What's the role of the Holy Spirit in your ministry?

That isn't to say we've forgotten what we did. We hosted some sharing, singing, and communion; simple. So simple, in fact, that we thought we could get the same results if we just did the same thing. Wrong. The sum of what we've learned is that the Spirit is always moving, but we can't make it do so. That's the way the Holy Spirit shows up in our ministry. Whenever it wants to.

Fortunately for us, it wants to a lot. Theologically, the Spirit is with us all the time. Any sort of healing, any sort of spiritual discovery, any sort of trust in Jesus is all the work of the Spirit. That means that so much of what is expected of us as pastors—so much of our job descriptions—is actually out of our control.

The desire to see students find life in Jesus is a healthy one, and it's essential in ministry. Unfortunately it can easily mutate into an unhealthy drive toward spiritual alchemy. Alchemists of yesteryear tried to take ordinary materials and convert them into gold. As pastors, we can tend toward the same thing. If only we can get the candles and songs and meditative videos just right, maybe, just maybe, the cloud that filled the temple will descend on our youth center. But that's not how it works.

A powerful visitation by the Spirit is not a dish for which we can just follow the recipe. God's Spirit shows up when we least expect it. A girl accepts Christ and leads her parents to do the same. Down the street, a couple decides not to divorce. A boy decides to give up speaking for Lent, to learn when to speak and when to listen. Real stories.

We can't make the Spirit move, and to focus on that is to focus on the wrong thing. Pagans both ancient and modern believe in divine beings that were largely sedentary and had to be wooed into action. Praise God, it's not that way for us. We have a Spirit in motion. And if the Spirit in motion is our point of departure, our task is no longer to conjure it but rather to clear the way.

We do this by training our leaders and students to understand the basics of pneumatology: What is the Holy Spirit, what is its role, what does it do? We teach spiritual disciplines like fasting, silence, meditation, lectio divina, and listening prayer. We create a leadership culture that allows us to check our plans and voice contrary opinions, lest our program leave no margin for the Spirit to work. After all, God will always pursue us but will not force his way onto us.

The overall metaphor is the second of the three seed parables in Mark 4. At the end of the day, the sower doesn't know how his seed will sprout and grow. She or he must leave it up to the sun and rain and soil. The kingdom of God is the same way. There is some seed scattering and soil tilling we can do, like preparing spaces and hearts for divine encounter, but we then must move out of the way and let God be in charge of growth and fruition. We can trust that when we allow God space to work, he does.

After scoring a lot of points on the basketball court (for the other team), I sank my heart into a Victoria’s Secret catalog and dreamed that I’d be on those pages someday. For all the wrong reasons, I truly wanted that.

If it weren’t for the Spirit’s gentle and convincing work in my life, chances are I wouldn’t have ditched this empty dream for a full one that has led me here, to the most fulfilling life I could live—modeling to a different crowd, and for different reasons.

The Holy Spirit helped me see how my life could be transformed through a conduit of trust. The Spirit knew what I needed when I needed it—and gave those things to me. The Holy Spirit led me into youth ministry. So, this part of God—the part that walks beside me and lives in me—is the same part that fuels the vision, mission, values, and practices of a ministry for and with teenagers.

The Holy Spirit is my counselor. Jesus said he would give us “another counselor” (John 14:6), and he has done that for me. As I serve the church, my Counselor helps me with everything from the smallest decision to the really big ones. My Counselor helps me live my life in his life. I need a clean heart to be able to see where there is jealousy, anger, and unloving attitudes. There is a rigorous replacement happening, my will for his. And when I’m stubborn and stall, I’m comforted to know that I’m still not alone or abandoned in the process.

We need the presence of the Holy Spirit to help us ditch plans sometimes and go with God, in our plans, in our relationships, in how we carry out youth ministry in our communities.

The Holy Spirit is the power (Acts 1:8, Luke 24:29). When the Spirit is given space to purify my heart, to perfect love in me, I have power in ministry. I’m able to lead and speak with confidence, even in my weakness because his power is made perfect in those moments. There is always the temptation to be all about me, to worry only for my own comfort, goals, and ideas. But the Holy Spirit guides me to surrender selfishness for a genuine awareness of others. I can’t do it on my own. I don’t have enough light in me to be what I need to be, but the Holy Spirit is able to do this.

The Holy Spirit is the presence of God in me (1 John 3:24). It’s what happens at the altar at camp. It’s what happens in our conversation at Chick-Fil-A. The presence of God fills our smiles, our high fives, and our hugs for those with tears. The Holy Spirit is the presence of God in my sermon writing, the check in my gut that says, Now is the time to talk about… or, Maybe you should go in another direction.

We try to look for the Holy Spirit at work in our students as well. We can overlook sometimes the fact that God dwells in them, just as he dwells in us. The Holy Spirit worked in one of my students’ lives to raise more than $26,000 in one year for clean water in Africa. This is the echo of the Kingdom as we collectively listen.

We make it known to our students and leaders that the Holy Spirit is given a free pass to roam the halls and rooms of our ministries and our hearts. My prayer is that the kingdom of God would be larger for our willingness to be filled, that youth ministries would receive power as their leaders receive it, and that we would live in grateful and prayerful response for the gift of the Spirit.

My last year at Youth Specialties and the pressure I felt to perform were particularly soul deadening for me. By the time I got laid off, I was close to burnout—both professionally and spiritually. But in the two or three months that followed, I experienced a gorgeous re-awakening of my soul. I felt God’s presence for the first time in a long time. My prayer life rekindled, and I started to hear God speaking, nudging, consoling. I knew this was the Holy Spirit, who had never left, of course. Instead, my spiritual eyes were merely opening to the Spirit’s presence.

This ramped up when I launched the Youth Ministry Coaching Program. When my cohorts were in times of personal sharing, I started sensing the Holy Spirit giving me insight that was beyond me, and I even started receiving what could only be called words of truth to be offered to others. I entered into the exercise of this with open hands—not grasping it or claiming it or arrogantly confident about whatever I might think I should say. But I was amazed, over and over again (as I have continued to be over the last eighteen months) that what I was hearing—from the Holy Spirit—was usually accurate. One of the most powerful of these was a time when I had a strong sense that another person in the sharing circle had a word from God for the person talking. Sure enough, when I called that out, the words spoken had a profoundly holy and truthy beauty to them, and we all knew we were on holy ground.

This has changed both my regular, everyday experience of God as well as my youth ministry practice. When I’m leading my middle-school-guys small group, for example, I’m trying to choose (and it is a choice, by the way) to simultaneously listen to my guys and to the Holy Spirit. One of the surprise benefits to me, in a youth ministry setting, is that I feel unburdened and free. That’s because I’m not carrying the absurd responsibility of being smart or insightful enough to know what to say.

This personal awakening and shift in my practice has also shaped my thinking about youth ministry and church leadership. If you ever hear me talk about Youth Ministry 3.0 stuff these days, I hope you hear the difference from what I wrote about in that book. When I wrote that book, about four years ago now, I was not operating with this mindset or experience, and most of my suggestions only tip a hat to the role of the Holy Spirit. But these days, I’m convinced that great youth workers (and great church leaders) need to recover the art of collaborative discernment. Great youth ministry takes all different forms because it has to be contextual. But the path to a wonderfully contextualized youth ministry is not merely an effort of assessment and study. In fact, it is first and foremost an exercise of listening (and I believe that listening needs to be practiced in community, which is why I am passionate about collaborative discernment).

Yes, we need to do assessments and learn about the community we do ministry in; yes, we need to read and study and observe. But more important than all of that is the intentional act of gathering a small group of spiritually minded people to actively listen to the Holy Spirit. Ask, What teenagers have you placed in our midst? (No, just observing them is not enough.) Listen. Ask, What teenagers are you calling us to in our community? Listen. Ask, What would a culturally and contextually appropriate approach be to reach those teenagers? Listen.

Bottom line #1: Without a sense of the Holy Spirit’s role in your life, you will always be limited in your own spiritual growth and practice and, therefore, in your youth ministry efforts. Bottom line #2: A youth ministry that’s not informed by active and intentional listening to the Holy Spirit will miss out on who God is calling it to be.