Dedicated To:

      My wife, Pam and my children, Katy, Kandace, Clara and Andrew. I’m so grateful and humbled the Lord has blessed me with you and that we have the privilege of serving Him together.

      Acknowledgments

      I would have never had the opportunity to write this book had it not been for Dr. David Alan Black. Dr. Black is professor of New Testament and Greek at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. I have had the privilege of traveling to Ethiopia with Dr. Black and his wife, BeckyLynn. During our last trip, in the summer of 2010, Dr. Black encouraged me to write a book about my desire to teach and equip families and churches to raise Christ-centered young adults. I quickly began sharing all the reasons why I could not do so. However, over time and with some persistent prodding from Dave and my wife, I decided to take the plunge. I feel a tremendous amount of gratitude toward Dr. Black for his gentle persuasion and putting me in contact with such a great publisher. I would never have written this book if we had not met. Dave and BeckyLynn are truly my greatest spiritual mentors. I am grateful for their investment in me and family.

      I want to thank Henry Neufeld, owner of Energion Publications, who helped this inexperienced writer greatly. I sincerely appreciate his time and effort in my regard. I am thankful for a publisher like Henry who gives people like me an opportunity to write a book, even though we have no prior background in the trade.

      I am genuinely humbled to have such a loving church family at Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church. I appreciate immensely such a wonderful and supportive church. The many prayers and well wishes and words of encouragement during the process of writing were so inspiring. I also appreciate those dedicated men that helped teach on Wednesday nights and at Iron Men, so I could have time to write.

      I learned very quickly that I needed some good proofreaders and editors to look over my shoulder and help me with grammar, spelling and content. David and Kathy Brown, my parents, along with my sister, Kim B. Church, were always ready and willing to read a stack of new material. I also want to thank Dale and Lori Jennings and Caison and Amy Jones for their insightful viewpoints and fantastic suggestions. What a blessing!

      There isn’t enough time or enough pages in this book to offer enough thanks to my wife, Pam, for all she did to help me in writing this book. My children endured quite a bit as well as the manuscript deadline approached and I’m thankful for their love and support. Ultimately, I could not have and would not have written this book if it had not been for their encouragement and understanding. We persevered together! I must say that Pam’s help as my main proofreader was indispensable. She literally could be considered my “co-author” for this project. Her ability to express ideas and concepts is truly amazing. God knew before time began that he would pair me with an English-major. I still have in my mind the mental image of Pam lying in bed until after midnight with a red pen in hand and reading glasses on her nose feverishly editing for me. I am blessed among men!

      Finally, I want to thank Jesus Christ, whom I invited into my life as a ten-year-old boy. He has patiently and lovingly been my good shepherd. He has given me an abundant life because he willingly sacrificed his own. He is my Lord and I sincerely desire to follow Him and live only for his kingdom. I am grateful that He has done immeasurably more than all I have asked or imagined according to his power that is at work within me!

      Foreword

      I am often asked for advice from young pastors and seminarians about how to implement New Testament truth into the life of a local church. I usually refer them to members of their own generation. There are a handful of younger adults who seem to understand the church, our culture, and how to apply biblical truth to both. Writers like Eric Carpenter, Alan Knox, Arthur Sido, and Kevin Brown are people who will help the Christian community find its way forward. These men are precious gifts from God, and their contributions to the church are greatly appreciated by their blog readers. They are engaged, informed, and ready and able to offer well-reasoned and biblical responses to the issues churches face today.

      How often are we wrong about our suppositions! Mary supposed Jesus was the gardener. The disciples in the boat thought He was a ghost. Joseph and Mary assumed He was traveling with them when actually He was back in Jerusalem. And how many times do we in the church assume His presence in our programs when He is nowhere to be found.

      God has provided instruction on how we should raise our children. If we are to love Him with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind, then there is a right way by which to honor Him. The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, and so we must always go back to the Scriptures if we are to understand His ways correctly. Today we draw up our blueprints for “youth ministry” and seek divine endorsement instead of seeking first the divine Word. We do not inquire, as we should, “Lord, what do you want me to do?” It is high time we reported to His headquarters for our marching orders.

      The last invitation of the Bible says, “Let the one who is thirsty come” (Rev. 22:17). My friend Kevin Brown is a pastor who hungers and thirsts desperately after God. He is conscious, deeply conscious, that there is only one source of Truth when it comes to our youth. If we drink of this Truth and receive it by faith, we will overflow to the glory of God and the blessing of others.

      What a blessed pattern for youth is set forth in Scripture! Our greatest delight as parents should be to see our children living for Christ. There is indeed a biblical pattern to parenting, but there are many impediments, not least our enslavement to tradition. Our Lord was careful to stress that children were important to Him. It is a mistaken notion that youth require entertainment and games. There is no adult Holy Spirit and teenage Holy Spirit. There’s just the Holy Spirit, and all who possess Christ are to love and serve Him. Paul makes this clear in 1 Corinthians 12. It is of first importance that the church stop marginalizing its youth. How ridiculous to act as though the Gospel could not transform our teenagers’ lives!

      You will observe that this book does not claim to be the answer to every question you might have about parenting or youth ministry. Raising responsible teenagers is a work of God. Only He can transform our lives. Except the Lord build the house we labor in vain who build it. Kevin Brown says the time for flimsy alibis is over. It will take rugged tenacity and inspired stubbornness to see it through. But the pay-off comes when the world is obliged to acknowledge that the work was performed by the Lord.

      Yes, says brother Kevin, Christian young men and women can be “strong” (1 John 2:14). The tragedy of today is that our sights are too low. Have you ever considered what the Scriptures have to say about the matter?