Youth Ministry Round Up #178

Greetings Awesome Person,

ABC's of Youth Ministry

Z is for Zeal

To those selling doves He said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn My Father’s house into a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for Your house will consume Me.” John 2:16,17

Zeal, properly applied, is a good thing. I think we all want to be like Jesus and topple everything over that is not good in God's house, but I'm afraid, for many churches, there wouldn't be much left standing.

Lots of youth pastors being arrested for vandalism is a bad look in a profession that has enough real and manufactured bad looks to go around.

Jesus turning over tables was never meant to become a weekly or monthly Table Turning outreach. In all of the gospels we see Jesus flipping tables only once but in doing so, Jesus also revealed/confirmed His identity to his disciples.

The biblical definition of zeal, in this verse means,

properly, burning emotion, inner feeling boiling over, "boiling from heat,"

Youth Pastors, like anyone else, can become over zealous about stuff that doesn't matter like Mac products and Church Clap as well as ministry stuff like budgets, worship bands, room design and numbers. There are better things to be zealous about.

Both Titus 2:14 and I Peter 3:13 encourage us to be zealous to do good works all to the glory of God.

Be careful of your zeal. Be zealous, but don't allow your zeal for politics, theology or even youth ministry overshadow the good work of