Grace Community Church is undergoing a metamorphosis.  The difference between a metamorphosis and a change is this… a change could very well take you on a new and different path, whereas a metamorphosis is simply becoming what you were meant to be.

I had a similar experience about 15 years ago.  I had been doing youth ministry for 7 years and by all appearances, it was successful.  We were reaching lots of kids and we constantly had kids becoming Christians.  I had built the Tribe (our youth group) from an attraction model.  We would do lots of fun and exciting things, and the kids would invite their friends to join us.  However, after 2003 I realized that I had successfully reached a lot of kids, but wasn’t very successful at making disciples.  Since making disciples is the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) given to us by Jesus, I figured our ministry had better have a metamorphosis.

There is a very powerful and alluring temptation in being attractional ONLY.   I could throw these big parties and get lots of kids to come out.  I would take pictures and show them on Sunday to illustrate how successful we were.  On one trip when I  was about 25 years old, I took 90 teenagers and only two other adults on an overnight trip to Wichita.  We broke down on the turnpike in a time before cell phones.  I was young and rolled with it like it was this great adventure.  I look back and realize how unwise and careless I often was.

People can see the width of attendance numbers, they can’t see the depth of spiritual growth.  The truth is, the numbers made me look good.  People assumed I must be doing something right to have that many kids attending.  The truth was, I just happened to have the latest cool thing going.  Many of the kids on our trips, at our events and even attending Wednesday night youth group were from other churches.  There wasn’t as much transformation going on as there was transfer from one church to another.

Then in the summer of 2002, I took a group of teens to Miami to pass out tracts (these pamphlets about Christ) in public areas and engage anyone interested in conversation about faith.  Many of the kids in this group had been with me all the way through their middle and high school years.  In preparation for this trip I worked hard to teach them all of the “right answers” to the tough questions they would receive.   At the time, I had heard all of the statistics that showed how many kids would leave the church after high school.  I thought the best remedy for that was to teach them all of the right answers about their faith.  At that time in my life I believed what I had been taught about discipleship, that it was primarily an issue of academics.  I figured if I taught kids the right answers they would never leave their faith.  Then we put it in to practice by going out into the streets to teach other people the right answers.

I often look back at a picture that was taken of the group that was on that trip.  That was the group of kids that I was the closest to in nearly 20 years of ministry, however, about half of them have nothing to do with Church or Christianity anymore.  It began to occur to me that maybe my model wasn’t the best way to make disciples and maybe my definition of discipleship was wrong.  My model was to throw a party and attract the kids.  Then, when they would start attending on a regular basis, I would teach them all of the right answers!  Ta-daa!  Discipleship!  Right?  Not really.  A few kids became disciples despite my misguided leadership.

Around that same time, I took a group of teens on a short trip to Branson, Missouri. We did tons of fun things and stayed at a hotel with an indoor water park.  I had worked pretty hard to put that trip together and was proud of the large group that attended.  Then, after a long afternoon of playing at the water park and having fun with the kids, our group was walking back to our hotel rooms.  One of the teens turned to me and said, “This water park is okay, but I thought it would be a little cooler.”  I tried not to show it, but I was not only offended, but stunned at my sudden realization that in my process of trying to create disciples, I was simply creating consumers.

Sure, we could have fun getaways, but something would certainly come along that was more fun.  I could throw a big party at camp, but a better camp would come along.  No matter what I could try and do, in a paradigm of attraction… something else will always come along that is more attractive.  I needed for our ministry to become more of who we were created to be.  We needed a metamorphosis.

I will tell you how we did that in the next post.