April 13, 2022 Show with Joel Saint on “Youth Groups in the Bible?”

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I'm so thrilled to have a first -time guest today by popular demand.

A lot of people have been asking me providentially recently if I knew

Joel St., the executive director of Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society, the host of the

Think and Reform podcast, and pastor of the Independence Reform Bible Church in Morgantown, Pennsylvania.

And I have been responding that I know of Joel, but have not had the privilege to meet him face -to -face yet, to my knowledge.

And we just recently began to correspond, and he listened to some of our recent interviews with Matt Trujillo, and Matt Knitzer, and others, and he told me that he would be delighted to be on the program, and I am thrilled that he has accepted my invitation.

Today we are going to be addressing a very controversial issue. I hope that I don't hurt the feelings of some of my friends.

I have friends who are actually pastors now, who began their careers in the ministry as youth pastors, and so I hope

I don't unnecessarily offend any of them. But today we are going to be discussing youth groups in the

Bible, how that study led Joel St. away from his job as a youth pastor.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Joel St.

Terrific to be on with you, Chris. Thanks so much for having me. Well, let our listeners know, first of all, about the

Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society. Yeah, we got started with the Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society here in the southeast of Pennsylvania about nine or ten years ago.

The reason why we did was we felt that the Bible addresses an awful lot of topics that aren't generally addressed, shall we say, from the pulpit.

Primarily, the ideas of what the Bible has to say about the city, about politics, and society.

We knew that the Bible speaks to these things. We also knew that pastors generally speaking tend to stay away from these items.

We started the society to lend our assistance to pastors, and that was, like I say, about nine or ten years ago.

We found out that most pastors aren't that interested in these topics, but we have continued with lecture series and some

YouTube videos letting people know some of our topics. Well, one topic was who would Jesus tax on taxation.

We also addressed political science from a

Christian perspective, also topics of what does the Bible say about education, criminal justice, property ownership, the right to keep and bear arms, that type of thing.

Our idea was to start from the Scriptures. If the Scriptures addresses these topics, then let's start there and go out from there.

That's really what we've been doing the last nine or ten years. By the way, have you ever had an uncomfortable conversation with a brother in Christ, might be even in pastoral ministry, might even be an author, from the

United Kingdom because they typically, not always, but they typically have a very different spin on the right to bear arms as we who are conservatives and patriotic

American citizens and constitutionalists and Christians, most of us, not all, but most of us here in the

United States cherish that right. Sometimes I have encountered real hostility on the other side of the pond from brethren who agree with you and I on most of the most important issues of the faith, and then all of a sudden you get hit by a sucker punch out of left field with a really amazingly negative response to that issue.

Have you encountered that yourself? I've not encountered that so much from folks across the pond in the

UK. I have encountered that from folks here. I live in Mike's County, which is a lot of plain

Mennonite history and a lot of pacifists here and so forth. And I'll just tell you about this one real quick discussion

I had with some. We got into an argument really about Romans 13, and they were telling me that the

Bible does not ever give permission to take a life. And I said, actually, it does.

If you go to Romans 13, you find out that the civil magistrate is actually called a deacon, a diachoness of God, and that's the one with the sword.

And I pointed out to Tim in that discussion, it was a good discussion, that God is calling the one who has the sword his deacon.

In addition to that, you have, for Samuel, for example, you have the Philistines, in order to control the

Israelites, taking away their weapons. It says that they didn't allow any blacksmiths in Israel, and they had to go to the

Philistines to get even their farm implements sharpened. And that's an example of the

Philistines, godless people, keeping the Israelites in check by exercising gun control, or let's call it weapon control at that time.

We also have, of course, Nehemiah telling his people, because they're being threatened by God's enemies, that they must fight for three things.

Their wives, or excuse me, their children, their families, and their property.

So I believe you can easily make a case for the right or the responsibility to keep and bear arms directly, not even indirectly, directly from the scriptures.

Yep, and every totalitarian dictatorship in history, the first thing they do when they gain power is remove guns from the citizens' possession.

And one can only imagine how differently things would have turned out if many, if not most, of the

Jewish population of Germany and those nations occupied by Germany, if most of those

Jewish families were in the possession of firearms. Things might have turned out differently. But we should return to that subject at some point in the future.

Also tell us about the Think and Reform podcast that you host. Yeah, and that's the same type of thing there,

Chris, where we want to take on the issues of the day. In these cases, obviously the

COVID, the shutting down of churches, that's been the more recent thing that we've taken on. How can we, if we really believe that the

Bible speaks to all of life, if we really do believe that, then there must be scriptural answers for what we're facing, no matter what we're facing.

Because if the Bible speaks to everything, then there's nothing new that the

Bible can't speak to. So that is what we do in the Think and Reform podcast. There's myself, my son

Luke, and my fellow elder John Bingaman, and another member of the

Middle Ancient Reformation Society, his name is Tim Mogul, and that's how we handle that. You've got to start with the

Bible, or you're not starting from... If you don't start from the Bible, you know you're starting from sinking sand, if that makes sense.

Yes, and now tell us about Independence Reform Bible Church of Morgantown, Pennsylvania. I'll tell you, thanks for asking about that.

We got our start there about eight years or so ago there, and I never really, even though I'm a

Bible college graduate, never really was itching to start a church. But what happened was

I felt like there was an awful lot of things going on in churches that I felt like I had to deprogram my children from, and that was difficult because I didn't believe that I had the option to be my own church, you know, my own little family, my own little family pastor.

I don't believe Scripture ever gave me that option. And I tried and tried to make things work, and in the end some friends and I began to pray about this, and we began the church, and by God's blessing, we're there.

I'm a lay pastor. I have a full -time job that I work.

But on the weekends I'm able to pastor, and I thank the Lord because I'll tell you, these times being able to preach and expound the

Word of God, honestly, Chris, it helps keep me sane in the crazy world that's going on out there right now.

Well, praise God. Now tell us about a conference that you have coming up from September 30th through October 2nd, 2022, this year, and I would love to be in attendance if my schedule works out.

Tell our listeners about this conference. Yeah, and I'd love to hear Dr. James White from you there on the,

I believe, 22nd, I believe you mentioned. Yes. Yes, I'm planning on coming.

Oh, great. In fact, make sure you bring at least 150 flyers.

I have a feeling we're going to have a bigger turnout with Dr. White there since he's so globally known.

Even I would say, why don't you bring 200 flyers for your conference that you could pass out at my luncheon, and you could also get up and announce the luncheon and describe it.

Oh, that would be terrific. I'm grateful for that. Yeah, I definitely plan on coming.

I'd love to hear Dr. White. I've listened to many of his debates, so that sounds like a pretty exciting time.

And I've organized many of those debates. Oh, good for you. In fact, did you organize some of the ones with Dr.

Robert Sungenis? Yes, I did, at least two. Okay. Yes, I happen to know him as well.

I don't know Dr. White, but I actually know Dr. Sungenis pretty well, actually.

Yeah, I am one of those few Reformed evangelical Protestants who actually likes

Robert's company when we're socializing. I have a great time having lunch or dinner with him.

I think he's got a great sense of humor. It's only when he gets behind that podium at a debate that sometimes

I think he loses his cool. But I really enjoy him as a friend. I make it clear to him, and he knows that,

I do not consider him a brother in Christ because he clearly affirms the heretical doctrines of Trent, which would include an apostate understanding of justification.

So I cannot extend the brotherhood to him and give him the handshake of a brother, but I do enjoy his friendship nonetheless.

Yeah, no doubt. And there was some pretty good debates between Robert Sungenis and Dr.

White, so I'm looking forward to hearing from him. But yes, about a week and a half later, we are organizing another

Future of Christendom conference. This will be about our fifth one, the end of September, the

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, which would be September 29th, 30th, and then

October 1st, of course, would be the Sunday. And our focus is going to be on courage. We want to hear from people, and we will have speakers who will talk about facing down the beast.

We will be hearing from Dr. Greg Wheeler, who had to face down the beast in York when a person that he had to administer ivermectin to was being stopped by police and hospital security, and he was authorized to administer ivermectin and face down those folks.

So we're going to be hearing from him. We're also going to be hearing from Pastor Matt Trewella, who, of course, you had on yesterday as well.

Yes. Our format is going to be 18 -minute TED Talk styles we call

Mars Express Talks, and we have found in the past that the 18 -minute talk is packed in, very interesting.

We move from topic to topic, and we have had tremendous response from both speakers and attendees that they love that format.

So we'll be introducing that format again. Great. Well, let me give our audience, and I hope to remember to repeat these websites.

But first, for the Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society, also known as MARS, go to midatlanticreformation .org,

midatlanticreformation .org. For the Independence Reform Bible Church in Morgantown, Pennsylvania, go to irbc .church,

irbc .church. And for all of the information that you need about the blog and podcast and the conferences that my guest,

Pastor Joel St., has been mentioning, go to futureofchristendom .org,

futureofchristendom .org. And as I said, I will intend to repeat that information later on.

Well, we have a... If there's just one more thing I could mention. Sure. We also sponsor a website called christendom .press

in which we attempt to look at the news from a Christian standpoint. We also attempt to report on news that is happening to, or international

Christian news as well. Great. Well, that's a new discovery for me, so I'm glad I know about that.

Yeah. We have a custom here on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, a cherished tradition, where whenever we interview a first -time guest, if that guest, which the vast majority of my guests are, is a born -again believer in Christ.

Sometimes I have nonbelievers on that may have written something that is important enough for the body of Christ to be educated about it.

And sometimes I have debates and other things that involve non -Christians, but the vast majority of my guests are Christians. And whenever we have a first -time guest who is a

Christian, we have them give a summary of their salvation testimony, including any kind of religious atmosphere they may have been raised in and what kind of providential circumstances our sovereign

Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to Himself and saved them, and that would include you.

So I'd love to hear a summary of your salvation testimony. Oh, well, thank you very much for the opportunity.

Extremely grateful to talk about that. I grew up in a solidly Christian home. My father took the

Bible very seriously, read it to us every night. The thing that I appreciate now so much was that he read the

Scriptures, Genesis to Revelation, and it was every night.

We would say that if there was ever a nuclear holocaust, there would be two things that would happen afterwards.

The cockroaches would be coming up from the bottom of the rubble, and my father would be calling us for family devotions.

Nothing stopped him. But in any case, he took the

Bible seriously. We, like I say, read it every night. I myself heard it, but I was a little rebel.

I mean, I still remember thinking that, even as a third grader, I remember a little kid thinking, well,

God, He can't tell me what to do, and I don't want to be a Christian. I was a little, so small.

I think I've met some pastors who have that. I've met some pastors with that same state of mind.

Yeah, what a shame. But yeah, I mean, there I was, and by God's grace,

I was convicted of my sin and the reality of eternal punishment in hell, and when

I was nine years old, I responded to that call and told the

Lord that I wanted to be saved, and by His grace, He saved me from my sins.

Praise God. And I'm grateful for that, for my father.

I will tell you this too. Even back in the 60s, he wanted us to go to Christian school.

He didn't trust what was going on in public school, even back then, and he worked really hard, he and my mom both did, so that I could get what they felt was the best possible education.

We were comparatively very poor, but my parents made sure that my brothers and I were going to get a godly education, for which

I am incredibly grateful for to this day. Praise God. And since we were mentioning

James White before, you're one of the few men that I know who was graciously and mercifully saved at an extremely young age.

I believe Dr. White said he was saved at eight, and I believe he was baptized not long after that.

By the way, my fellow Cumberland County residents might be interested to know, if you are familiar with Dr.

James R. White, who's one of the most brilliant apologists alive on the planet Earth, he spent a part of his youth growing up in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and was a member and was baptized at the

Bible Baptist Church of Shiremanstown, Pennsylvania, so I just thought

I'd throw that in there. I was not aware that he spent time in Mechanicsburg. How about that?

Yeah, his father sold mobile homes, I believe, for a living for a part of his life, in addition to being a pastor.

Right. But I'm sure that James will love reminiscing and driving around visiting some of those spots where he was raised when he comes out here this fall,

God willing. Please, folks, pray that nothing prevents him, such as a nuclear war that we may be involved in, or gas going up to $30 a gallon, or whatever it may be, because he is traveling by a mobile home these days to avoid the mandates on masks and airplanes and so forth.

Good for him. So please pray that nothing prevents that, folks. And now

I'd like to hear how you came to discover and embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace, which have been nicknamed

Calvinism and also Reformed theology, because I know from your written testimony that you began your

Christian journey as an Arminian. I did indeed. And my dear father was an

Arminian influence, but he could never really be consistent with it because he read the Bible too much.

And I know that almost sounds in such a way as maybe

I don't really necessarily want that to sound. But I'll give you a quick example.

Every night he would pray for a neighbor of ours, every night, in devotions. We'd go around, we'd pray, and he would pray for this neighbor who was a cursing, vile, oath -taking, foul -mouthed man every night.

And I've heard that this man has since died, but I've heard that he turned to Christ before his death.

Praise God. Yeah, absolutely. My father was just, it was every night he prayed for him, and it was a neighbor.

And my father, I don't know if he ever really put that together, that how do you really pray for someone's salvation and believe that their own will is ultimate, if that makes sense.

But anyway, my father prayed for him. What happened to me was

I began to think about, I realized at one time that there were smarter people than me, people more deserving, just better than me in every way possible, that didn't believe in Christ.

And Chris, I couldn't understand why I did. And I began to think, well, how much of my personal salvation is my responsibility?

I actually began to do this. I think it was at 50 -50. Well, no. Christ came from heaven and died a horrific, painful, humiliating, disgraceful death.

He was made a disgrace. And all I did was believe. And I was like, wait a minute, that doesn't sound like 50 -50.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought, you know what? It's God's grace that opens up my heart and my mind.

And it's nothing that I have. Amen. Absolutely nothing.

It is all, 100 % His grace. And even illustrations of the Bible. For example,

Ezekiel talks about the fact that God found the Israelites. He uses an illustration of a newborn baby in the desert with no help at all.

Well, that's an idea of just no shot. Amen. That was me.

Amen. That was me. And so it came sort of slowly, if you will.

But by God's grace, it came thoroughly. Praise God. It reminds me of the logical conclusion you came to.

It reminds me of the lack of logical consistency of our dear

Arminian brethren. When I was listening to an interview on a radio station that I worked for for 15 years,

WMCA, 570 AM in New York, a Salem media affiliate. Andy Anderson was the talk show host.

And I was listening to a friend of mine, an independent fundamentalist, King James Only Baptist, a real great guy.

I loved him. A great friend. And I was listening to him being interviewed. And he said emphatically to Andy Anderson, I thank

God that Jesus Christ 100 % completed the work of redemption on Calvary's cross that I required to be saved.

He did it all. So I called in. This was a live call -in show. And I said, brother, oh, what great news.

I didn't know that you'd become a Calvinist. And he said, oh, what do you mean, brother Chris? I don't know what you're talking about.

I said, well, you just said that Jesus Christ 100 % completed the work of redemption on the cross. That must mean you're a

Calvinist. He goes, how do you mean that? And I said, well, if he died for every single person, then we're all going to heaven.

Every single person on the planet Earth, right? He goes, no, no, I don't believe that. And I said, well, think about your inconsistency then, brother.

Yeah, right on. I love Spurgeon, who you probably have heard what he said about this.

He said, this is Charles Spurgeon now, a man who loved Christ and loved his neighbor, who said, some people call it

Calvinism. I call it the gospel. Amen. Well, when we come back,

I want you to complete your testimony by sharing a little bit about how you knew that you received the call into pastoral ministry.

And then we'll get into our main theme about how you departed from the youth pastor mindset.

And let me remind our listeners, I have dear friends who are really theologically sound pastors today that actually began their ministries as youth pastors.

I don't even know how much of what my guest has to say today that I will agree with.

I have a feeling I'll agree with much of it, possibly even all of it, because I have, as an observer from the outside, have a lot of problems with what

I have witnessed in the youth group movement within the church. So I'm eager to hear what my guest has to say.

But please keep an open mind and be prayerful and don't immediately reject what my guest has to say, just because you may have a bias about this.

But if you have questions of your own, even if you are a youth pastor, even if you are 100 % in favor of youth pastors and youth groups, please send in your question to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, your country of residence, if you live outside the

USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say you are in agreement with our guest, for instance, and you're in a church that is very strongly focused on a youth ministry, a separate youth ministry with a youth pastor, and you don't want to identify yourself at this point.

Well, we could understand something like that, being a reason to remain anonymous. But if it's just a general question, please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence.

And that email address, once again, is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. We'll be right back with Joel St.

right after these messages. ♪♪♪

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We are now back with Joel Saint and he is pastor of Independence Reform Bible Church of Morgandown, Pennsylvania.

We are discussing or we are about to discuss youth groups in the Bible, how that study led

Joel Saint away from his job as a youth pastor. Before we enter into that key discussion that is the main issue of our program today, how did you know that you received a call from God to enter into pastoral ministry?

You know, thinking of the word, the one that Paul is saying there to Timothy, I believe, you know, the one who desires the office of the bishop desires a good thing.

I actually, there's a sense in which I looked out and I saw a need and that pretty much was my call, if you will.

When I first got into the youth ministry, however, let me back up to that point, I just love the idea of teaching the next generation.

I still do. The reason for that is I happen to believe that the, you know, we often say that young people lose their faith in college.

It's my belief that the youth lose it far before that and I believe that the junior high age, that age of 12, 11, 12, 13, sometimes even younger, is when younger people are putting together their worldview, they're trying to find out what makes sense, what's consistent.

And I've said to my congregation that at that point it's really important for fathers and mothers, fathers especially, to model a consistent walk with Christ like my father did for me.

My father failed at times, but he was consistent. And what we find is that children can survive failure from their father.

They cannot seem to survive hypocrisy. And it's just, if parents, especially fathers, are hypocrites in their

Christian walk, it's so hard to fix that. And I wanted to certainly address the worldviews of younger people, and that was one of the things that got me interested in becoming a youth pastor to begin with.

Well, let's open up Pandora's box now and enter into this realm where you began to do a study of the scriptures in regard to youth pastors.

And in fact, that may even upset people by saying I don't think there's anything in the

Bible that describes an associate or assistant pastor.

I see two offices, elder and deacon, and elders are pastors, and so are bishops, and so are overseers.

But having said that, tell us about this study that you began and what it was that began to trouble you about your own position as a youth pastor and the concept in general.

Well, first of all, Chris, I just want to say congratulations for opening up this particular topic.

Good for you. Especially since I would say, and maybe some would disagree, but we all have our ideas of what a legitimate church is.

Owns their own building, certain budget size, maybe certain staff size, and one of them could be, in the minds of a lot of people, youth group or youth program.

And so we're really touching the apple of the eye of some folks here. So well done by you to,

I think anyway, going this way. There goes all the financial support for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And it's interesting, one of the reasons why I think this subject is so important, and as I said at the outset,

I don't know, I'm not a mind reader, and I've never had a discussion with you on this before. I don't know how much of what you are about to say

I'm going to be in agreement with. I have a feeling, knowing who you are, from the descriptions of others and reading your website and so on,

I have a feeling I'm going to be in great agreement. But this issue is the presence of a youth group is one of the deciding factors for a multitude of Christians as to what church they join.

I know theologically reformed Christians who will join an

Arminian church because they have a flourishing youth group. But anyway, you go into your own explanation of what happened.

So here we go. Yeah, so here's what happened.

I was a youth pastor. I was also teaching in a Christian school in basically an independent

ISCA, Independent Fundamental Churches of America church. It was a church that I grew up in.

And there I was, a youth pastor, really enjoyed it. My wife and I were continuing to have children while I was there as a youth pastor.

I began to notice something, and this troubled me. I began to notice that it seemed to me like the children from Christian families didn't really need me that much.

I also noticed that the children from families that were completely ruined were nearly beyond my health.

And I could try, I could do what I could, but it seemed like the damage from a broken family was really hard to get over.

So I began to think about this. I began to think about what, where did the whole idea of the youth group come from?

And I knew that it was a Hitler thing, it was a Stalin thing. I mean, I hope

I'm not offending too many people here, but the idea of the youth group, in a modern sense, you go back to Stalin, you go back to Lenin, you go back to Hitler, and you, in order to change the values of the parents, they put children in youth groups, and the children then would adopt, abandon the values of the parents, and adopt the values of the group.

In fact, this would be a good time to warn those churches that do have youth groups, please do not choose brown as the color of your uniforms.

Yeah, right, brown shirts. Don't do that! Don't do that!

Or wear red scarves. Right. Either. Please don't do that.

Yeah, exactly. So anyway, this was troubling to me, but it wasn't a deal -breaker to me.

And I began to read the Bible more about this. For example, when I was a youth pastor,

I don't know if this is a trend anymore, but when I was a youth pastor, late 90s, what was happening was there was a big trend to have separate services, one for the kids and one for the adults.

And I remember reading in Peter, 1 Peter, I believe, if you're a 1st or 2nd Peter, I believe it's 1

Peter, where Peter talks about the younger being submissive to the older, and I remember thinking, well, how are we going to do that if we separate everybody?

And the idea of all the separation was very troubling to me. As I thought about this further,

I studied the Bible and began to think about what is a good youth pastor? What are the characteristics of a good youth pastor?

Well, every youth pastor knows the answer to this already. One, he has time for the kids. Number two, he has a great interest in the kids.

Number three, he's willing to be with the kids. And number four, he's willing to teach them the Bible.

I think there's a fifth one now in most youth churches. He has to be extremely funny, but that was not there then.

But the first four, time, interest, attention, be with the kids and teach them the

Bible, I realized, Chris, that that's a perfect description of a father. And I thought to myself, what am

I doing here? Am I like a substitute parent here? Again, not a deal -breaker, but troubling.

So I began to study the Bible, began to read books. The books were not real helpful to me.

The best I could do with books, people saying things like, well, you know, David was a youth when God worked with him, so we have youth groups.

Well, that wasn't working for me. Let me say in the middle of this, if I may, that I'm not against youth work at all.

Jesus Christ was a youth worker. He said, suck up the little children to come to me. And he sets a child in the midst of it.

That's youth work. That's a different animal from this youth group idea that has its own identity separate from the

Church. Well, here's where things got real dicey for youth pastor

Joel Singh. I went to the Bible, and I discovered youth groups.

Chris, I'm going to ask you if you can imagine what I found. Nothing? Actually, it's worse than that.

I found three. Okay. Not too good. The first youth group

I found was that group that mocked Elijah. Or Elisha, excuse me.

And that to me is the first, well, maybe not the first, but that's an idea of a gang.

Just a bunch of kids wandering around Israel in a really apostate time. No family there.

What do a bunch of kids, what do they do mocking Elijah for? But that was a youth group not really, really very encouraging.

I found another youth group, and that was that stellar group that Rehoboam addressed.

He listened to their information, their counsel, which wasn't too good.

Tell all the people that you're going to be worse than Father Solomon was.

And we know that that did not go over well. It split the kingdom. Rehoboam, listening to his peers, split the kingdom.

After that, the kingdom was permanently split. Rehoboam almost got killed himself, and his tax collector actually did get killed over that.

And by the way, going back to Elisha, that's also a reminder to the kids, don't make fun of bald guys at church.

I mean, God actually released a bear on these kids who ate them.

Yes. Making fun of bald guys has a bad history in the

Bible. You might want to... You're going to want to remember this.

Definitely. And so there was that, and then there was... And then the third one was the most terrifying for me.

This was in Daniel 1, where Nebuchadnezzar set up...

He had 70 youth, young men, and you can read about Daniel 1, and he set up his basic youth group, and his idea was to teach them the literature of the

Chaldeans. His whole purpose was to separate the values of the kids, of those youth, from their parents.

He was going to teach them to be good little Babylonians. And I was like, oh man.

This is not... That was my little...

That's a real short history, then, of my little foray into what the Bible has to say about youth groups.

In fact, we're going to have to go to our midway break right there and pick up where we left off. Please keep in mind, folks, please be patient, because the midway break is always longer than the other breaks in the show, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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Before I go to any of the listener questions that we have waiting for you, if you could continue what you were saying.

You basically told us before the break how you reached the point where you had abandoned the concept of the youth group, something that you were personally involved in as a youth pastor, and if you could pick up where you left off.

Sure, certainly. So I talked about the three youth groups that I found in the

Bible, none of which were, shall I say, encouraging me with the idea that this was a biblically supportable idea.

Again, to make it clear, youth work absolutely throughout the scriptures. Can you give a distinction, and let me give you an example, and you may even disagree with me on this.

I think that the church has a liberty to have special events for the youths, to have adults accompany them on trips, to have a special Bible study after the worship services where you are not creating a counterculture within the congregation by basically pitting the youth against the pastor and his preaching and teaching ministry where you're not having separate worship services or anything like that.

And even beyond that, I have supported para -church organizations that are primarily an outreach to youths not from Christian families, and youths from churches very often get involved in these organizations as missionaries and evangelists to other kids that are lost.

But do you have a problem with those kinds of things? No, and let me explain why.

One of the things that I saw happening was the key word you mentioned there was the counterculture, or the idea that we have a group that develops its own mores, its own, shall we say, hierarchy.

That was a concern to me. I can give some examples. I remember seeing this. I did events as a youth pastor where just a few youth workers and me, and what always happened was the hierarchy just kind of appeared out of nowhere.

And what I mean by the hierarchy, I'll say the in -crowd and the nerd herd, if I can say it that way.

And it just developed that way. You know, you have the group that whatever they said went and everybody laughed at their jokes.

And then you have the other group on the other end that nobody laughed at them and they were just out. And I still remember,

Chris, how that used to bother me so intensely. Like, this is not what I want.

This is not good what's happening here. I also noticed something else. When I did events with, especially with fathers, and there was a critical mass of fathers in Ornette, and we were having a good time, we were, you know, maybe we were playing a ball game or going someplace, and all the bus, whatever, and a lot of the fathers were interacting with the kids, oftentimes interacting with kids that were not their own, that whole hierarchy disappeared completely.

And it was so much better. So I actually couldn't agree more with what you're saying.

It's that counterculture thing, which ruins everything as far as I'm concerned, which the

King Nebuchadnezzar actually wanted. And so ultimately, I don't want to copy

Nebuchadnezzar or Lenin or Stalin or Hitler or anybody else. I want to copy the scriptures, and when it comes to teaching the next generation, the scriptures are clear.

You, Deuteronomy 6, you fathers, you mothers, you teach them to your children, you talk about them when you sit down, when you rise up, when you lie down, when you walk by the way.

It's your job. And you will either fail at your job or you will succeed at your job, but it is your job, and you are not allowed to farm it out to anyone else, if that makes sense.

Yes. And do you have anything to conclude this portion, or should we go to our listener questions that we have so far?

Just one quick comment. Sure. The last chapter of the

Old Testament, we have 400 years, final years before this, you have a statement that God says,

I'm going to send to you Elijah, he is going to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and also the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

I believe that there is a sense in which we fathers have abandoned our responsibility, and we've substituted the youth group.

It's not working. Great. Well, we have an anonymous listener who says,

I'm remaining anonymous because my own congregation has a youth group, although I don't know if it would fall under the category of the kind of group that you would disapprove of.

But I have heard from churches overseas that actually do not want churches here in the

United States and in other areas to send youth groups over for mission trips.

They far prefer getting the financial assistance that they need to accomplish those things that they must do to function as biblically faithful churches, and the trips of youths overseas really wind up very often wasting the time of people over there, and it turns into more of a joy trip than a real missionary effort.

What are your thoughts on that? Boy, we're jumping into it, aren't we,

Chris? Here we go. Here we go.

In my experience, I've... Okay, well, you have me on, Chris. I don't know what kind of fire you're going to have to put out later, but hey,

I'm just... In my experience, the idea of the youth missions trip is basically

Christian tourism, as far as I can tell. It's...

In my experience, very little mission work actually gets done. I would have to say this.

If you're going to do a missions trip, start here. Start here in America. Go out to a local mall.

Go out to your local town square. Engage people. I don't mean just pass out tracts necessarily, as good as that is.

Try to engage in a discussion. If you can do that here, then perhaps you can do that overseas.

Please, if your missionary activity isn't working here, as a friend of mine says, please don't export it.

In fact, I would add to that, and I've seen this happen, send the kids from your church to a local ministry here in the

United States, and have them be involved in physical labor to help that particular organization get accomplished what they need to be done.

Painting and things. Of course, with adult supervision and assistance. That kind of a thing, where they're actually, in reality, helping.

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yeah. Plenty of opportunities here. Why not work here?

I've been in on some of these discussions since I've been out of it. I remember hearing of one youth missions trip and it was no,

Chris, it was no missions at all. It was, this day we're going to go visit here, and this day we're going to go visit this museum, or whatever.

Then we're going to go to the beach for a whole day, and there was no missions at all. But I get the idea of it.

I get how it works, because you would never be able to raise the money for the missions trip if you said, we're going to go touring.

So you have to throw missions in there, and missions is, of course, the thing that opens up the wallets of Christians in general.

I mean, forgive me for sounding cynical. I don't want to. I'm just trying to identify the way

I believe that it is. Thank you, Anonymous. We have

CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says, it really irritates me when

I see youth groups being created in local congregations where it is palpably obvious that they have these groups in existence just to lure in new members who want these groups to basically babysit their children.

These groups do, as you have mentioned, become counterculture movements within their own churches very often, and the substance is lacking in many of them where you can talk to these children involved who are members of the church, or at least children of members, and it seems that they don't even understand the gospel, and the gospel is not even really present in many of these groups.

Boy. Boy. Okay. Let's just say it this way.

When you have a counterculture going on, oftentimes it's real

Bible study that takes the beating the worst, because when the counterculture occurs, what happens is it's not studying the

Bible so much. I'm sure there's exceptions, and I know there's exceptions, but generally speaking in my experience here, what happens is you have the counterculture happen, and then those kids who really want to study the

Bible, they're the ones that are out of it, and the cool kids are sitting in the back, baseball caps pulled low over their eyes, texting each other, and making fun of the leadership and the kids who actually want to study the

Bible. Boy, Chris, I know I'm really stepping into it here, but that counterculture thing is, in my experience, not conducive to real

Bible study. We have, oh, thanks, CJ. We have another anonymous listener who says,

I have to tell you that although I may not be in favor of all kinds of youth groups, my life was benefited enormously by active involvement in youth groups, which actually got me involved seriously in the main activities and worship of the local church where I am from.

I can remember as a child and as an adolescent having no interest in the worship of God until someone really took the time to reach out to me with love and tenderness and biblical astuteness in order to make me recognize what

I was missing by my disobedience and rebellion against my parents and family.

I cannot think in a million years that I would be where I am today as a faithful member of a church without my youth group.

Yeah, I'm glad somebody, I figured someone would say something like this, and I appreciate what was said, and I appreciate the clarity.

What's intriguing to me is the writer says the youth group was important. It seems like, if I heard it correctly,

Chris, it was someone, it wasn't actually the group, but apparently the group was not a bad thing.

Apparently the group was helpful, but ultimately it was a worker, it was a person that actually reached out to the writer there, which is what made the difference.

And that is what I would like to see more of. I would like to see a lot more adults reaching young people.

Can we do this while bypassing that counterculture? I believe we can, and I believe that's what we should strive for, if that makes sense.

I hope I'm speaking to the listener here. Perhaps you should go through some of the main elements right now, because we may be unnecessarily offending some people who misunderstand where you are coming from.

Why don't you go through some of the main points that separate an unhelpful, unbiblical, perhaps even anti -biblical youth group and biblically sound and obedient youth work?

Sure, yeah, great question. So let's talk about that a little bit. And to the point you raised earlier, what can happen is someone can be, quote unquote, against youth groups, and then we have to over -worry ourselves.

You know, like, oh, if a bunch of kids want to go out for ice cream after a Wednesday night Bible study or something like that, is that a youth group?

We shouldn't have that now, and that type of thing. And I certainly want to stay away from that sort of introspection, if you will.

My main concern is... Well, I'll take it back to what a Christian leader said years ago.

I remember hearing him say, a popular Christian leader, you would know his name if I said it. And he said that at a certain time, a teenager will get away from the values of his parents, and he'll look to his group, to his peers, for his values.

So what we need to do is shape the values of the peers through the youth group, because we know already that the child is going to abandon the values of his parents, his or her parents, if you will.

That is my concern right there. I do not see it as a valid thing, scripturally speaking, to set up, shall we say, an alternative church, wherein we can separate the values, wherein it naturally happens, where the values of the younger folks are separated from the values of the parents.

Going on to talk about this a little bit, I cannot accept the idea that it's an automatic thing that the children will abandon the values of their parents.

I want to bring up two examples from the Bible here very quickly, if I may. One is the example of what

I think is the most underrated man in all of Scripture, that being Lot. Lot was a prominent man there in Sodom.

We know he was in the gates. We know that he was well -known. And apparently his children were completely influenced by the culture.

On the other hand, you have Abraham, whose son Isaac was so influenced by Abraham, he was old enough, we know he was probably a teenager, he was big enough to carry the wood for the sacrifice, which would have been a substantial amount of wood.

He was still being influenced by his father. I would argue, Chris, that we have given up on the idea that children can be influenced by their fathers.

And I would argue that we need to get back there. Can we, rather, maybe

I could say it this way, rather than attacking the idea of the youth group, maybe we should say, maybe

I should say, let's look, let's work hard at having dads, especially, and moms, but especially dads, pro -Malachi, with the passage of the quote from Malachi chapter 4 earlier, what can we do, how can we do, how can we work positively to encourage fathers to be the number one influence in their children's lives, as my father was with me, and frankly, as his father was with him.

Amen. And something that I have experienced in a negative way, observing the youth group movement,

I have acquaintances who profess to be theologically reformed, conservative, not necessarily confessional, perhaps, but who declare that the doctrines of sovereign grace and the doctrines and the theology of the primary reformed confessions are a main part of their own

Christian livelihood, their lives and their pulpits and so on.

And they will tell me, at least on three occasions that I can remember, oh, we just hired a new youth pastor.

Oh, really? Oh, that's interesting. And they'll start describing the person and they'll say, do they believe in the doctrines of grace, reformed theology?

No, but we didn't think that that was all that important. The experience that the guy has working with youth in his former church is just so magnificent.

He has a stellar resume. We didn't really think that was important because the emphasis of theological training is being done by the elders, and we didn't really think it was that important.

I'm like, are you kidding me? If anything is fertile ground for an uprising of counterculture and a war against what is being taught from the pulpit is knowingly hire somebody that doesn't even agree with the theology professed by the church.

Boy, wow, that sounds amazing and extremely disappointing because by saying that, they're saying that theology and doctrine is not important for these teenagers.

And you're always teaching something. You're either teaching right or you're teaching wrong. In that case, you're teaching these young kids theology and doctrine, not important.

Don't worry about it. It's being taught. Very, very dangerous, it seems to me. Well, why don't you go into some more of the areas of concern that you have because there still might be listeners who think that we are disagreeing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and that we're making much ado about nothing and we are causing rifts and divisions amongst the members of the body of Christ for reasons that are uncompelling.

So why don't you really get into the nitty -gritty of why you think that this can be a dangerous movement.

Certainly. And as mentioned, well, I'll say it this way. I won't go back to what

I mentioned earlier. We need to take a step back if we really care about the future of the

Church of Jesus Christ, especially here in North America. We seriously need to take a step back. The numbers that I have seen are that 70 % to 80 % and Chris, maybe you've seen other numbers and if you have other numbers and maybe

I'm overstating the case, I'd love to hear back from you on this. The numbers that I've seen are that 70 % to 80 % of the next generation in Christian homes are leaving the faith.

Now, this should be a Chris, this should be a 25 alarm fire going on here, right?

I mean, this should be like, we should be having conferences on this. We should be like saying, whoa, what in the world are we doing?

Instead, it seems like this is being met with a shrug of the shoulders. Perhaps maybe this is a sign of the return of Christ, the great apostasy.

Don't worry about it and so forth. I would ask this question, this very serious question.

How has the existence of the counterculture, I'll say the counterculture youth group, put the brakes on this apostasy that's happening to the next generation or within the next generation?

I'm thinking right now of someone like the Apostle Paul who had an influence on the next generation.

And let me say, he wrote doctrine, he wrote letters. I'm intrigued that Paul had to save his life at one point by appealing to his nephew.

His nephew, he talked to his nephew, he said tell the officer that there's people about to kill me and you need to take this message.

And Paul trusted his nephew to take the message and the message took that, and the nephew took that message on behalf of Paul.

Paul had an influence on the next generation. Now, let me go a little bit further here.

And say this. Here we go. This is no turning back now,

Chris, but here we go. Chris, you're probably familiar with Charles Potter, the finder of the first Humanist Manifesto?

Yes, I've heard of him. Yeah, you've heard of him, yeah. You may or may not be familiar with his comment, and I don't have it in front of me, but it's easy to find, where he made the comment, this is back in 1933, he said, you know, what can the churches do within an hour or two?

We have them in our schools for 20 to 30, even more hours, and I'm botching up the quote, but I'm definitely getting the point of it here.

We have them for a lot more time than they have, and we're going to influence them a lot more than the

Christian parents will. The children are ours. I'm arguing that this influence is not just stopping with the schools, it's coming into the church, and should we not be asking ourselves, what is our responsibility here?

And our responsibility is to teach our own children? It must be possible.

I would argue that we've pretty much abandoned it, and we've said, look, I don't really, you know, parents, dads especially, look,

I'm not really the guy that knows theology. I'm going to turn that over to the church and to the youth group.

And it doesn't seem to be stopping the great apostasy, and we're not that far from being a completely secular nation.

I'll say this as well, and this will get some disagreement also.

I believe God has set us up in families. Grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren.

We know from the Scriptures, for example, that I, I have 22 grandchildren, just found out about a 23rd one on the way, for which we're excited.

I have a responsibility to my grandchildren. God has set us up in grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren.

He set us up vertically for godly influence. What have we done? I would argue we've set ourselves up horizontally.

Let's take the old folks and put them in the old folks' home. Let's set mom and dad out to work. Let's put the kids in various and sundry grades in school.

We've separated the family vertically, separated all from each other, and I believe it's not godly.

God has set us up horizontally. Let the grandparents teach the children and the grandchildren.

Let the grandchildren and children learn from the parents and the grandparents. I would argue that's the way

God has set it up in Scripture, and I would further argue that to go any other way is to go against His plan, and it's not surprising that we are experiencing what we are experiencing.

Excellent. One of the things that I have noticed and have heard from those doing evangelism on college campuses is that many who are in the mindset of the youth group or youth outreach actually have a wrong understanding about what youths that are being drawn by God are actually hungering for, and they think wrongly, according to these men that I respect who have told me about their labors on college campuses.

They have told me that people wrongly assume we've got to make the Christian music as close to the secular music that the kids love or they're not going to listen to it.

We've got to just totally play down any kind of notion of what might be considered respectable attire for something as important as a worship service.

We've got to just play all that down or ignore it or actually oppose it, and we've got to get our pastors up on the platform barefoot with T -shirts and to be totally not involved in the strangulation of dressing properly and so on.

And these men that have labored on the campuses have told me when

I have encountered those kids that are, even lost kids, but they have signs that they're being drawn by God, they want and they hunger for something that is truly reverent towards God and something that doesn't seem like a trick.

And I've been told that young people, millennials and so forth, hate the notion of being tricked and including in an attempt of trickery is to use the imitations of the world with a smattering of Jesus and Bible verses mixed in with it.

And I was wondering if what they were saying was accurate. And I had a conversation with somebody,

I know I've said this on the program before, a young lady who is actually the daughter or one of the daughters of the woman who led me to Christ before she was born again while she was living in Florida.

She contacted me and said, Chris, I want to go to a church, something that is theologically reformed like the church where you and my mother are members and if you could give me some recommendations.

I contacted a very major reformed ministry. They gave me a recommendation and I passed that information on and the young lady contacted me a couple of weeks later and she said,

Chris, I don't want to hurt your feelings. I really appreciate your help but the church that I visited, it was more like a rock concert than a worship service.

I didn't feel like I was really worshiping God. I felt very uncomfortable. Do you have another recommendation?

And this was from a girl, a woman, that identified herself as an unbeliever but she believed she was being wrong.

And that really proved, I mean, of course, this is not the case in every scenario, but it proved that this idea that the campus ministry workers were telling me was true.

Mm -hmm. Boy, wow, it just really did confirm it. Man, that's amazing.

Part of our difficulty here, I would argue, is that we have abandoned three -quarters of the

Bible. And this is what I mean when I say that. I hope I'm not wrong.

I would like to be wrong, I should say. If I were to say that an awful lot of folks that attend church and they attend these rock concerts slash worship services do not know what book in the

Bible comes before 2 Chronicles. And again, that's probably a little bit strong statement, but how much do we really know about the

Bible here? When we study the Bible, we see God's ministers, especially the

Old Testament prophets, who we just, you know, most of us don't even know that they don't even exist. The last thing they were, the very last thing they were, was relevant to the culture, if you will.

They were relevant to one person. They were relevant to God. And as I read what God had to say, said this to Jeremiah, said this to Ezekiel, you know, the idea of worrying about what people think about them was like last on the agenda.

For example, he says to Jeremiah and Ezekiel, listen, I will worry about who listens to you.

I will worry about what happens to you. I will worry about your future.

You, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, you worry about one thing and one thing only. Get my word right.

Do not mess with my word. You have no responsibility or you have no option to do that.

And I mean, there they are, Ezekiel laying on his side. They look, God sent Jeremiah down to the temple of all places to tell people that they're doing wrong things, that they're in great sin, they need to repent.

This idea, it seems to me, of trying to become relevant to the culture is antithetical to the approval by God.

Amen. And we have Christopher in Western Suffolk County, Long Island, New York.

Christopher says, do you think a part of the problems you are discussing are rooted in the wrong idea and the unbiblical idea that the only way to communicate biblical truth to lost people is to use a messenger or an evangelist that most closely resembles the people in that lost audience?

Such as people who think that you must have somebody of a particular ethnic group or skin color to reach a certain group that shares that identity.

Of course, I'm not talking about the language barrier where we need people who speak Spanish to evangelize people who only speak

Spanish, etc. But I'm talking about the overemphasis on sameness, and that would be why a lot of people think that the church needs to have groups that dumb down a youth group in order to make the group more reflective to younger people.

Boy, I love the questioner. I love him. Let's address that for a second.

First of all, when the twelve apostles, eleven and then they pick

Matthias with twelve, they went out in basically twelve different directions.

They went to North Africa, they went to India, they went up into Europe. In every case, these twelve apostles ran into human sacrifice in every case.

They were all, by definition, they were counterculture.

They were not from the culture of the people that they were going to. I mean, if you think about it, if you're going to evangelize the world and convert the world as the earth will be covered with the knowledge of the glory of the

Lord as the waters cover the sea, Christ told his disciples to go out and evangelize the nations saying that he has authority in heaven and earth.

If you're going to start with twelve disciples there, it's going to necessarily be a different culture.

Here's a different culture for you. How about Jonah going to Nineveh? There's cross -cultural.

Something he didn't want to do. Quite so.

Jonah, in his disobedience, turned out to be the most effective evangelist in all of recorded history,

I believe. And let's not forget that a

Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee of Pharisees, the Apostle Paul was the apostle to the

Gentiles. There you go. He did something that, you know,

God's ways are not our ways. I would have set that guy up as the head of the Messianic movement of the church and to primarily focus on evangelizing the

Jews, but that's not what God did. That is a fantastic point. You have

Peter. Wow, that's a great point. You have Peter who, you know, was pretty much the apostle to the

Jews who apparently was a Galilean, of course, but he wasn't as much of a, shall we say, an educated

Jew by a long shot. Nearly as much as Paul was. So that's a phenomenal point that I hope

I remember. And we have to go to our final break. It's going to be a lot briefer than the other breaks.

If you have a question, I would strongly recommend that you send it in quickly because we're rapidly running out of time.

I do want to ask a listener whose name is

Jordan. Jordan, if you will include in your question your city and state of residence and your country of residence.

You've submitted a question that does not give us that information. If you don't mind, if you could please resend your email with that information,

Jordan, we would be most appreciative. And again, that goes for you too. If you are sending in a question, unless you are remaining anonymous for a compelling reason, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

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I want to say a very quick word about my friend and sponsor Banu Gadi, pharmacist in New York City.

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We have Jordan in Redding, Pennsylvania, who says,

Joel, as always you put things so clearly I wholeheartedly agree with what you're saying.

I'd love to hear your take on kids coming to the youth group who aren't

Christians and are hearing sound doctrines. The struggle I have is that the parents are not

Christians and I struggle to get them to see the importance of their role, especially the dads.

Bingo. Right on. So difficult to replace.

We talk about the safety net for the family and it's really, really difficult.

And to respond to Jordan there, thank you Jordan for the compliment there. I would have to say this.

That what's needed is not necessarily a youth group. What is needed is a solid youth worker that takes an interest in that son or daughter, young man or young woman, from an unbelieving background.

The one thing we don't need is we don't need a counterculture youth group that reflects the counterculture, which is what it sounds like this young person is trying to get away from.

If that makes sense. Well thank you so much Jordan and thank everybody for listening because we have run out of time and I want to make sure that I give you all the websites of the organizations and the church where our guest is a leader.

First of all, the Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society can be found at midatlanticreformation .org

midatlanticreformation .org to find out more about the upcoming conference this September and October futureofchristendom .org

futureofchristendom .org and you can also find out more about the podcast hosted by my guest

Think and Reform. And last but not least Independent Reform Bible Church can be contacted at irbc .church

irbc .church that's the Independent Reform Bible Church in Morgantown, Pennsylvania. I really look forward to you returning frequently to Iron Trip and Zion Radio as a guest,

Joel. I think that I've found a new friend and I hope that the Lord continues to bless our cooperation on Kingdom work for many years to come.

Thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure. I want to thank everybody again for listening especially those who took the time to write.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater