All About Teenagers: An Interview w Greg Stier of Dare 2 Share - GotQuestions.org Podcast Episode 21

Welcome to the Got Questions podcast. On today's episode, I have with me Greg Steer, the founder and visionary for Dare to Share. We're gonna be talking about teenagers. I like to joke around that God didn't call me to youth ministry because I don't like teenagers.

And while that is definitely not true, I do sometimes struggle with relating to teenagers, but Greg definitely does not have that problem. So Greg, welcome to the show today.

So glad to be a part of it.

So for those in our audience who may not be familiar, tell us a little about what is Dare to Share? What is the ministry that God has called you to?

So Dare to Share, we started 30 years ago. I was a pastor in the Denver area and church planter and loved it, but I also just had that itch in my soul to reach teenagers with the gospel and started Dare to Share on the side.

And after the Columbine High School shooting that took place April 20th, 1999, it just rattled me. I knew a lot of the kids at Columbine High School and decided it was time to focus full-time on mobilizing teenagers for the gospel.

So the question that haunted me with Columbine was where were the Christian kids to reach out to the two shooters with the hope of Christ? And what if those shooters had been evangelized? How would that have changed the scenario?

And I started thinking, man, there's teenagers all around this nation, all around the world who desperately need the hope of Christ. And the best one to reach a teen is a teen. And just kind of flashback to my childhood.

I was raised in a violent inner city family that a preacher from the suburbs reached out to the city, reached my whole family with the gospel of Christ. I mean, the Denver mafia knew my uncles as the crazy brothers.

So when the mafia thinks your family's dysfunctional, that's not good, right? And, but this preacher reached my whole family for Christ. I got involved in his youth ministry. They had 800 teenagers in his youth ministry.

And it wasn't because it was the coolest youth ministry in town, it's because he mobilized teens for the gospel. So that was put in my soul. What if we could mobilize teenagers all around the world to reach their friends with the gospel of Christ?

So for 25 years, we did that through big arena events all across the nation. Last five years, we've been focusing on a simulcast. So we do one day of training and mobilizing that can be in thousands of churches across the nation and this next year around the world.

And then developing apps and curriculum and tools and resources and books, all to help teenagers share the gospel and youth leaders and parents train their teenagers to share the gospel. So Dare to Share, we're like Liam Neeson in Taken.

We have a very particular set of skills and that's to really strengthen the evangelism muscle in the heart of the youth leader and a teenager. So that's what we do.

Dare to Share Live and the Life in Six Words App

Awesome, so give us a couple of practical, more concrete ways that Dare to Share is doing, maybe even what are some new things that Dare to Share has going on?

Well, one of the things, actually it's Dare to Share Live. I talked a little bit about it. It's our one day simulcast, it's November 13th. It's a free event, so you just, you get it piped right into your youth room.

Mom and dad could lead a Dare to Share Live with their teenagers and a group of their friends right in their living room. There's only three requirements. You have to have internet, you have to have adult leaders to help guide it.

And then you have to be willing to do the outreach. It's not a watch party, it's a do party. November 13th, 9 a .m., West Coast start, noon, East Coast start. Simultaneous training from Denver piped in to cities across the nation and now again around the world where we'll get inspired.

Teens will be empowered to share the gospel and then they'll be unleashed. Another simple way is our app. We have a free app called Life in Six Words where you download it and a teen can share the gospel via social media, send an audio story that explains the gospel to a friend or face-to-face.

And it's a simple, simple way to share the gospel of Christ. Life in Six Words, it's free on your app store. Just download it and watch the tutorial video and start using it. I use it, even though it's for teens, I use it all the time as an adult.

I've probably used it a couple hundred times at least. I've never been turned down to engage someone because you ask them, hey, if you were to describe your life in six words, what would they be? And there's 14 words they choose from.

Everybody loves to choose their six words. And then you say, tell me why you chose those words. And then you hear their story. People, everybody loves to talk about themselves. Then the words you have in common light up and you're like, well, you know what?

I have some words in common. You share your story and then you share the gospel story. And just, if you can swipe and read, you can share the gospel. So free on the app store, Life in Six Words, a simple way for your teens to get started and for you as an adult to get started sharing the gospel.

And that's fantastic. And just to let our audience know, we'll have links to the stuff that Greg is talking about, both on our podcast page, which is podcast .gotquestions .org and also in the description field on our YouTube channel for this videos.

So don't feel like you gotta memorize it. We'll give you all those links later on. Before we jump into the main question I wanted to ask you today, Greg, I noticed you did a one a day evangelism thing over the past couple of years.

So tell me a little bit more about that and what your experience was in doing that.

Daily Evangelism and Looking for Opportunities to Share Christ

Well, there's this huge movement around the world called Go Movement, where it started in Germany and basically they said, hey, let's focus on the month of May for evangelism. And I mean, I think this last May, the last Saturday of May is the big outreach day.

I don't know, like 50 million believers took part in it around the world. It's huge globally.

So at the beginning of the month,.

I was talking to the one of the leaders. I go, hey, what if we do one a day in May? And he's like, let's do it. And so he could challenge a bunch of people. I challenge a bunch of people. And it was really cool and I'm still doing it.

It's been exciting to pray every day, Lord, give me an opportunity to share Christ. Today, I literally walked out of my house. We have new neighbors across the street and we just started talking. I shared with them about a new book that I'm coming out with, tells my life story.

And in that, I was able to share the whole gospel and it was just really cool. I mean, she didn't trust Christ on the spot, but I mean, it's a beginning of, I mean, they're my neighbors. So it's a beginning of a gospel conversation.

I think when you pray for the lost, you see the lost. When you pray for opportunities, God opens your eyes to the opportunities that are all around you every day. Unless you're living in a monastery. And if you are, share Christ with your fellow monks.

People around you need Jesus. Everybody needs Christ.

So that's exciting. Something I need to do more of. I mean, I do internet evangelism all the time. So we've got questions that are presented with many opportunities to share the gospel written, but in terms of my daily life, I'm not doing enough in terms of recognizing the opportunities in the real world.

So thank you for the reminder that just because I'm doing it in one venue doesn't mean, doesn't exempt me from doing it in other ways and looking for opportunities. So I'll be praying.

A simple way, just a simple way to think about it is, even just when you're talking to somebody, you know, COVID has been tough for a lot of people. Is there any way I can be praying for you? Right there, you're asking them a question.

You're hinting that you're a Christian, pretty hinting pretty strongly. And now they know, okay, this guy has got a connection with the Lord. And I've had so many natural gospel conversations just come from that simple question.

How can I, how may I pray for you?

Preventing Teenagers from Drifting from the Faith Through Mission

Yeah, that's fantastic. So Greg, so the question, main question I wanted to poke you with today, we get a lot of questions from parents, from youth leaders asking something along the lines of, how do I prevent my teenager who's ready to go off to college or even in high school from departing from the faith due to their life experience, due to stuff their friends tell them, due to stuff their teachers or professors tell them?

So how do you answer that question? What in your experience are the keys to keeping teenagers focused on Christ and committed to Him?

Yeah, I think our approach has been more information, right? So if we pour enough milk from God's word into the sponge of their minds, then when they go to college, you'll have all the answers that they need.

Now, here's the problem with that situation. If I pour milk in a sponge and I never wring it out,.

It rots.

And I think a lot of times what happens is we think it's just a more knowledge approach. And we just try to drive this content into their head, but it never reaches their heart and never comes out of their mouth to their peers.

So they become, you've heard the illustration of the Dead Sea versus the Sea of Galilee. Sea of Galilee is alive and teeming with life. The Dead Sea is dead. I've been in the Dead Sea. I've been in the Sea of Galilee.

I tried to walk on water just because I thought it'd be kind of fun. I did not succeed. I got it on film because I'm in youth ministry. That's what we do. But the Dead Sea is dead because it's got an inlet and no outlet.

The Sea of Galilee is alive and teeming with life because it's got both an inlet and an outlet. And I think one of the things that we need to do is make sure that we have a outlet for the gospel. I'll give you an example.

When I was in this youth ministry growing up, man, they gave us truth. They gave us knowledge. They gave us theology. They gave us worldview. We got apologetics. But we had it in the context of mission.

So every Friday night, we'd go out and do Friday night soul winning, you know, as an independent fundamentalist church, but we'd go share the gospel. And I wanna tell you this. I did that from the time I was about 11 or 12 to the time until I graduated from high school.

By the time I was 15, I knew. I mean, I was ready for the Philosophy 101 Prof at any university because I've already had 50 conversations with people that would ask the same questions. Not only that, but I knew what it meant to depend on God because I was terrified to share the gospel.

So it makes you depend on him. Apart from Jesus, you can do nothing. But when you plug into the vine and either the, I mean, you know, the branch, you plug into the vine, you can do all things through Christ, right?

He gives you the boldness, the courage, the strength, makes you study God's word because you wanna know what it says. It makes you depend on the spirit. I think we need to make evangelism top of funnel when it comes to the discipleship process.

I hear this a lot from parents, but especially youth leaders. They'll say, well, I don't think my Christian kid is ready for evangelism yet. I'm like, okay, so they need more theology? Yes. They need more lessons?

Yes. More Sunday school? Yes. More small groups? Yes. How's that worked out for the adults in your church? Are they actively sharing their faith? And usually the answer is no. So more content is not the answer.

I think more mission is the answer. And along the way, when you're doing mission, you'll get that content. You'll learn apologetics. You'll go to gotquestions .org, right? I mean, this next week, I'm doing a Dare to Share event called Lead the Cause because we call the Great Commission the cause because the Great Commission just sounds like something our great, great grandparents did, right?

We call it the cause because teens are in the causes. And guess what? We're gonna have a prayer day, a care day, a share day, and a dare day. So they'll be out in the streets of Denver sharing the gospel of Christ.

And we promote gotquestions .org as a place they can go to get more information because why they're hungry for that. I've been out on mission sharing the gospel. I got to ask these questions and they're dependent on the spirit.

I think we got it all twisted. The Western mindset is very linear. First, we start with 101, then 201, then 301,.

Then 401.

The 401 is usually evangelism. By then, nobody's going to the class. They've already been institutionalized. We got to make evangelism the 101 and it'll lead, it'll accelerate the rest of this stuff. So I think we got to bring it back.

Why Apologetics and Evangelism Belong Together

So you touched on it briefly and this is something that I've taught teen classes and co-led youth group at our church many times. And what importance do you place on apologetics? So teaching teenagers how to defend their faith and versus, I mean, just standard Bible knowledge and all that comes together in a packet, all that's necessary, but how important is apologetics and what we're trying to communicate to our teens?

I think it's really important. And again, I think evangelism and apologetics should be like siblings. They should be working together. If you do evangelism without apologetics, you're going to have an uninformed faith.

If you do apologetics without evangelism, you're just going to become a theological nerd, right? You want to have evangelism and apologetics welded together, right? And you break, I also think with this culture of Gen Z, you don't lead with apologetics, generally speaking.

So it's more like Acts 17, when Paul is talking to the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers at the Areopagus, he doesn't lead with apologetics. He tells the gospel as a story, right? And at the end, like a love letter, and P .S., he's given proof to this by raising Jesus from the dead.

He uses apologetics as the P .S. to the love letter of the gospel. And that's when some believed, some mocked, and some said, we want to hear you again on this subject. So I think we just need to reframe it.

And I also think there's a mental stronghold, maybe a spiritual stronghold, that I have to learn all the apologetics first before I share my faith. And that is a lie. So what we tell teenagers is, remember this phrase, I don't know, but I'll find out.

Let's keep talking. And then you go to GotQuestions .org, or Josh McDowell, Sean McDowell, whatever. I mean, you get, talk to your youth pastor, study the scriptures, get the answer, go back. Because now you're continuing the conversation.

So I would say, I call it street apologetics. That's how I learned my apologetics, is in the streets. By getting asked questions, I had no clue, and say, that's an excellent question. And go back and study and figure it out.

And honestly, you did not ask me to say this, but I think GotQuestions .org is so good, so simple, so ingenious, to be able to just go there and find the questions to your answer. It's just such a great tool.

And your answers are theologically solvent, but for, I was a roofer for eight years, so I call it, you make it blue color clear, right? You make it, you put it on the bottom shelf so anybody can understand.

It's not simplistic, but it's simple. And you guys have done a great job at that.

Well, thank you for the encouragement. And what you said earlier, I give the same advice to adults all the time, that sometimes, I don't know, but I'll find out, is the best answer you can give someone.

I hear so many people, who they ask a question they don't know the answer to, and they get flustered, and they try to hack their way through it, and end up giving a terrible answer, like, no. And that sort of situation, a, I don't know, but let me do some research and get back to you.

And then if you actually get back to them, they're already open, because hey, they're the ones who asked you that question, and they appreciate the fact that you spent the time to dig into it. And at the previous office building we worked at, I ate way too much pizza from the pizza place that was nearby.

And I got to know Bob, the manager of the store, and he kept seeing the GotQuestions logo on the shirt I was wearing, and started to ask me about it. And then started, like, every week, I'd go back to pick up a pizza, and he'd ask me a new question.

And just from doing GotQuestions for nearly 20 years now, I can usually give at least a semi-decent answer, but every once in a while, he'd ask me one that's like, huh. It's like, that's a really good question.

Let me get back to you. And I always got back to him, and he was super appreciative of that. And I definitely know it's the same with teenagers, that they don't like a know-it-all, especially those who clearly don't know it all.

So again, that is a perfectly acceptable response, and oftentimes that is the best response we can give.

Amen.

Why Teenagers Matter in the Body of Christ

Yeah. So we have a site for teens called 412teens .org. It's based on 1 Timothy 4 .12. Do not let anyone look down on you because you're young, but set an example in the faith and so forth. What are some ways that you see, maybe the church as a whole, tend to look down on teenagers?

And what are some ways that teenagers can be considered valuable contributors to what we do in the church as the body of Christ?

Well, think about it this way. Chances are, most of the disciples were teenagers when they began to follow Jesus. And when I heard somebody say that once, and I thought they were crazy, I was preaching at a Billy Graham School of Evangelism, and an old black pastor said, you know, Jesus was a youth leader.

I'm like, what are you talking about? Matthew 17, 24 through 27, Peter and Jesus and the disciples go into Capernaum, but only Peter and Jesus pay the temple tax. He says, go cast your line into the water and pull out a fish.

He's got, you know, a drachma tax, two for you, two for me. What about the other disciples? There's no indication that they pay. You cross-reference that with Exodus 30, verse 14. The temple tax, which is originally the tabernacle tax, was only for those 20 years old and older.

So if I'm reading that right, Jesus was most likely a youth leader with one adult sponsor, Peter, right? And one really rotten kid named Judas and no budget. And with that youth ministry, he changed the world.

And it kind of explains some stuff, you know, like when the 72 come back and he's like, oh Lord, Father, I thank you. You revealed this stuff to little children. I mean, not old enough to go to war, according to the Old Testament, 20 years old or older.

Not old enough to pay taxes, but that's who God revealed himself to. So I would say if Jesus took teenagers seriously, we should probably take teenagers seriously. And if you look at it, if you scroll back through some of the great awakenings, you know, the first great awakening with Whitfield and Wesley and the boys, Jonathan Edwards, who was a chief historian of the first great awakening, records the revival has been chiefly amongst the young.

And it was primarily a student movement, a teen movement, an early 20-something movement. It was a young person's movement. And you see that with D .L. Moody. You see that with Spurgeon and his preacher boy.

I mean, you gotta go throughout history. You'll see young, God loves to use young people. So I would say don't underestimate. Don't wait till they're old enough to tithe and sit on a committee, because really that's not the essence of the Christian life.

The essence of the Christian life is mission. Let me put it another way.

It's cause.

So the greatest cause, we've already talked about, what we do is lead the cause at Dare to Share. The greatest cause is the cause of Christ. So what if we mobilize teens to not just stop human trafficking, because they're gonna get involved with causes, but also stop soul trafficking, because the biggest trafficker in the universe is Satan's been trafficking generations to through hell and to hell, right?

Let's not just feed the hungry bread. Let's give them the bread of life. Let's not just give the thirsty water, but the living water. Let's not just build the homeless a house on earth. Let's build them one in heaven too.

And so if we recalibrate the Christian life as the greatest cause, that's what Jesus did. What is his discipleship strategy? It was a three and a half year mission strip, separated by trainings along the way.

He did his theological training usually on the road, on mission.

See that fig tree?

Here's why it's cursed. Boom, here's this. I mean, he would teach along the way. What if we did that with our teens? I think we could flip this thing, right? We all know that you were living in a post-Christian nation and the trajectory of the rejection of the historic Christian faith is skyrocketing.

How are we gonna close that gap? We gotta close the gap with people that come to Christ quicker and spread the gospel faster. That's young people. So I think if anything, we need to divert some of our missions funds to mobilize in the next generation for the gospel, because we're losing this nation.

We've actually lost it, I think. We've lost it. You know, if you look at it, this is no longer what we would say a nation that is, you know, built on, I mean, it was built on Christian principles, but we strayed far, far away from that.

So how do we change the nation? Well, you wanna change the heart of Rome? You change the heart of the Romans. What does that? It's not political programs. It's not moral reformation. It's not religious education.

It's gospel transformation. Thoreau said for every thousand, hacking at the leaves of evil, one strikes at the root. Only the gospel strikes at the root of evil. So let's strike at the root of evil. That's what I have in my family.

My family, again, the Denver mafia knew my uncles as the crazy brothers. So again, when a mafia takes your family as dysfunctional, it's not good. What changed them was the gospel. And everything else flowed out of that.

What can change this nation, what can change this world is the gospel. The best ones to do that, teenagers. One billion teens worldwide. One billion teenagers worldwide. The largest generation of teens in the history of the world.

Almost 30 million in the US. Well, rise up, church. Rise up, moms, dads. It's time to mobilize the next generation. A sleeping giant, sleeping giant in our midst.

Absolutely. When I look at some of the teenagers in our church, sometimes it can be a struggle. Like you're looking at them and are they paying attention? Are they getting what I'm trying to communicate?

But then you hear like next week, so what do you remember from last week? And then whether almost reciting your thing. So what encouragement would you give to people in youth ministry, people who are seeking to minister to teens that sometimes get discouraged from maybe a lack of response or the teenagers are more interested in video games or being on their phone or whatever.

Every possible distraction from the gospel. How do you keep them motivated to continue to recognize the amazing potential in teenagers?

Training Teenagers with Why, What, How, Now, Wow

So I'm gonna give you kind of five, our five training philosophies. I'm gonna give you one story and then I'm gonna give you one recommendation for a resource. So the way we train teenagers that dare to share is why, what, how, now, wow.

So why? We give them motivation. We motivate them to share the gospel.

What?

What is the gospel? We give them gospel fluency. We actually have an acrostic that lays out the gospel.

We have memorized.

How?

How do we begin the conversation? You know, we train them. We have the Life in Six Words app as a simple way to do that. Now, now let's go out and do it and then we'll come back and share stories. That's the wow.

That's the celebration. The now is the activation. The wow is the celebration. I remember, here's the story. When I was a middle school youth leader at Community Baptist Church, Nevada, Colorado, my first Sunday, these 21, seventh grade, eighth grade, middle school kids are bored to death.

I talk on evangelism. Halfway through, I go, okay, now we're going to go do it. And it's Sunday school.

They're like, what?

I go, we're going to go into the neighborhood. We're going to go door-to-door so we can pray for people and share the gospel. And we're going to come back and share stories. They're like, well, we can't do it.

It's Sunday school. We'll get in trouble with our parents. I go, number one, I'll get in trouble with your parents. Number two, at school, you take a field trip. We'll take a field trip. And we went out and then I couldn't get them back in.

And when we came back in, I did get in trouble, but I could not get them to stop talking about it. That became the reference point for the whole youth ministry. Let's go do it. So Dare to Share Live is a simple and free way to activate.

We also do the last Saturday of every month. Teams, we have youth groups from around the world doing what we call Go Share Day. We just go out and we pray, we care, we share the gospel. If you go to GoShareDay .org, there's a list of ideas, different tools you can use to do it.

It's not just a Dare to Share thing. It's anybody can do it. I go out with my teenage daughter and a group of her friends. We went out last Saturday to 16th Street Mall in Denver and had pizza, prayer and proclamation.

Gave slices of pizza to homeless people and good pizza. It was from the Mellow Mushroom. It's really good pizza. And we'd pray with them and then we'd share the gospel with them. And the teams need activated.

So GoShareDay .org, DareToShareLive .org, simple way to do that. Also as a resource, I wrote a book called Gospelize Your Youth Ministry. And gospelize, I-Z-E, is the old English word.

For evangelize.

I heard it in a Charles Spurgeon sermon. These are the, in this book are the seven values of a gospel advancing disciple multiplying ministry as found in the book of Acts in a research project that we did.

Powerful, powerful book. You can go to a DareToShare .org, download it for free on our website. So read the book, apply those values in your youth ministry and let's just stop being hearers of the word.

Let's be doers of it. Let's go do it. And let's primarily do it with the people we are around all the time. Because you can make converts on the streets but it really is hard to make disciples outside the context of a relationship.

Yeah, absolutely. So I always tell people that one of the weaknesses of internet ministry is the lack of follow-up, the lack of continued contact with people. You get people who come and read one of our pages that present the gospel and indicate to us a profession of faith and we praise God for every one of those.

But then most of them we never hear from again or we don't know if they're contacting us again because they didn't give us their email address the first time around. So real life contact with people, you can not only evangelize but also discipleship is obviously the way God has designed it.

Some see Matthew 28, 19 to 20 for the cause as you describe it. So Greg, thank you so much for being on the show today. Enjoyed our conversation. Listeners, I hope you found it encouraging and beneficial.

And again, as I said earlier, we'll have links to Dare to Share and other resources that Greg mentioned in the description field on YouTube and also at podcast .gotquestions .org. Greg, thank you again for being on the show.

Thanks again for the opportunity.

And so Got Questions, Bible as Answers, we hope you find them.