Four Youth Groups Attend Youth Rally at Crossroads Church

Four youth groups attended the Crossroads Back to School Youth Rally Friday and Saturday. In addition to the Worth County Youth Group, groups from Platte City, Moberly, and Marceline came. The purpose was to raise money to fight human trafficking, to reach out to victims and rescue them.
There were some informal games of Redneck Dodgeball, Glow in the Dark Volleyball, and Cornhole played Friday night. But first, they listened to Ryan Christopher speak to them about keeping their faith strong.

Christopher talked about Josh Harris, whose book, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” influenced the lives of many young Christians during the turn of the millennium. He was Pastor of Covenant Life Church from 2004 to 2015. He encouraged young Christians to forego dating and consider courtship instead. However, in 2018, he disavowed the teachings contained in the book, and in 2019, he divorced his wife and announced that he no longer considered himself a Christian, something Ryan said was a major topic of conversation in Christian circles.

Another minister who had been influential in Christian circles in the 1990’s, Marty Sampson, also announced he was struggling with his faith. He talked on his Instagram about how he was genuinely losing his faith, citing what he called the contradictions of the Bible along with science. “How can God be love, yet send 4 billion people to a place, all because they don’t believe,” he asked. “No one talks about it.” He wrote many popular worship songs in the 1990’s.

Ryan Christopher said that the problem stemmed from people who had grown up in church all their life, but still didn’t know what it meant to follow Jesus. “I’ve been there,” he said. For instance, he said that when his wife’s mom died from a fast-acting cancer, it challenged his faith. “Churches don’t always get it right,” he said. He said the problem comes when we put our faith in humans and not Jesus alone.

He compared leaving the faith to kids constantly asking about Santa Claus, about the logistics of getting down a chimney, or how he operates if there is no chimney at all. But he said that if we try to understand everything, we will never understand anything. “We have everything at our fingertips,” he said. But Christopher said that too often, people fall into the trap of going beyond the simple faith that is at the heart of Christianity. “We can’t change minds, only the Holy Spirit can do that,” he said. “All we can do is show the love of Christ.”

Talking about Mark 7, where it talks about how it doesn’t matter what goes into your body, but what comes out, Christopher said that too often, people focus too often on words about the Bible rather than the Bible itself. He said that at the present time, he didn’t want to read another book until God released him, because he wanted to stay focused on the simplicity of the Gospel.

“At some point, we all struggle,” said Christopher. It started, he said, with telling lies to parents when little to things like fudging time cards, cheating on taxes, and gossip, especially on social media.
Going to his main text, Christopher turned to Matthew 13, about the Parable of the Sower. He said the people who were snatched up by the birds were like the people who either have no relationship or who just play church. “You know you should live for God, but you don’t,” said Christopher. “I’ve buried a lot of people your age who thought like that. A lot get incarcerated, homeless, or buried.”

Christopher said a lot of people had shallow roots, in which they have a relationship, but it is shallow, meaning they will flee at the first sign of adversity or persecution. Or their relationship was based on pure emotion. “I love worship songs, but you still have to have a relationship,” he said. “Fire purges you. When you go through hard times, that’s how we can know who is bearing fruit and who is not.”
The people who were choked out, said Christopher, were the ones who got too caught up in things that were, in and of themselves, not bad things. But they choked out the focus on the Gospel. Examples were such things as video games, social media, and sports. “If you think of all the things you pursue, you can’t take it with you when you go,” he said. “I struggle with this stuff too. Most of you will not go pro in sports?”

Christopher talked about his own experience, where he was getting progressively better, being pegged to start varsity football by the time he was a sophomore. He said that he chose football over God, but that changed when he got a career-ending injury during practice when his opponent fell on one side of his leg and the quarterback he was trying to protect fell on another. “God chose for me,” he said. But then he found a good youth group and a good mentor. “If that’s what it takes, weed these things out,” he said.

Weeding out distractions, said Christopher, was key towards becoming the fourth seed, which grew healthy. “I’m not perfect, I know who I am, but we’re supposed to make disciples of people.” In closing, Christopher challenged the youths, saying that it was not for him to know, but, “What seed are you?”