At the end of a youth event I asked Mark, a seventh-grader, to close in prayer. His reply, "Um, I don't know any." Following a high school mission trip, Adam said to me, "This was the most meaningful week of my life. God has really changed me, but now what?"
My youth ministry has been shaped by these two experiences. Many youth don't know how to pray. They don't know how to be with God. They also don't know how to respond once God has touched and changed their lives. And they long to be with God — a God who is alive, active, radical, even earthshaking.
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