A dare for leaders from the creators of The Fight

We at Roundabout Ministries want to encourage you guys so much as you journey with your young people. Youth/young adult ministry can be such a tough and sometimes thankless gig! We’ve experienced that and know what it’s like! We know that you don’t get taught how to help young people deal with issues like pornography and sexual addiction at bible college. We know that if the stats are correct, that many of you are probably in the midst of your own struggles with these issues too. It’s tough at the best of times helping young people deal with these issues but when you’re stuck in your own struggle it can be enough to make you want to give up altogether.

But, avoiding these issues in youth and young adult ministry is like sending out green recruits into a warzone without adequate training or weapons. Very few Christian young people have what it takes on their own to survive our increasingly sexual world. We have to find ways to help them negotiate this slippery path in these crucial years.

That’s why we’ve put ‘The Fight’ together. We believe that this resource is going to be used by God to impact coming generations. It sounds great and easy to throw around these sorts of exciting buzz words like ‘revolutionise the generations’. But I think at times, it’s all too easy for us to lose sight of the fact that the young people we’re investing into will live lives that have the potential over the course of their lifetime to impact dozens, hundreds or maybe even thousands of other people. These are the next generation pastors, missionaries, evangelists, etc. These are whom we pass the baton of ‘the faith’ onto. When we approach ministry from that mindset, everything is different. When we live in that mindset, helping 15 year old Mike understand the potential future impact of his current dabbling with porn becomes a vital mission worthy of great energy and investment on our part. 15 year old Mike, may be the next person to do your job or be the next Billy Graham, or ______(you fill in the blank!). And not just one day, but TODAY!

So many young people we speak with as we share in youth and young adult ministries around the world are struggling with these issues and the vitality and depth of their faith suffers as a result. We’re excited about the potential impact ‘The Fight’ will have, not only on young people and youth leaders, but on youth and young adult ministries as a whole.

From our trialing of ‘The Fight’ with 40 teenage guys and their leaders from a youth ministry in Melbourne, Australia, we’ve received some awesome feedback. We launched the program with a ‘Fight Night‘, and at the end of the night the guys split into small groups where many guys, some for the first time, spoke openly about their struggles with porn and other sex-related issues. The year 7/8 guys discussion time went for the longest it’s ever gone before! Confession, prayer and the beginnings of building stronger accountable relationship found their way into the conversation.

Can you imagine for a second, the possibilities for the guys in your ministry? Imagine your youth group or young adults ministry taking a journey like this where a new level of honesty and sharing is birthed, where a new level of friendship and support is facilitated and where guys receive biblical teaching and encouragement that actually provides them with what they need to break out of their porn habits. I see young men in youth groups and young adult groups that have been so revolutionised (there’s that buzz word-but I don’t care!), that have grown to a point of really relying on each other, who have learnt to fight together, pushing each other to grow in intimacy with God. I see groups of young men like this, transforming their churches as they challenge adult guys to get serious about the same issues. I see amazing possibilities for ministry as guys start to overcome these issues in their lives and are unashamed in sharing of what God has done in them. I see a generation (buzzword warning!!!), of young men raising a new standard for the generations that will follow.

What do you see?

May you see with renewed vision and hope, may you join with us in asking God to do God-sized things in the lives of the guys He has entrusted into our care, may you consider joining your band of brothers with us on this journey. May your young peoples lives and the nations, (buzzphrase!), never be the same as a result.

We invite you, encourage you, DARE you to join us in ‘The Fight’

We’ve put together a few guidelines for leaders that you can download in a pdf document - click here to download it.