Youth Sunday
Message Transcription
SUMMARY:
In this sermon, Bryan Brunson explores the impact of youth ministry and community involvement at Broadway Church of Christ. He begins by highlighting the various summer activities for youth, including Bible studies, service projects, and camping trips. Brunson shares personal experiences from these events, particularly a challenging moment during a Trek trip where students demonstrated what it means to "love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:39).
Brunson emphasizes the importance of being "here" - physically and emotionally present for one another. He uses the example of dropping off his son at pre-K to illustrate the need for trust in God and community support during life transitions. The speaker then delves into the concept of bearing one another's burdens, referencing Galatians 6:1-2. He encourages the congregation to actively participate in church life, recognizing that building a strong community requires consistent presence and involvement.
TRANSCRIPT:
Well, good morning Broadway. I'm going to do that again like we do in youth class. Good morning. Broadway. And when I get up here and I say good morning, it's never rhetorical. It's never rhetorical. I always want to know that you're having a good morning as well. Um, I could just walk off the stage. Um, Evelyn, thank you for reminding us that the stories are true, and doing so in a voice and a manner that actually reminds us of how true this word of God is, that everything that is written inside of there is true. It's knowledgeable. It's trustworthy. It's you. Sunday, you might be asking yourself, What is Youth Sunday? I'm asking myself the same question as I'm up here looking at you. Not really. Um, for for about 12, 12 weeks during the summer when students are out of school and they've got nothing to do, or maybe they're getting some summertime jobs and there's, there's all these different activities that they can be a part of. We just want to let you know about a couple of those things, because not all of you are like getting youth and teen emails anymore. You don't really, like, see the concepts of us like going to camp and Trek and Surf City and all these other things. So for just a little bit today, I want to pull back the curtain on what we've been doing over the last 12 weeks or so and shout out a couple of people as well.
But before we do that, I just want to say there was a video here, but the video is not here, so we'll post that on socials later. I want you to to just meet our youth leadership team. So this is myself. That's me, Brian and my lovely wife and my now three year old son, Barrett. You have Austin and Katie Bacchus, and there's Chisholm. So remember, Chisholm runs away. So here's a picture of him in case he does run away for the missing persons report later on today. This is Chisholm. Okay, Katie. Good. And then Greg and Courtney Johnson are actually on week two of serving on our youth leadership team with their crazy family. We love this youth leadership team. And we also have our two elders, Joseph Ellis and Richard Evans. Now I want to do something a little special. If you have served in youth ministry in the last, let's say, ten years, Would you stand for just a moment? If you've done anything with youth ministry. You've gone up there, you've taught a class, you've hosted a third day, you've gone to camp, you've gone on Trek, you've gone on junior senior road trip. Would you stand for just a moment? Yeah, we can clap for these people. I think that's a very worthwhile thing. All right. So now now we've seen just in the last decade of our church, if you have ever in the history of Broadway Church of Christ served in the youth ministry in some capacity, please stand.
Hey, teens, look around for just a second. So so I know that that leadership and churches have always taken different names. It's been deacons and now it's lights and different things like that. Each of you have played a vital role in the spiritual formation of our students and in the lives of families as well. And I just want to thank you for that. And I look back and I see all of our college students back, which is really amazing. I'm thankful that somebody poured into them in their time in youth ministry, that they are being continued to being poured into by members of this church. Our ministers on staff, that they're continuing to think that this is a very important part. I want you to to think for just a second about back to school. So in the Brunson house, it was a it was a really big deal this year. We've always done Sunshine Preschool here at Broadway the last two years. My favorite part of sunshine preschool is knowing that if something catastrophic happened, I was one wall away from my child. If he got sick or needed attention or something, that I could be right there and then at Miss Laura's Imagination Station, knowing that he was with somebody who I deeply cared about, that I knew was teaching him about Jesus, that was creating a safe environment for him.
Whenever you go to pre-K and Barrett is now at pre-K at Lubbock Cooper East, you have to be potty trained. You have to know how to do all of these different things. And we were cutting it very close to a number of these milestones that Barrett needed to make in order to get to pre-K, In fact, all the way up until Tuesday afternoon, I was getting worried about a couple of different things. A couple of markers that he needed to meet. And I asked Sarah in this very loving way. They're not going to not take him, right. Like, we'll be able to fix these things as time goes on, right? And in that moment is this amazing thing happened. And Barrett checked off one of those milestones. I had been praying for about three weeks. God, give me a spirit of power, love and sound mind. Not a spirit. A spirit that is rooted in fear or anxiety. Well, Wednesday morning rolls around and Sarah looks at me on Tuesday night and says, we're going to be up at 615. Barrett is going to be on his feet, walking around, putting his clothes on, getting his breakfast ready, waffles with mostly syrup. So a lot more syrup than waffles we're eating that morning. But what three year old actually wants to eat the waffle? They really just want the syrup, right? And so I my feet hit the ground.
I start getting Barrett ready. I start getting myself ready. Sarah is putting on her beautiful green dress, curling up her hair real nice. As she started a new adventure to third grade, she was asking herself to not be rooted in fear and anxiety for that day as well. As she interacted with new students, with new parents, and new administration as well, and a new team, and I was doing really good, I thought, we're going to make it. The lunches were all packed. Everybody got to school looking exactly how they needed to, hair done, outfits picked out. I was in my work clothes as well. Like I wasn't going to go back to the house and hang out for a little bit before I absolutely had to go to work. I went and picked up chick fil A breakfast for them at about 740. Sarah looks at me and goes, it's five minutes till the bell. In five minutes you've got to walk him down because I have to stay here, which means you're going to be doing this solo. Do you think you can do that? And I'm like, yeah, I've walked my child places before. And she said, no, but like, you're dropping him off somewhere new. And I was like, yeah, I recognize that. And she goes, okay, just so it's 743. And we begin walking down the stairs and I begin to just feel weights in my legs, like it's getting harder to move forward.
And I see this sea of parents that are all waiting in the discovery pod, the big lobby of the school, and they've got all these smiles on their faces. Some of them have one kid, some of them have like four kids at this school, and they're all smiling. They're excited. They've got this youthful energy about this first day of school. And I'm sitting there crying, biting my lip. I don't think that I want my three year old to be right here, right now. I want to hold him a lot closer. Take a deep breath. Spirit of power. Love, sound mind. God, give me a sound mind right now. Walked into that room and his teacher was immediately like, come on, it's his pre-K teacher. So she's got all this energy, right? Come on, come on, come on. And Barrett gets in the room and she says, Barrett, we're going to create this morning. And I just want you to pick one of these stations and start building something. He goes to the Legos and completely forgets about me. And I was like, this was supposed to be a little bit bigger deal. Like, I thought that we were going to like when I was a kid, when I was in pre-K and kindergarten, I couldn't get off of my parents legs. So I thought that he was going to be just like me. But he walked in. Their spirit of power, love, sound mind in the way that he interacted with these kids and these teachers all made me feel like it was going to be worth it.
I recognize that today many of you come here with one less person in your home, or maybe your kids started school for the very first time. Maybe you've lost a family member recently. Maybe something's gone on and you come here with a little bit more emotional baggage than normal. You are welcome here. You are seen here at this church. You're part of this community. So as we talked just a little bit about these teenagers and the wonderful things that have happened this summer up on the screen here, in just a second you're going to see a slide. So one of the biggest things that we did this summer were the weeks that we were in town on Monday evenings, we did a Names of God Bible study. So our intern, who is now a senior at ACU, she starts in just a couple of days. She's a Wildcat leader, so she is revved up and ready to go for all of the amazing things of welcoming students back onto a college campus. So on Monday night, we did the Names of God Bible Study over the spring semester. Her and her group did this, and she said, Brian, I think that teens would love to know the names of God, to hear and parse out all of these different names of God.
And so on Monday night, we met and talked about these five different names ABBA the Father, the father that created us, the father that we run to with these problems. We talked about El ROI, the God who sees and all of the situations that you're facing right now. There's a God who sees you right where you're at, and he wouldn't change where you're at for anything. You are here for a purpose. Today we talked about Jehovah Jireh. You might have heard this popular song on the radio that's like ten minutes long, but it's like the best ten minutes ever is. Jireh, you are enough. You're a God who provides every single need. Might not be in the way that I see that it's most fitting. But you are a God who serves us and loves us in the most fitting ways. So you're the God who sees. Elohim, the powerful creator, the Supreme one, that there are these invisible qualities of God that we know nothing about, but that he's eternal. He was at the beginning of time. He'll be at the end of time. And he's the creator of all things. And God created everything to be good, right? And then in Genesis, whenever he talks about people, he says, it's very good. We're supposed to be in community together. And then ultimately we have Immanuel, God with us. One of the first things we did this summer was an activity that we call Surf City.
So for four days in the morning and in the afternoon, we serve different organizations here in Lubbock with the volunteer center. For those of you who don't know, the Volunteer Center of Lubbock has an office in this building. All of their staff work here Monday through Friday with us, and we get to interact with them pretty frequently. I'm a part of some of the work that they do in Lubbock ISD and our other surrounding schools, but we worked with all of these different places, whether it was the Ronald McDonald House, Silver Star, Salvation Army, Boys and Girls Club, um, park cleanups or different things like that. Our students served in just some very small ways, like we baked cookies one afternoon. Don't ask me to bake your cookies. Ask Evelyn Fisher over there. She's very good at that. And I sat and I watched and I was like, don't even let me near the oven. Don't let me near the batter. I have no idea. They're sitting there eyeballing these cookies. And I'm like, yeah, that looks like it might make a cookie. I don't know if it's going to be fluffy or flat, like I just sat there and encouraged. I think I did a pretty good job of encouraging that afternoon. Right, guys? They're all looking at me very blankly right now, so I guess I didn't do as good a job as I thought, but we wanted them.
Everything that we do here at our church, whatever action, whatever thing that we're being involved with, has to fall under three things. Are you pursuing God? Are you building community? Are you unleashing compassion? This falls as one of our unleashing compassion on the community around us, and serving in some ways that people might not even know. Like, I'm sure that that park had more pieces of trash than we picked up, and that the next day there were more pieces of trash because the wind had rolled in, but that we unleashed compassion just by trying to beautify our city, or trying to partner with the Ronald McDonald House in making a hard time for a family a little bit easier Um, we're going to come back to Trek and I just put pictures up of this. Austin helped lead that trip. Austin deserves a gold medal for having to get me up and down the mountain. Not so much the teens, but Brian. Because if you look at me, do I look like a mountain man? Do I look like somebody who can very easily carry a £50 pack a couple of miles and pitch a tent and filter water and cook food over a jetboil? I mean, if you look that up in the dictionary, it basically is me, right? Wrong. But our students said, hey, we would really like to start going on Trek again. And I said, that's great, I know nothing about it.
You would die if I had to lead that trip. And that's like, y'all are laughing. But it's true. I don't I don't even remember how the tent went up. Like, if we put Terry's tent right there, the one that I helped put up, I don't think I could do it on my own. He had a lot of help, but he was helping other teenagers at the same time. I think he really trusted me to put it up, but I didn't do a great job But they said, we want to do this. And I said, find some adults. They found Austin. Austin said, I don't think I can do this alone. I think I'm going to grab Emily Carson. I think I'm going to grab Terry Sparks. And all of a sudden they plan this trip. They told me the numbers, they told me the places. They told me how tense we're going to get set up. They told me all of the details. And I looked at them and I said, cool, I'll drive the van. That's the only responsibility that I truly had over that week, over that weekend. But that verse that we just read, we're going to come back to that and talk a little bit more about Trek. And then at the second week of July, we went to camp 51 with churches from Kauffman, churches from San Antonio, Odessa and Conroe. I rehearsed that in my head a lot.
But you know, when you go down this long list of people, it was 265 kids at camp with us that week, all worshiping and serving together. One of the remarks that I got was, well, Broadway's really good at Nine Square. Well, no one wanted to come face us. Really. I don't think they wanted Joseph and I to slam it on them was truthfully what it was. Joseph got a really cool nickname that you're going to have to go ask him about after worship. What was the nickname that you got? Joseph. But we had a great time bonding there. We our theme was shine and the night that I Keynoted we talked about shining together, that our witness for Christ is so much better whenever we stand together, when we talk about the victories that we have through the cross, when we stand together and say, this is how God has rescued, redeemed and reclaimed parts of my life, and I'm going to testify to his goodness every single day. That's what we talked about. Matthew 2237 through 39. You just heard Haley read it just a few minutes ago, and he said to them, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment, and the second is like it you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Let me go back. Just a couple of slides right here.
I want you to look at these teenagers on this Trek trip. Um, you know, youth ministry is a really amazing and beautiful thing. You get to interact with teenagers, you get to interact with their parents, you get to interact with their younger siblings, and you get to watch them be excited about coming up into youth ministry. And it's a really beautiful thing. On this trip, I decided that this was going to be our verse for the school year. And I want to give you a couple of examples. Why I just told you that I'm not the most physically gifted mountain man that there's ever been. Now tennis and pickleball. Let's go hiking up the mountain. I'm not your guy. As we got to camp and we began setting up our tents, I started to feel like a little funny. You know, like whenever you're in the car and you're starting to be like, am I getting sick? Or am I just imagining this? I'm just going to look at the road for a little bit and see if that's the case. Well, I put up a tent and the food started coming out and I'm looking around and I was like, here's my moment. Am I going to be sick? Or is this just like anxiety getting to me? I got up the mountain. That was a really big deal for me. I was huffing and puffing the entire way when I got to see that view of the of Lake Stewart where we were camping, it all made it worth it.
But after about 45 minutes, my whole body shut down. I remember sitting on a log with my hood on and sitting like this. And every student just kind of would look at me and not say anything, which meant that I looked pretty, pretty bad. And then all of a sudden, I stand up and realized that I am suffering from altitude sickness. And that is going to be coming one way. And I just started as soon as I got to camp. All of a sudden, before I knew it, four different students and a couple of adults were around me. Brian, what's going on? What do you need that they stopped what they were doing and pitching their tents and ran over and came to check on me. And I'm sitting there like I'm the person who's in charge of all of this stuff, even though there's like other people who are doing this, like, I'm the youth minister, if anything happens on this rock, it's going to fall back on me. And after that one time, Kolbe and Joy comes over and he talks with me for a little bit, and we're standing by this log. And I convinced myself that maybe I've had an anxiety attack because I'm feeling a little bit better as I'm standing there and I'm talking to my good friend Kolbe, and he hands me this pink Starburst and says, eat this.
It'll make you feel better. Or at least I think it will. I'll never forget the pink Starburst moment with Colburn right there. And so I walked back over to where everybody's cooking dinner, and I was like, yeah, I'm doing pretty well. Ten minutes pass and I feel the exact same way. And I know if I stand up, I'm going to be sick. Stand up. Get sick. One student rushed over because the other ones were like, oh, this one's a little bit bigger. We're going this way. We're headed back further into the woods, away from Brian, just in case he's contagious. Sick, right. And this one student I remember being, like, on the ground, hands and knees. And I'm not going to say who this one student is because I think that it would embarrass him. But he just grabbed me under his shoulder and walked me to my tent. And said, what do you need? I know you have some peanut granola bars and do you need some more water? Do you need a pillow? There's no pillows in the wilderness, but he offered me one. It was really nice of him To love your neighbor as yourself. And I sat there thinking, in that moment, that's exactly what this student was doing. This student has been raised in this church, knows so many of you in this room and put the practice of to love your neighbor as yourself.
And one of my that was probably my most vulnerable moment that I've ever had in youth ministry. I've made some mistakes. My very first youth ministry event, we were cooking for 90 people. I forgot the buns. That was embarrassing. I had to go tell my boss like, hey, I forgot the buns. He just winked at me and goes, this one's on me. Don't worry about it. I'll tell them that I was the one who forgot the buns. So if Tim's watching this, I'll own up to. I did not get the buns. Finally. But this moment where I literally got picked up, feeling as worse, as bad as I've ever felt in my life. As weak as I've ever felt in my life. One of our students came and picked me up at camp 51. There's no picture of me on the stage, but I keynoted one of our nights and I talked about this verse right here. Galatians six one. Brothers, if anyone is caught in a transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him with a spirit of gentleness. Be watch on yourself, lest you be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. And so I got up on stage, and I and I started telling parts of my story that I don't even know if I've told inside of the walls of our own youth ministry before, but I'm standing here in front of all these students, and I start to divulge some stuff of things that I've struggled with in my life.
And as I'm wrapping up and there's a big group activity going on around almost every single one of our students that we normally don't let on stage, because there's lots of things that aren't belonging to any of the church, and they're the camps. And if they break, it's going to be lots of money for us that we don't have. They all just start getting on the stage and hugging me and telling me, we see you and we accept you and we know that about your story now. So if that ever happens to you again we are here for you guys. A 15 year old said that to me. A 16 and a 17 year old at this church said that to me. They truly know and understand what it's like to bear one another's burdens. It's the fulfillment of the law of Christ. As I look out into this room, I've seen countless of you bear the burdens of other people in this room. Like I'm making connections in my brain that you'll never know about. Of you serving somebody else in this room. And I'm here to tell you that there is no better service in this church than this group right here. They're hungry, and they're passionate to serve and love on you. As we think about this, bearing one another's burdens, it can't be done over a text message.
It can't be done over just a small little phone call. Right? I told our students last week, our word that we're going to focus on for this school year is here If you believe this to be true. Jesus is in this room right now. The Holy Spirit has filled this room and we're partaking in its presence. It's filling us up, empowering us to do all of the things that we need to do this week to proclaim the word that these stories indeed are true. As I think about that word here, I literally think about as that word comes to my mind and it will never leave it as I think about this, is all of these people rallying around me in my weakest moment in all of my youth ministry career, and that the next morning, all of them came up and were like, do you need some breakfast, Brian? I made you some oatmeal, Brian. Here's some water. Brian. Do you think some coffee will help? Man, you looked really bad. Like someone goes, I thought you were going to die. Like I thought that we were going to, like, you know, we're digging for other purposes out there. I thought that we were going to dig a ditch for you. I kind of thought that there for a second as well. Austin talked about long hikes and short hikes. I was a short hike guy that day.
No chance. I loved the high school boys. I loved their energy, but I can't. I can't keep up with them up the long mountain. As I think about that word here, in the way that it's permeated in my life, I go back to dropping it off. I had prayed and prayed and prayed for this woman who I had no idea what her name was. I had no idea of all these other students who were going to be there. But I said, Holy Spirit, would you be here with Barrett? As we walk into this room, his walking away from me, confident, knowing that the people in that room loved him. The teacher looked at me and said, at about 755, we'll start asking parents to leave. I left at 748. God literally told me, you're not here. He's here. He's where he belongs. It's the validation that I needed. The call to to bear one another's burdens means that we have to be here. We have to be at this place. We have to be doing these things communally together. So whenever you think, man, it's it's a Wednesday night, we're really busy. We probably just need to skip being a part of Wednesday night church. Sometimes that affects our kids and sometimes that affects our youth, that we don't put as high a price on all of those things that, you know, that's somebody else's job to do, that somebody else's burden to carry. No, it's our job collectively as the people of God, to be here for one another, to bear one another's burdens.
There is a battle that's going on right now. And I'm not. Again, do I look like a person who's ready for battle? If I was in like, camo right now and a rifle, you would laugh at me. But there's a battle going on right now. The world's trying to tell us, man, you can love God with just a little bit of your heart. I mean, you could still You still act that way. You can still talk that way. You can still treat people that way and still love God. But he asks us to love him with our whole heart, to give every bit of our heart that it is indeed a physical thing, that is a spiritual thing, and that it is an emotional thing. And the only way that we can model that for each other is by being deeply involved in bearing one another's burdens. This battle is long. It's not something that's going to stop next week. As much as I would love for some of my battles to just end. I think that I'm cursed with vehicles right now. I would love for that curse to be lifted off of me, and not on to one of you guys, but maybe some other person who needs car curses. I'm just done with them. I want that battle to be over. But it's tried to teach me to exercise a little bit of patience, a little bit of gentleness and a little bit of kindness.
Speaking to somebody in love, like that verse in Galatians talks about that we can restore someone to gentleness that doesn't have to be screaming, yelling, finger pointing, but rather, Hey, I don't think you're living in integrity. I don't think that you're able to carry this by yourself. And I am here for you. I'll be here every Sunday and every Wednesday to help bear these burdens. And my my hope is that you come up to to me or to Michelle or to Carl or to Gary and say in a respected ministry, I want to help bear that burden. Let's tackle this problem together. It's the only way that anything gets solved is by us banding together to bear one another's burdens. So I'm going to invite the praise team to come back up, and they're going to sing this song. Battle belongs. I'm sure that all of you have heard it on the radio before. Um, the beautiful thing is, is that whatever, whatever thing that you're fighting right now, the victory has already happened. God has made us more than conquerors through those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. That's actually Romans. I piece that together. Pretend I didn't say that. But this battle that we're fighting, it belongs to him. So give it to him and give it to this community. And let's fight it together.