I believe in the ministry of the Generation Conference. To use a popular ministry/church leadership buzzword: I love our DNA. DNA is an interesting concept. I’ve had people cal me and talk to me about the Generation Conference and as ask for advice on doing a conference. I believe outside of the UNDESERVED favor of God (I cannot underscore that enough), the single greatest influence on the Generation Conference was the youth church at Mount Zion. Let me explain: I’ve seen people try to pull off conferences and their youth groups are floundering. Even worse, they try to do in a conference setting what isn’t being done week to week in their youth ministry. They’re missing a secret. See, God doesn’t want to build conference, he wants to build churches. If a conference can be used as a means to that end it is wonderful. If not, in my opinion it’s a waist of time. One thing you would hear regularly from people who attended the generation conference is: “Wow! we feel like we can do this in our church. We have a revelation of what a youth church can be!” Some of those ministries, by the way, only had a hand full of kids. When I was the youth pastor of Generation Chruch here are some of the things you would see on any give week:
- Over 90 kids in the prayer room intensely seeking God 45-30 minutes before the service
- Passionate worship that at times no one wanted to stop (this wasn’t every week, but definitely a hallmark of Generation church)
- Solid, didactic, practical teaching
- Holy Ghost ministry.
Before I went to any youth conference, as a youth pastor I would be asking myself: What does the fruit of where this is going look like.
