s wrath.

Are you ready for the rescue mission?

FarmVille!

If you don’t own a farm yet, you probably know at least a few folks who are completely addicted to the latest Facebook crack and trying to persuade you to be their “neighbor” so they don’t feel like a loser.

Of course the million dollar question in my mind is…

Did Old MacDonald have a FarmVille? Ee – i – ee – i – NO!

I guess I get the attraction: anxiously awaiting your prized pumpkins to sprout in real time and passionately seeking out the golden chicken so you can shame your friends…but seriously, if you really want to work on a farm and make real money, maybe try a trip to Kansas or Iowa?

Perhaps there is something else fascinating about planting a seed and seeing what happens – especially knowing that growth will equate with profit.

Did you know that Jesus was a “farmer” too? Facebook wasn’t around in His day, but He still planted seeds:

He went back to teaching by the sea. A crowd built up to such a great size that he had to get into an offshore boat, using the boat as a pulpit as the people pushed to the water’s edge. He taught by using stories, many stories.

“Listen. What do you make of this? A farmer planted seed. As he scattered the seed, some of it fell on the road and birds ate it. Some fell in the gravel; it sprouted quickly but didn’t put down roots, so when the sun came up, it withered just as quickly. Some fell in the weeds; as it came up, it was strangled among the weeds and nothing came of it. Some fell on good earth and came up with a flourish, producing a harvest exceeding his wildest dreams.

“Are you listening to this? Really listening?”

When they were off by themselves, those who were close to him, along with the Twelve, asked about the stories. He told them,

“The farmer plants the Word. Some people are like the seed that falls on the hardened soil of the road. No sooner do they hear the Word than Satan snatches away what has been planted in them.

“And some are like the seed that lands in the gravel. When they first hear the Word, they respond with great enthusiasm. But there is such shallow soil of character that when the emotions wear off and some difficulty arrives, there is nothing to show for it.

“The seed cast in the weeds represents the ones who hear the kingdom news but are overwhelmed with worries about all the things they have to do and all the things they want to get. The stress strangles what they heard, and nothing comes of it.

“But the seed planted in the good earth represents those who hear the Word, embrace it, and produce a harvest beyond their wildest dreams” (Mark 4:1-12; 14-20).

Interestingly enough, Jesus uses a FarmVille illustration for what impact the words of the Bible have on people.  What He is saying is that everyone’s soul is just like a plot of soil, and when the good news about Jesus and His death on the cross enters their ears, that message is planted – and the result of the news on that person becomes evident in real time.

Result One: The amazing idea that this person can be freed of guilt and sin and find eternal salvation by trusting Christ doesn’t even make it past the first day, because Satan uses doubt, fear, and lies to steal away the message.

Result Two: This person trusts Christ and gets excited about serving Him, but the first time they are ridiculed or come to the realization that being a Christian is costly, the seed of the gospel withers away.

Result Three: Being a Christian sounds like a great idea to this person, but soon the message that they can be free of their shallow, materialistic culture is choked out by the attractive weeds of media, music, and friends.

Result Four: This person allows the message of Jesus to grow from the core of their soul.  The rocky soil is broken up, the weeds are pulled, and life is never the same in their spiritual FarmVille.

I bet if I asked you about your plot on FarmVille, you’d have an immediate answer.  But let me ask you a more important question…how is your spiritual soil? Are you rife with plant life or dry as the Saharan desert?  And imagine this – what if everyone was as excited and motivated to tell others about the gospel as they are about FarmVille?  Ironic, isn’t it, that we want neighbors in a game, but we sometimes don’t care about the people who may or may not be our neighbors in heaven.

So the next time you’re plantin’ and harvestin’ your crops, remember that there is a much more important activity going on.  This one doesn’t get you coins, but it does “produce a harvest beyond wildest dreams.”

Get involved in the spreading the seed of the gospel in the lives of the teens you know. You will reap amazing rewards from the growth of those seeds!

If you didn’t know, the tales of this incredible detective’s adventures have been around for over 120 years.  Way, waaaay before your grandparents were born, super sleuth Sherlock Holmes was on the case, mystifying folks with his incredible intellectual prowess and bringing the bad guys down to Chinatown.

Now in 2009, he hits the big screen with not only brains, but also mad, Chuck-Norris skills that he uses to bring an extra slice of beat-down on his adversaries.

Isn’t there a bit of Sherlock Holmes in all of us?  Think about it – shows like CSI, House, heck even Blue’s Clues (we just figured out Blue’s clues!) captivate us by getting our brains humming to see if we can solve the mystery before the characters.

(Well, maybe not Blue’s Clues… Not that I *cough cough* watch it or anything… But you get my point, right?)

So in the grand tradition of Sherlock Holmes and the satisfaction of solving mysteries that feel like a splinter in your mind, I present to you the grandest mystery of all… one that involves tragedy and triumph, action and adventure, and most importantly, life and death.

The game is afoot!

We find our first clue in a conversation that took place thousands of years ago, when the first man and woman on earth made the biggest mistake in the universe.  They disobeyed God’s one and only rule, and brought physical and spiritual death to all humanity.  But look closely at what God tells Satan in the midst of this:

Then the Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this, you are cursed
more than all animals, domestic and wild.
You will crawl on your belly,
groveling in the dust as long as you live.
And I will cause hostility between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring.
He will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel” (Gen 3:14-15).

At first glance, it looks like snakes and people just won’t get along to well – Duh!  But notice God refers to “her offspring.” This is the only time God refers to Eve’s descendant, not Adam’s.  Why? And what does He mean with the whole “strike your head” and “strike his heel” thing?

The next two clues come from songs written by one of the greatest Kings of Israel, David:

My enemies surround me like a pack of dogs;
an evil gang closes in on me.
They have pierced my hands and feet.
I can count all my bones.
My enemies stare at me and gloat.
They divide my garments among themselves
and throw dice for my clothing (Psalm 22:16-18).

(This sounds like a death scene, but how could David write this if he were dead?)

For you will not leave my soul among the dead
or allow your holy one to rot in the grave (Psalm 16:10).

(Wait a second…does David really think he’ll live forever?)

The final clue comes from a great prophet of God named Isaiah:

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14).

OK, now the mystery has gone to a whole new level… A virgin has a child? Also, “Immanuel” literally means “God with us” – as in, God in the flesh. What does that mean?

Confused as to how all those fit together? Perhaps not, because for many, the case has been solved. But think about the people who lived before Jesus came. They had no idea that Jesus was a descendant of Eve, not Adam, through the Holy Spirit and borne of a virgin. They didn’t know that he hadn’t inherited the sinful nature that the rest of the human race inherited from Adam, their representative.  They also didn’t know that death on the cross is the only form of execution that bruises your heel. And yes, Jesus crushed the power of Satan when He defeated death.

And David’s songs? He was prophesying that Jesus’ hands and feet would be “pierced,” that soldiers would gamble for His clothes, and that Jesus wouldn’t stay in the grave…

All of which took place exactly as predicted.

What about Isaiah’s prophecy? It had been revealed to him that Jesus would be both God and human. Jesus was God in the flesh, God walking around on earth, eating, drinking, sleeping. And because he was fully human, he is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, because he was “tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

Aren’t you glad the gospel isn’t a mystery anymore?  The case has been solved and your greatest enemies – death and Satan – have been totally defeated. This is elementary, my dear reader. If you have trusted Christ as your only hope of salvation, you have hope for this life and paradise in the life to come.

But there are many who have yet to solve the mystery of their depression, guilt, loneliness, and despair.  They are held captive by the enemy. So now it’s your turn to join the adventure and help them find the solution every soul longs to discover.

The gospel is afoot!

1. Economic strain will force churches to go primal.

With a national dept that is catapulting toward the unstoppable, it’s only a matter of time before the United States goes bankrupt and the “new” new reality hits Americans and American churches like never before. I am convinced that the current recession is just an appetizer to the main course of soup lines, increased joblessness and the impending bankruptcy of the United States.

I’m no economist, but I can do Kindergarten math. Financing two wars + universal health care + a government that is growing faster than a baseball player on steroids = probable bankruptcy, not just for the nation, but for a lot of Americans and the ministries they support.

Is this inevitable? Of course not! Congress could choose to attack the deficit and get this nation right side up before it’s too late. But, even if they don’t, is this all bad news? No! I believe that, if or when the economy of America collapses, that many churches and ministries will go primal in their purpose, priorities and programs. Bigger and better church buildings will become a thing of the past and loving one’s neighbor by engaging, serving and introducing them to the Lord Jesus Christ will become central to the focus of thriving churches.

In his book Primal: Quest for the Lost Soul of Christianity, Mark Batterson writes, “Our generation needs a reformation. But a single person won’t lead it. A single event won’t define it. Our reformation will be a movement of reformers living creatively, compassionately, courageously for the cause of Christ. This reformation will not be born of a new discovery. It will be the rediscovery of something old, something ancient. Something primal.”

Hooah! Count me in Captain Batterson sir!

In light of shrinking donations churches and parachurch ministries will be forced to re-evaluate the reason for their existence. The ones that survive, and then thrive, will have the advancement of the gospel through peer-to-peer evangelism and love-your-neighbor campaigns as their new bull’s eye.

Pastors, youth pastors and ministry leaders of all stripes will scour the New Testament, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, to rediscover their calling. Armed with “the weapons of righteousness” in their right hands and in their left, ministry leaders will become elemental in their focus and re-engineer their churches to look more and more like the book of Acts and less and less like the typical church of the first decade of the 21st Century.

2. The new spirituality will leave “that old time religion” in the dust.

According to the book UnChristian 40% of those between the ages of 16-29 in America consider themselves outsiders to the Christian faith. That’s up from 23% among baby boomers! The historic Christian faith is losing trajectory with the younger generation and is being replaced by an “all roads lead to God” type of quasi-spirituality. This kind of philosophy is more eastern than western and more Buddhist than Christian. And, in my estimation, this spiritual point of view will accelerate across every corner of the United States over the next ten years.

Just last year I had the opportunity to watch a reality series called Gospel Journey which featured a Mormon, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew, Seventh Day Adventist and an evangelical. Most of these participants were in their late teens or early twenties. Instead of tribal challenges they tackled tough issues like the existence of God, the problem of evil and the purpose of life. They had amazing conversations on a boat, at the top of a volcano, on the beach, and, finally, in a leper colony. Every participant shared what they believed from their religious point of view.

What surprised me throughout the week, other than the evangelical and the Muslim participants is that each one of these young people had developed some altered, watered-down, Americanized version of the religion they claimed to follow. Each one had dressed their individual religion with whatever accessories he or she saw fit. Most of them presented their beliefs with a kind of “this is true for me but not necessarily for you” qualification. It became clear to me that they were more alike than different in their worldview, even if their religions differed on the finer points. This overarching spirituality was really the one religion that united most of them at their philosophic core. And it is the same spiritual philosophy that will dominate in the next decade.

This belief system is hard to nail down doctrinally because there is no formal creed. But it has something to do with being nice and tolerating others. The only thing that won’t be tolerated is any belief system that claims to be the exclusive way to God. I believe that this will lead to a growing tension between those who espouse this philosophy and those who embrace the historic Christian faith. This inevitable tension leads to my third prediction for Christianity and evangelism over the next ten years.

3. Evangelism will become a hate crime in America.

Maybe evangelism will be considered a misdemeanor as opposed to a felony, but I’m convinced that sharing one’s faith, with the intention to convert that person to Christianity, will be outlawed in the good ole’ US of A. The First Amendment will be “contextualized” for a postmodern culture by postmodern judges and, as a result, any speech or actions that seem intolerant will be considered intolerable.

Is there anything less tolerant than telling someone that they are on the highway to hell unless they change their way of thinking (i.e. “repent”) and put their faith in Christ alone for the salvation of their souls? Strip away all of the fancy trappings, snappy gospel tracts and cool conversation openers and that’s exactly what evangelism is. Even when we say it nice we will be told not to say it twice. Why? Because we will be sharing a message that points to Jesus as “the way and the truth and the life” to a generation that has no patience for narrow minded thinking. And does it get any more narrow minded than to declare Jesus alone as the narrow path that leads to life everlasting? As one sage put it, “All roads lead to God…most to His judgment, one to His forgiveness.”

Two millennia ago in the Roman Empire if you said “Jesus is Lord” you were dangerously close to signing your death warrant. Jews thought Christians were blasphemous because they were assigning deity to a man. Romans thought Christians were treasonous because the man they were assigning deity to was a poor Jewish carpenter and not the mighty Emperor of Rome.

The same brand of treasonous blasphemy that got Christians killed thousands of years ago will get Christians arrested in America over the next ten years. Hate speech will be the law that triggers the trials. As Alan Sears, President of the Alliance Defense Fund, once told me, “The persecution of the 21st Century will be prosecution.”

A milder form of this persecution is happening right now in secular universities and Hollywood studios. How many evangelical freshmen in philosophy classes across America have been taunted by bowtie wearing, atheistic professors? Too many to count! How many unflattering caricatures of evangelizing Christians have been painted in movies and television shows? Too many to count! And when the ideals of the secular university and Hollywood studios trickle down to the working class, a legal predisposition against evangelism (aka “proselytizing”) will be the result.

But maybe that’s just what the American church needs…a swift kick in the “but I preach the gospel without words” to trigger the actual proclamation of the gospel to friends, family, neighbors and strangers. Maybe when evangelism becomes illegal we will do more of it.

I love my job now but I think I’ll love my job even more over the next one hundred and twenty months. As someone starting an organization that mobilizes teenagers for peer-to-peer evangelism, I may get to, not only train teenagers to please God by sharing their faith, but to promote something illegal at the same time! When teens begin to realize that they could get thrown in jail for sharing their faith it could lead to an unstoppable movement of relational, relentless and rebellious evangelists who sweep the nation with acts of love and the message of Christ!

Maybe I’ll get to start a prison ministry as a result…from the inside.

4. Missions organizations will work together for the fulfillment of THE Cause!

What has been known for three hundred years as “The Great Commission” will get rebranded as “The Cause.” Why? Mission organizations will realize that the TGC term was popularized by missionaries centuries ago with the express purpose of mobilizing young people for world missions. As mission leaders realize that most Christian young people have no clue what The Great Commission is they will begin to reframe the call of Jesus to “make disciples of all nations” as a cause rather than a commission. Because it is no mere cause it will be called THE Cause.

More and more of these organizations will begin to synthesize strategies, coordinate efforts and share resources to get the last and lasting mandate of Jesus accomplished. As they do their efforts will be exponentially accelerated as key organizations push the giant flywheel of world evangelization in the same direction.

Missions work will become more and more about training indigenous people to contextualize and evangelize their own people rather than missionaries seeking to do all of the evangelism themselves. We see the apostle Paul switching to this tactic midway through his missionary career.

When Paul evangelized in Ephesus Acts 19:8, he went into the Synagogue and preached the gospel there. This was his usual approach when coming into a new city. As a result of this strategy several Jews in Ephesus trusted in Jesus Christ as their Savior. But in verses 9-10 Paul changes his tactics. He took the people who had trusted in Jesus at the synagogue to the School of Tyrannus, a local community college, and trained them every day for two years so that “every Jew and Greek in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.”

How did every person in this vast region hear the gospel in such a short time? The men and women the apostle Paul equipped at the School of Tyrannus evangelized everyone in the province of Asia! They were able to do collectively in two years what the great apostle could not do his entire life, reach every person in such a large region with the gospel!

As mission organizations take hold of this School of Tyrannus strategy they will see the same results as Paul did. Entire countries will be evangelized by their own countrymen as missionaries focus on mobilizing (inspiring, equipping and deploying) those they lead to Christ to make disciples as opposed to trying to do all of the disciple making themselves.

Churches and youth groups in America will get in on the action too. Effective stateside ministries will focus more and more on seeking to be Schools of Tyrannus that train their people to reach their spheres of influence with the gospel as opposed to just inviting them out to “the synagogue” (church, youth group, outreach meeting) so that the person upfront can do the work of evangelism for them. This approach will lead to the exponential spread of the gospel in America and across the world, which leads to my final prediction for the next decade.

5. An army of youth evangelists will unleash holy havoc across the globe.

To bolster this worldwide evangelism effort, I believe that God will raise up an army of youth evangelists (both in and out of high school) who will embrace the gospel as The Cause and spread it to the ends of the earth both online and face-to-face. The average teenager has over one hundred online and face-to-face friends and, according to one survey, these teenagers have one hundred times more influence on their friends than a stranger does.

As Christian teenagers are equipped to evangelize their sphere of influence in compelling ways that gospel will spread in powerful ways. As a result even more persecution will take place. This will inspire aligned and united missions organizations to mobilize persecution-hardened, cause-inspired young people for global outreach. As some in Thessalonica said about the early Christian evangelists in Acts 17:6 they will say about these young world changers, “These…who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here…”

In ten years I believe there will be disciple-multiplying teenagers in every one of the 67,342 high schools and middle schools in America. The coming, inevitable revocation of The Student Bill of Rights (a bill signed into law by Bill Clinton which gives students the rights to evangelize on campus) will only inspire more teenagers to engage in reaching others with the controversial message of the gospel.

Youth groups and churches will begin to grow as a result of new converts being added to their rosters at a rapid rate. These churches will start to gauge their effectiveness, not by how many people go to their meetings, but by what percentage of them came to Christ as result of their personal evangelism efforts.

A FINAL DISCLAIMER

What makes me qualified to make these predictions? Other than the fact that I met George Bush once, absolutely nothing. Sure I used to be a youth leader at a church – I’m pretty much just a guy with a Bible and a blog. I could be totally wrong about what is going to happen to Christianity and evangelism over the next decade. But, even if half of my predictions come three quarters true, this has huge implications for the church, youth ministry and world evangelism.

Talk to me in ten years and you can either slap me in the face or pat me on the back.

I’m talking of course about Disney’s A Christmas Carol.  A timeless story that has been Disney-fied to the brim and is sure to draw millions of viewers.

Be warned…this one’s not for the kiddies, but for all the visual fireworks and occasional inexplicable sequences (like Scrooge being reduced to one inch complete with a mouse voice?), it stays true to Charles Dickens’ vision for the story.

If you are unfamiliar with this classic, A Christmas Carol chronicles the events of a night before Christmas in the life of one of the biggest jerks in all of literature: Ebenezer Scrooge.  He is visited by his dead former business partner, then three ghosts from his past, present, and future Christmases – they all come with a message and a warning.  The heart of their message is basically “Stop being a hater,” and their warning is “If you don’t, your eternal afterlife is pretty much the worst situation you could imagine.”

In other words, “Scrooge, you better rediscover your soul or there will be horrible consequences.”

Can I take you on a similar journey?  With my apologies to Charles Dickens, I’d like us to look at three Christmases as well.  The first is Christmas Past…in fact, it’s the first Christmas ever.  Picture the scene as we travel back through 2000 years:

There were sheepherders camping in the neighborhood. They had set night watches over their sheep. Suddenly, God’s angel stood among them and God’s glory blazed around them. They were terrified. The angel said, “Don’t be afraid. I’m here to announce a great and joyful event that is meant for everybody, worldwide: A Savior has just been born in David’s town, a Savior who is Messiah and Master. This is what you’re to look for: a baby wrapped in a blanket and lying in a manger.”

At once the angel was joined by a huge angelic choir singing God’s praises:

Glory to God in the heavenly heights,
Peace to all men and women on earth who please him (Luke 2:8-14).

As we’re standing at this scene, I have to ask you…

Is Jesus your Savior?  The first Christmas is a radical scene of angelic armies, overwhelmed shepherds, and exhausted parents. But even more drastic is the fact that God wrapped Himself in flesh and was born of a virgin so He could bring salvation to this dark and sinful world – which includes you and me. Let this scene remind you that the God who created you loves you so much that He chose to die rather than live without you.

Which brings me to Christmas Present.  We are surrounded by people who do not know Jesus as their Savior and think this holiday is about ribbons, tags, packages, boxes, and bags (shout out to The Grinch!).  They get so mired in the glitter and material that they miss the truth that Christmas is a time to be reminded that salvation is available for all who call on the name of Jesus.

And look! There’s you with your friends at a Christmas party.  I can see your lips moving but I can’t hear what you’re saying. It looks like you’re starting a conversation about Jesus Christ and why He came to earth.  That’s awesome, because the message of the gospel is the greatest gift you could give anyone.

Finally, let’s look into Christmas Future.  This is a very different Christmas, because it’s not about the first time Jesus came to planet Earth, but the second time.  This time, He is not a baby wrapped in a blanket and lying in a manger.  Here’s how John describes the scene:

Look! He comes with the clouds of heaven.
And everyone will see him—
even those who pierced him.
And all the nations of the world
will mourn for him. He was wearing a long robe with a gold sash across his chest. His head and his hair were white like wool, as white as snow. And his eyes were like flames of fire.  His feet were like polished bronze refined in a furnace, and his voice thundered like mighty ocean waves. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as if I were dead. But he laid his right hand on me and said, “Don’t be afraid! I am the First and the Last. I am the living one. I died, but look – I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave (Revelation 1:7;13-15;17-18).

The ghost of Christmas future in A Christmas Carol is scary…

But the return of Christ is waaaay scarier.  That is, if you don’t know Him.  So what will that scene really look like in your future?  If you’ve trusted Christ, it will be a day of deliverance.  If not, it will be a day of mourning.

So this Christmas, help your friends prepare for the last Christmas , when Jesus returns to earth to set up His forever Kingdom.

In the meantime…God bless us, everyone!

Let’s take it a step further.  What if you had pretty much unlimited time, equipment, and cash?  That’s the situation James Cameron found himself in a few years back, and the result is the visually stunning sci-fi cowboys and Indians movie called Avatar.

And when I say he had money, I mean he had bank.  Cost estimates for Avatar run between 300 million to half a BILLION dollars. With that insane amount of money that dwarfs the gross domestic product of over a third of this planet, you better create an out-of-this-world place that rocks.

And James Cameron did that with Avatar. Don’t expect any dialogue that would make Shakespeare nervous (i.e. “You are not in Kansas anymore. You are on Pandora, ladies and gentlemen” …wow …just, wow).

But do anticipate the 3-D cinematic equivalent of a 162-minute roller coaster ride that will leave you wishing for another round of Avatar.

By the way, do you know what “avatar” means?  No, not “freaky blue creature that looks like a misshapen cousin of Jar-Jar Binks.” It actually comes from the Hindu religion, meaning,

The descent of a deity to the earth in an incarnate form or some manifest shape; the incarnation of a god. (www.dictionary.reference.com)

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that this movie was released around Christmas? Because at the heart of this holiday is the shocking, amazing, and breathtaking truth that the true Creator, Jesus, became the real incarnation of the deity to earth:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only,  who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

No one has ever seen God, but God’s one and only Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known (John 1:1-3; 14; 18).

Think about it…the eternal and all-powerful God wrapped Himself in human flesh to live on the planet He created and dwell with the inhabitants He formed from the dust of the ground.

In the film Avatar, the main character named Jake links with his own avatar so he can infiltrate the “Na’vi” creatures. But the God of the universe, named Yahweh, incarnated Himself as Jesus so He could accomplish the most important mission of all time:

“Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit.  And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:20-21).

As the Christian band 4Him says, “That’s such a strange way to save the world.” What a wild idea that God would step down from the throne of heaven and allow himself to be subjected to life in this evil and fallen world…and for what?

To die.  The only way to save us from an eternity separated from God was for God Himself to pay the penalty for all our wrongdoing.  And the only way for God to die was to take on humanity.

Jesus came into our world as a visitor to accomplish His salvation mission.  He lived a perfect life and died a horrible death so we could have hope here on Earth and a glorious eternity in heaven.

So this Christmas, remember that the scene of Jesus lying in a manger has the dark shadow of the Cross in the background, but behind the Cross is the doorway to heaven, open to anyone willing to trust in Jesus alone for salvation.

If that doesn’t rock your world, I’m not sure what could!