“Be ENCOURAGED” - GOD is the One …

Positive Expectations & Excellence in Our Efforts --- These are the SEEDS for Ministry Success that We Plant, and then God Gives Us the Growth and the Results.

“God is the One who makes ministry successful; He is the One who reaches lost kids, and grows the faith of the preteen believers.” Nick Diliberto (from video ‘God Speaks’ at preteenministry.net)

This is the third Blog post in my series God is the One...

Pastor Nick Diliberto recorded his video, “God Speaks” as a testimony of how God moved during services he was leading at a Christian camp for kids in grades 4 - 6.   He made remarks in the video about how he had some plans for activities that he thought were very creative, but he listened to God for direction and was led to minimize the implementing of those plans.    

He still affirmed that you have to plan, and to be motivated to have excellence in what you do.   But God … when God takes over, to just stir the hearts and minds of the kids and draw them in - for powerful times of worship and revelation of Himself through the Word, then your plans for ministry and activities need to take a back seat.    “God is the One who makes ministry successful.”   You can get ready to switch gears, and start to harvest spiritual fruit from what God is doing in your midst.

I also can testify from my experience with taking a group of sixth graders to the Super Start Conference for preteens last March.   The conference planning, programming, and worship, with the singer Yancy, were all excellent.  But the real blessing was how God moved, challenging those sixth graders and stirring up faith in their hearts.   I was in a position to help by answering their questions, and counseling them.    I’m looking forward to next year’s conference.

The take-away idea for ministry to young people is to expect the Power of God to really be your Source.   I have objectives for ministry, and plans to accomplish them, but the main thing I need is the spiritual breakthrough that causes my preteen students to engage - first, engaging with spiritual matters (for the “Not Interested” or “Stagnant” kids), then engaging with learning and  discipleship at the next level higher (for the “Growing” kids), not just listening to some Bible stories but making a commitment  to be young disciples of Jesus.   

I can tell you that -- if you don’t have that spiritual breakthrough -- applying all the intellect and all the experience you have, into planning and program development, or curriculum development, will fall flat with preteens.   But, don’t let that drive your efforts.     Let positive expectation and faith be what is driving your efforts.

Be Encouraged.   God is the One who can take the positive expectations you have for your work in the ministry, and the effort you put into it, and use that as seed planted for a harvest.   He will give the growth and the ministry success.


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George Nielsen is an ordained minister in the Christian Church and Churches of Christ.  He is a teacher and evangelist with Faith Hope and Love Christian Ministries, of Springfield Illinois and teaches in the Children’s Christian Education ministry at Rochester Christian Church.   He is a member of the United States Reformation Prayer Network (USRPN) and is affiliated with Mountain Alliance of Illinois.   He is a US Army veteran and retiree.

"God is the One ..." so - Have FAITH

Jesus answered, saying “Have Faith in God”

Mark 11: 22

“God is the One who makes ministry successful; He is the One who reaches lost kids, and grows the faith of the preteen believers.” Nick Diliberto (from video ‘God Speaks’ at preteenministry.net)

This is the second Blog post in my series God is the One...

We need to always minister to others from the mindset of positive expectation, looking to our Source, God Almighty.  If we are in alignment with God, doing the works He has preordained for us to do, we can be fully justified in having our positive expectations.   

2 Chronicles 16: 9a is a Scripture passage that declares a Kingdom principle we can rely on to have and to maintain our positive expectation:

9 For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him. (NKJV)

God Almighty, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and  using the holy angels when needed, takes action to show Himself strong, on our behalf.

Mark 11:22 is the verse I have used throughout the entire 20 years I have been in vocational Christian ministry as my reminder to “look to our Source”.    Put a dagger into doubts -- Have faith in God.      

This does not necessarily mean immediate achievement of  positive results that we can see.  Sometimes, the positive expectation is achieved in stages, like planting and then watering a crop, then waiting for growth and then the harvest.    During the time it takes, when we don’t see what we have expected, having faith and exercising our faith is vital.    The words we say need to reflect our faith, not any frustration we may feel while we wait.    

Helping Kids Develop a Mindset of Positive Expectation

Words we say are particularly important when we are saying them to preteens.   There are enough things happening in the lives of our typical preteen (and some are quite serious, needing our intercessory prayer), that it is easy for them to have doubts.   This is not just “having questions”, which is normal.   The things that are happening in their lives can cause them to doubt basic things like their worth as a person, their ability to achieve what is expected of them, or whether they will have friends.    In some cases, the kids will have gone beyond doubts, to the point where they are experiencing “fears."
The number one thing to say to preteens, and to communicate with sincerity, is “I believe in you.”   This is the start toward building your level of faith into the kids you influence.    They are able to get the intellectual understanding of the idea “God is the One who is our Source” and that God is capable of showing Himself strong.  Preteen kids need to have the confidence to receive this as their own.   Telling them of your confidence in them will help -- so that your confidence starts to rub-off onto them.
This also will help them to see that you are the kind of person that they can go to, to  get those doubts and fears out into the light.

This series of articles about God, and depending on Him as the Source, is being written just prior to the start of one of the most important seasons of the year, Back-to-School season.   This is one of the critical times when a preteen kid needs big-people in his or her life that say “I believe in you,” as they launch into another year of school.

A Manifesto for War on Christianity

"The SKY GOD"

Gore Vidal's Manifesto for War on Christianity

Note:  Six days ago, I published a post on this blog which was an Excerpt of an article by Dr. Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.    My comments were in the posting itself, and the Excerpt was supposed to be available by clicking on a LINK.  Because of problems with that link, today I am re-publishing the full Excerpt here.

Gore Vidal and the Sky God  -  By R. Albert Mohler, Jr. ,  August 7, 2012   9:28 am

Excerpt taken from article at http://www.christianpost.com/news/gore-vidal-and-the-sky-god-79595/#T2RZ1epIAjKKRVQ6.99

In his 1992 Lowell Lecture at Harvard University, Gore Vidal attacked not just Christianity, but the very notion of monotheism.    In his essay, "Monotheism and its Discontents," based on the lecture at Harvard, Vidal perceptively and blasphemously blamed the existence of a binding sexual morality on monotheism.

"The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism," Vidal asserted, "From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament three anti-human religions have evolved - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These are sky-god religions."

He went on to describe the "sky-god" as patriarchal and jealous. "He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is in place not just for one tribe but for all creation."

He claimed that America's founders were "not enthusiasts of the sky-god" [in spite of clear references to God, the Creator, in the Declaration of Independence], but that devotees have had an inordinate influence throughout most of the nation's history.

"From the beginning, sky-godders have always exerted great pressure in our secular republic," he argued.    "Also, evangelical Christian groups have traditionally drawn strength from the suppressed."    He blamed the "sky-godders" for "their innumerable taboos on sex, alcohol, gambling."

In one scathing paragraph, he pressed his case:

"Although many of the Christian evangelists feel it necessary to convert everyone on earth to their primitive religion, they have been prevented - so far - from forcing others to worship as they do, but they have forced - most tyrannically and wickedly - their superstitions and hatred upon all of us through the civil law and through general prohibitions.    So it is upon that account that I now favor an all-out war on the monotheists."

He was not reluctant to state his main concern:

"The ongoing psychopathic hatred of same-sexuality has made the United States the laughingstock of the civilized world.   In most of the First World [Europe], monotheism is weak or nonexistent, private sexual behavior has nothing at all to do with those not involved, much less with the law."

Christians should pay close attention to Gore Vidal's argument, but the mainstream media have almost uniformly ignored it. The obituaries have celebrated his literary gifts, and noted his radical political ideas and rejection of Christianity, but not his call for "all-out war on the monotheists."

We should realize that Vidal's rejection of monotheism, though blasphemous, was truly perceptive. He was certainly correct that a binding and objective morality requires a monotheistic God who both exists and reveals himself.   He was also correct in pointing to the fact that a secularized Europe has largely abandoned a biblical morality when it comes, most specifically, to sexual behavior.

Gore Vidal was a controversialist, but in making this argument, he was simply saying aloud what many others in his social class and literary circles were thinking.

Christians must not miss the troubling parable of Gore Vidal and the Sky God.  It tells us a very great deal about the intellectual world Gore Vidal now leaves behind.   It is a manifesto for aggressive homosexual activism against Christianity.

"God is the One..."

“God is the One who makes ministry successful; He is the One who reaches lost kids, and grows the faith of the preteen believers.”  
Nick Diliberto (from video ‘God Speaks’ at preteenministry.net)

Today I am publishing this quote from Christian pastor Nick Diliberto.  

This will serve as a Preamble to additional posts I will be writing next week. Key elements that I will emphasize are Faith, Encouragement (in the work of the ministry), and Intercessory Prayer.

George Nielsen

George Nielsen - Faith Hope and Love Christian Ministries: Teaching and Writing -- to Honor GOD.

My Name is George Nielsen.  I am an ordained Christian minister, ordained in the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ; I am a graduate of Lincoln Christian Seminary at Lincoln Christian University, with an M.A in Ministry majoring in Urban Missions.    My teaching ministry in the Church is in the Children's Christian Education ministry at Rochester Christian Church.   As a writer, I have been concentrating on writing curriculum for teaching children and youth.   I also write teaching essays for adults, directed primarily toward parents, that are related to the curriculum I write for children.  I am also considering writing devotional books.

I have been a Christian since 1974.  I am dedicated to fulfilling my calling as a minister of Jesus Christ.  Besides teaching and writing, another important part of my ministry is to be a person who encourages other Christian men and women to take action to extend the Kingdom of God, right in their own area of influence, and particularly for our next generation of children.

Helping Pre-Teen Children Become Young Disciples of Jesus

Thoughts About My Pre-Teen Students – Helping Them To Be Young Disciples of Jesus
By George Nielsen – July 4, 2012

Being a Young Disciple of Jesus is presented as a goal and the goal is restated, almost every week, to the 5th graders that I teach on Sundays.

What am I actually expecting?   The list written below describes what I am trying to accomplish with my 5th grade students, over this next year.

Most people who set tangible goals know that the idea of goal-setting is to have goals that are meaningful, written, as specific as possible, and attainable.   The goals should motivate you or me, the goal setter, to work to achieve them, following action steps related to the goals.    My action step is primarily to carry out my teaching ministry on Sundays, which also includes prayer and encouragement for the kids, both inside and outside the classroom.

It is absolutely vital that the parents be involved in this, building on my one-hour-per-week of teaching.    All of the parents in this year’s class have been mailed a copy of the 5th Grade Learning Objectives.  Parents should realize that their input into their children’s spiritual development is essential; telling them to “go to church” isn’t enough to meet our objectives.

Helping children be young disciples of Jesus involves the following:

1. Increasing a student’s knowledge of God and the Christian story
2. a student’s willingness to internalize or “own” their faith; we present this to the kids as “choosing to live their lives ‘On the Right Path’” (it is developmentally appropriate to give 5th graders this freedom to choose, while still teaching them to make the right choice – “I Serve Jesus”)
3. teaching a set of beliefs by which students interact with their world and make sense of things (developing a “Biblical Christian worldview”)
4. starting the process of acceptance into and participation with their faith community; in other words, starting to get them outside the “bubble” of kids’ programming in the church, connecting with ‘big people’ and serving others through service projects (participating in the Impact discipleship group)
5. the work of God’s Spirit, which may be mysterious, both to kids and to parents; but in spite of its newness to them, we still plant and water the seed, namely that they are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, can be filled with the Holy Spirit, and that they have been and will continue to be imparted by the Spirit with special gifts; sometimes the gifts are only understandable through hindsight or reflection.

I have said this several times, and wrote about it often – that in 5th grade, we teach the children that Christianity is “a Way of life.”     Young disciples of Jesus need to learn the more-Christ-like way of living.   This is a process that must ultimately be internally motivated, not dictated by a parent, teacher or youth worker (but we are important, as mentors!).   The result is not just Christian behavior.   It is following Christ out of their deepest, most thought-out convictions.    This does take time.  But we start the process in 5th grade, by building on the nurturing in the faith from the student’s earlier years.  The key element is not the knowledge we present to the kids, as much as it is to develop their internal motivation.

One hazard to avoid is to attempt to reduce discipleship down to a simplistic monitoring of the children’s behavior.    As a teacher, I try to build a relationship, make and maintain a connection with the children.      Parents already have the relationship, but should really strive to build their connection with their children.    When you are connected, you are in a position to influence, not just to lecture. The saying is true that “rules without relationship leads to rebellion.”   When parents keep-up a strong relational connection with their kids, they won’t have to lose their influence and surrender to the peer group or the Disney/MTV-driven social pressures their pre-teens will experience.

To see the 5th Grade Learning Objectives - click HERE .