October 30, 2000
Youth ministers encouraged to fill 'er up for more power ___By Ferrell Foster ___Texas Baptist Communications ___ARLINGTON--Warren Samuels held up two empty drinking cups. One represented a minister. The other a person in need of ministry. ___A minister who is not allowing God to fill his life each morning is like an empty cup with nothing inside to pour into the empty lives of the people he encounters, Samuels told participants in the Texas Youth Ministry Conclave. ___"Does a man with an empty cup have anything to give to a man with an empty cup?" asked Samuels, director of leadership development for Global Missions Fellowship. When God fills a person's cup, that person has something to give others, but it's "not my stuff, it's stuff that God's given me that day," he said. ___The Oct. 16-18 event attracted 1,035 youth ministry professionals, said Jane Wilson, youth consultant with the Baptist General Convention of Texas. ___Samuels, in his opening address, lamented what he perceives to be a declining number of "satisfied people," especially among Christians and ministers. ___Modern Christians ought to be more like Moses, who learned how to be satisfied, he said. "It was not in the palace of splendor that God taught Moses to be satisfied. It was in the pasture with sheep." ___The "secret to satisfaction" is found in Psalm 90:14, Samuels said: "O satisfy us in the morning with thy lovingkindness, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days." ___The speaker drew three points from the passage: ___ What happens in the morning "sets the tone for what happens the rest of the day,"
___Samuels, a former youth minister at First Baptist Church of Dallas and Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, said he knows of gifted ministers who are now salesmen. They began to think they were special, rather than depending on God, he said, and crises drove them from vocational ministry. ___"If you have to survive on the accolades of men, you won't stay in the ministry long-term," Samuels said. ___"The easiest place to miss Jesus is in the ministry," because "you can substitute so many things for a personal, passionate relationship with the living Christ." ___ God satisfies his children through his lovingkindness, Samuels said. ___"Your pastor may not be crazy about you, your staff may not be crazy about you, your youth workers may not be crazy about you, your spouse right now may not be crazy about you. But the one who made you is in love with you; he is crazy about you." ___ God satisfies a believer so that person may sing for joy and be glad, he said. If the world sees Christians as "discontented and dissatisfied and never happy and always wanting more and never satisfied where we are, then why in the world would they want Jesus?" he asked. "They see no difference in our life and their life. We're pursuing the same stuff they're pursuing. ___"You can survive without stuff," he said. "You cannot survive without the Spirit of the living God in your life initiating everything you do. The long-term, fruitful, Spirit-filled, supernatural ministry does not take place apart from hanging out in his presence." ___A similar appeal was made by Mike Satterfield, minister to youth at Westbury Baptist Church in Houston. ___Some people in youth ministry are "waiting for something to happen," he said, but "transformation and power only come by prayer and fasting." ___In a conference titled "We Fall Down," he talked about the importance of prayer in ministry. ___"Too many of us in youth land are waiting for a newfangled program to install, the next Great Awakening to blow over us, the rapture to snatch us up or some popular personality to rejuvenate or ignite the arenas God has given us stewardship over," Satterfield said. ___Yet while many ministers are "trying to ride waves to go up high," God is "telling us to go deep." ___"Approach his throne persistently," Satterfield said. "When you storm the gates of heaven persistently, ... God will move." ___He spoke of the importance of obeying God in the discipline of prayer, repenting from sin, abiding in Christ and teaching others to pray by example. ___ The Baptist Standard
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