Youth Specialties Pittsburgh – General Session 3 – Francis Chan – Post 5

Francis Chan was the speaker for General Session 3.  He’s a great speaker, great energy, all that you would expect from a gen. session speaker.  Honesty, I wasn’t sure about him since I heard a particular podcast that kinda … hmm … not sure what the word is here but I wasn’t feeling him.  Glad we don’t finalize our impressions from one interview or something though.

Anyway, I connected with this message.  Loved that he spoke about the complexities of parables.  Reminding us that Jesus actually wanted people to work and struggle through their meanings.  They were for those who wanted to know and wanted to be his disciples. 

I am lost as a listener every time someone says something to the effect of “It’s easy, we just need to GO!!” or “the Gospel isn’t rocket science”.  It’s actually harder then rocket science.  Anyway, Francis didn’t do that.

One of his main points was, “We as youth pastors do so many things different than Jesus.”  I’ve always tried do to the alternative youth ministry thing but even there, I find myself doing things that Jesus might consider unnecessary.   

He also said: In reaching our students we overestimate the importance of attendance.  To the point that when kids leave, we beg for them to come back, offer pizza, prizes.  Jesus let the crowds leave for the effect of his message.

On Salt:  “Jesus talking about salt and its use.  He says that some of you are “flavorless salt” that has not use.  It’s not enough good enough to be used as manure.”

Jesus was saying, “You are ruining crap”. 

He used a fun illustration of adding  a big pile of flavorless salt to small packet’s size worth of salt.  Who adds flavorless salt to real salt?  Why would you do that?  Ohhh, because we like to have bigger piles, bigger crowds, bigger attendance etc. 

We can build our congregations, we can get people to come front. He joked how he has a story that gets people to come down every time.  True, true. 

But what we need is something super-natural.  We need life change. 

He spoke about Elijah as a man just like him.  Fire can come down from heaven but it’s the work of God not of ours.