Youth Ministry Booster
Welcome to the Youth Ministry Booster podcast! The most honest and hilarious podcast in student ministry. Hosted by Zac Workun and Chad Higgins. We are the biggest fans of youth ministry leaders like you!
We are here for you with the humor and the help to engage, entertain, equip, and encourage.
Youth ministry is better together. Learn more @ http://www.youthministrybooster.com
Youth Ministry Booster
The Power of Presence in Youth Ministry: Streets to Sanctuary w/ Jose Rodriguez
What if the most challenging parts of your past could fuel a transformative future?
What if your toughest challenges could become your greatest ministry?
In this episode, we reconnect with our friend Jose Rodriguez from Tulsa, now leading Rescue a Generation in Southern California.
He shares his incredible story of transformation—from growing up in a tough neighborhood, navigating gang life and racial struggles, to becoming a movement leader for youth in California. His journey reminds us of the importance of faithful outreach, like a simple church bus ministry 🚍, to change lives and spark leadership.
✨ Reflect with us this episode on the "ministry of presence"—a the real game-changer in youth ministry. Showing up during critical moments builds trust and transforms hearts 💛.
We also dive into practical strategies for churches to make a real impact through local involvement, featuring success stories like Rescue a Generation 🏫🤝. Learn how to partner with schools, connect with your community, and craft messages that truly resonate 🎤.
🔔 Subscribe and share if you’re passionate about youth ministry! Let’s grow together.
#YouthMinistry #Leadership #Outreach #FaithInAction #RescueAGeneration
A snap. What is up?
Speaker 2:everybody hey it's not every day that we get a California guest in I would thank you for making the travel all the way.
Speaker 1:Of course, of course, staying out with you. It's the holidays. That's what this really is it's the holidays.
Speaker 2:This is really just Tulsa friends hanging out. Yeah, this is Tulsa friends hanging out in the garage. How was your Thanksgiving?
Speaker 1:How was your family? Yeah, I got to see my family. I'll come back, like once a year.
Speaker 2:Is this kind of nice to be away from everybody for a little bit? It is.
Speaker 1:It is. It is, but I love you know, seeing my family, I always give Erica a tour of town and not the south side of town, the north side of town, yeah, see true, tulsa, exactly, you know.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, you're staying at the Brute. You're in downtown. You were in downtown Tulsa living it up.
Speaker 1:Ironically I had. I don't know if we should go. I stole a car as a teenager and dropped it off like a block away from the Brute Hotel and then ran. So you know I was giving her that tour.
Speaker 2:It's good to be home.
Speaker 2:We're home, you know, Jose, for folks that don't know, you've been a friend with Lifeway Students for a while, published with us. Give us just a quick intro to who you are, where you're at. I mean, you're living in California serving the rescue generation. But I want to talk Tulsa a little bit about growing up, because I don't want to talk about teenagers today, like that's. One of the things that I love talking with you is I feel like there's a lot of people in youth ministry I talk to talk about ministry as a program and church and leadership, but you are literally in the stadiums and in the gymnasiums and in the hallways and the cafeterias and the classrooms with students. So I would love just to hear about some of that today. But give us a little bit, just like Jose's here from Tulsa. Why is this kid from California coming to Tulsa to hang out and talk about ministry.
Speaker 1:Well, born and raised here in Tulsa, grew up on the wrong side of the town, you know, and dad was a drug dealer. Most of my childhood really rough upbringing. Seventh grade dad gets sent to prison. I remember coming home from school. I was at Carver Middle School, which was actually a nice middle school. There are some on the north side oh, absolutely, it was a great school. Come home, dad's in prison and I just knew. I was a scrawny little teenager and I knew man like the neighborhood I live in is not a good one and I got to find protection for my family, my mom and my sister. So I joined the gang and immediately I was the only Latino in this all black neighborhood. So there was a lot of like just confusion for me. Anyways, mexicans didn't like me because I was hanging out with the wrong people and then I'm not black either.
Speaker 1:So I was just really racially confused, which ironic for Tulsa and all the history here Like I was smack dab in the middle of all of that. But I watched God use that later on in ministry, which was actually really ironic how he doesn't waste seasons of your life. He came back later. He has a way to navigate all of that.
Speaker 2:Why is that? I mean again, it almost sounds like a platitude or trite, but it just seems like there is this quality of you have to live life forward but to see it in reverse there is some breadcrumbs or clues that you're like man that became so significant and vital to like. My story Hands down.
Speaker 1:Like that's. I mean I just think it's God and all of his genius and like goodness In the big and small ways. Yeah, Right, he just he knows how to redeem stories. And so, no matter the pain, the trauma, the roughness of the upbringing, god knows how to reach in and make it what it should be. And that's really what he did with my story. And so I got saved through an outreach ministry, a bus ministry.
Speaker 2:Okay, this is important because there's a youth minister listening to this that's probably gassing up a van, right now, that's gassing up a van right now to go pick up some kids.
Speaker 1:Please do that.
Speaker 2:From an apartment complex. Do that, Do that? Why this guy right here?
Speaker 1:right here is one of the big facts, yeah, yeah yeah, so I this is sorry for the guy who's, you know, filling up the van right now.
Speaker 2:Cleaning the soup out of the back.
Speaker 1:That's right. Yeah, my first day on this bus, I got kicked out of church for fighting my bus captain. You fought the bus captain Literally true story.
Speaker 2:Not another kid on the bus, but the bus captain. No, I was acting up. What did he say?
Speaker 1:He went to go pray for me, because I was singing with my friends, we weren't listening. And he goes to lay his hand on me and pray.
Speaker 2:And you put hands on him.
Speaker 1:And I laid a hand right back on him and a hand that I laid on them, and so you know, and literally I got kicked out for a month. I ended up coming back and, long story short man, I ended up joining a leadership and training program which gave me something to be a part of. You know, it's the concept that they let me belong before they ever asked me to believe.
Speaker 2:So like in the church, a part of the ministry, even really before, like fully Jesus fallen professed. I don't even know.
Speaker 1:Jesus yet. But I can pass out pizza on a bus.
Speaker 2:Okay, or.
Speaker 1:I can do these skits for these memory verses in front of 1,200 boys and girls. Okay, you know, it was the second largest bus ministry in America. So like it's a big ministry, but like we can do these skits, at least we know how to do that much.
Speaker 2:And so it was it gave us something to do, an opportunity, because I think sometimes that goes missed in churches where it's like well, we have stuff for you until you, you know, are worthy of leadership or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, it threw me in right away and and I was, uh, you know, not the best leader, right, like, so you know I'm, I'm throwing up gang signs on the bus and then still like doing these scripture verses and, like it was, I was a mess. Anyways, I ended up. So I go on this mission trip because I had this opportunity to, and I'm fresh off probation for stealing cars. Okay, so like.
Speaker 2:I'm like almost don't get to go, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I feel like this story gets worse and worse every time I tell it.
Speaker 2:but like no, some of us are living it. I was living it, that's it.
Speaker 1:I did GTA before GTA.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:So I, literally I barely go on this trip, but on this trip they taught me how to tell my testimony.
Speaker 1:So the first school we go to, they say Jose, stand up and tell your testimony. So I tell my testimony. Now I'm lying because I know I don't believe yet, Right, but I did what they taught. How many of you want to say yes to Jesus today? And I'll never forget this high school. Almost 500 kids, almost every hand of the building went up and I felt convicted, probably for the first time. Okay, Because I just led them to something I didn't even believe myself and it was kind of a thing for me. And so I had a moment on that trip, just conviction, and like man, I got to go all in now, Like I'm going to go live this. And so, man, I came back and I was the first in my family to really like surrender my life to God. And you know rough ups and downs. I got kicked out of the church a little bit after that for stealing a church van, Like hold on, hold on, hold on.
Speaker 2:You can't just pass that one. We're going to put a little pin in that. Hold on, hold on. Where did you take the stolen church veil?
Speaker 1:All over Tulsa and with the gang flag in the mirror and drugs. It was a mess, Zach, and really here's really what happened.
Speaker 2:People talk about messy youth ministry. Oh yeah, Okay, all right.
Speaker 1:I said this at Youth Specialties one year.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I said I was on the stage with Larry Acosta.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I said hey, how many of you got a kid in your youth group? That just gives you a headache.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they all raised their hand right. Yeah, yeah. And I was like yeah, I was that kid on steroids, two monsters before you threw Light work, light work, but so anyways, I did.
Speaker 1:I came back and I got plugged in, but I also knew where they kept everything. So I ended up stealing the van and a friend of mine wrecked it and it was just a mess man. So they were should have pressed charges on me, and it would have been my second offense. I would have had a felony on my record for a really long time. Somehow in all of this my dad comes back into the picture because he's out of jail now and he begs the pastor to not press charges on me.
Speaker 1:And I'll never forget that meeting because my dad is crying, I'm crying, I just know what's next if they press charges. And my dad says this he says if you press charges on my son, he's going to end up like the rest of my family and the pastor let me off the hook. And I saw two things that day. I saw my dad fight for me in a way I'd never seen before and I saw the mercy of God. I didn't get what I knew I deserved and literally that changed the course of my life. So even how I approach students today with bad behavior drastically different than probably what I would have done back in the day, because I've been forgiven of a lot, I've been let off the hook and not to say it's without consequences, because consequences are real, but it was a real kind of turning point in my life and so fast forward. I went to Bible school, ORU, studied, you know, theology, youth ministry, and then I thought I was going to go work at a mega church, because of course that's the trajectory of everything.
Speaker 2:You got the story, so with all of my ORU friends. I've yet to meet one of you that didn't have a big plan. That's one of those. I love it.
Speaker 1:Dream, no small dreams. That's what he said.
Speaker 2:That's what he said it is this two handed thing of like I love it so much, but it also like and makes you have this big smile. Like I've met ORU students that like have literally said and maybe this is other college students too, this is just the one that literally two blocks over.
Speaker 2:They love Jesus, they serve in ministry, they, they give it all. Like. But like met one or two young folks that both had plans for like a music and a speaking career and I said, awesome, Like, tell me about the songs you've written or what you spoke on. And they both were like well, not yet but. And I was like that's interesting, that's very interesting that you have this national speaking tour mapped out and you haven't even been like sharing devotionals in the high school gymnasium for folks it's one of those like dream big, serve small.
Speaker 1:You're about to get me on a soapbox right now.
Speaker 1:That was one of the most frustrating things in college because people would argue doctrine and theology and then they would map out these major plans. But they weren't serving in a local church. When I got saved I was serving right away, because I was serving before I was saved. And so we're busting in 250 teenagers every Thursday night, breaking up gang fights at church. I knew where I was headed the megachurch, because I came out of one, so I thought surely I could write my ticket somewhere in life you know, go somewhere.
Speaker 2:I got stats. Dude, if you have stats on the baseball card, you're good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, right right, so, man, but God saw differently. He sent me to San Bernardino, which was the second poorest city in the nation, second to Detroit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know if I even know this. How did you get specifically from Tulsa to California?
Speaker 1:Like that's a again. You could have gone a lot of places. Why specifically California and then San Bernardino? Two things happened. I led a mission trip to LA from ORU and that's where I met the pastor that I went out there with. And we just hit it off right away. But I didn't go right away. He asked me right away would I consider coming to be his youth pastor? But I knew he didn't have any money and he couldn't pay me. They were like a two-year-old church plant with no resources.
Speaker 2:So no big denominational backing, no nothing. The opposite of a megachurch.
Speaker 1:Right, and so I was like I don't think I'm going to do that Then ring by spring.
Speaker 1:I gunned for the altar after college and then was divorced in less than a year Because I didn't have the tools that I needed to have a healthy marriage and was really struggling through manhood and like how to be the man that God was calling me to be, with all this trauma and baggage that I have and literally that that really is what. I was broken enough and this other pastor really, like pulled me under his wings and I used to say this all the time and I don't know, you know, theologically, where people stand on this Cause. I don't think it's a biblical concept necessarily, but the spiritual father concept. Yeah, I needed a father in the faith. Yeah, that I needed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, my natural dad is incredible and is a hard worker. I learned a lot from him, but he also didn't have the tools that I needed to be the man God was calling me to be, because I was the first in my family to fully surrender to Jesus. Yeah, to be because I was the first in my family to fully surrender to Jesus. Yeah, so you can't take me where you haven't been yet.
Speaker 1:That's true, so I needed somebody older in the faith to pull me under their wings, and he did that during that divorce. Okay.
Speaker 2:And that's what. So there was the relationship connection from the trip, but the relationship shift that puts you in the spot, that you were spiritually hungry. Yeah, Even if the job was going to leave you physically hungry, you were more spiritually hungry than physically hungry.
Speaker 1:Well, I told him, I said look, I don't even want to do ministry, no more.
Speaker 2:Like by that point I was just so hurt. You was looking for something, a new opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to move and I'll go get a job, because I've, you know, been a hustler my whole life. So like we'll go figure it out, got it, you know, and so you've done this, do it again, right, like and so. But really, uh man, as a youth pastor in san bernardino, two things happened. I couldn't get my youth group over like 40 or 50 kids like which look in certain contexts.
Speaker 2:That's big yeah, right, but in the context I come from.
Speaker 1:We're busting in 250 kids every week, yeah I'm like man. I got friends that are bringing in 300, and I'm only doing so. It's that whole comparison thing. But those 40 or 50, Zach, they were straight out of the school of hard knocks. So if I ever had a mirror image of how I was to this lady.
Speaker 2:You got 40 of you. Oh man.
Speaker 1:So I used to always say you know, you urban youth pastor, when supporting your kids is in a courtroom as a character witness and not on a basketball court yeah because I would get multiple calls, like I remember, uh, one young lady called me twice, actually with the same story. But, pastor jose, will you come pick me up?
Speaker 1:I just ran over somebody with a car and I don't know what's about to happen next like man, some of that theology goes out the window when you hear pain like that, it's like the ministry of presence becomes really important, like I got to learn how to just sit with kids in their pain and not have answers, but just to be with them, and so that was really where I got baptized in, like sitting with kids who were really, really struggling, even though I was one and I was reached as one. When you're sitting with them as the adult now, it's a whole different ballgame.
Speaker 2:Will you say more about that? Because I think there's a tension right now in youth ministry as an enterprise. That is youth ministry program, which is like, whether it's Sunday or Wednesday midweek, whatever, it's the 60 to 90 minutes that we plan every week. And then there's this other conversation that is like the relationships or presence. It's it's it's program and presence, or program versus presence. Like what, what you have done both? Uh, you, you have, you know again, but you don't have a bus ministry unless you have a program to bus them to.
Speaker 2:Sure, um, so like what, what is that ministry or presence, in a way Like like, how did, how did you move from feeling like man I don't have as much as I used to have, because the number of kids are here, are less. I mean being character witness for a kid that you know deeply, getting those phone calls one that's hard to scale, but two, I know from your story is probably what set you on some of the work that you're at now. So what brought about that shift in you? What is something about that that others could hear and learn from? Like what is that?
Speaker 1:Well, it's really kind of ironic because I think God used the lack in our youth ministry to propel me to go to where students were. I got really accustomed to being in their neighborhoods anyways. So when I got called because of the car situation, or another young man called me in the middle of the night because his mom just got jumped and he was ready to go kill somebody, and you get those calls. But if you're used to being in the community, going back to the community to sit with people is not hard, but if I'm not used to being in the community, I'm not coming to you right. Well, because kids weren't coming to us, I got really used to going where they were. So I would be in the neighborhood hanging out with them, like literally, like going to them is what I feel like developed that ministry of presence in me. And then, when pain and trauma are all like at the forefront, you just I felt like I was wise enough to know don't say something stupid.
Speaker 2:Like don't ruin the moment.
Speaker 1:Like don't say it's going to be okay. I'm praying for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like We'll figure this out next week, yeah, right.
Speaker 1:Like and so just to sit. I remember the kid that his mom got jumped. I went to 30 in the morning. I sat in his living room until about 6 am, until he finally fell asleep.
Speaker 2:And then I left, just watching over him, just like shepherding, like literally shepherd. At the gate I said, if you leave, I'm leaving.
Speaker 1:Wherever you go, I'm going Just to make sure he doesn't go do something crazy.
Speaker 2:Regrettable Right.
Speaker 1:I didn't have words, I didn't have a scripture for him, I didn't. You know, I had nothing but to sit and to know that he wasn't alone. When you are there for people who are really struggling, I would say there's a sense of you gain a level of loyalty from them on the other side of the struggle that now they want to kind of be all in for you too, like. And I think that's where some of the misconception in church models are today, because we want kids to be loyal to our program but we're not loyal to their lives, and so it's like yo, come to me, come to me for an hour and a half, we'll do like we'll do the thing right Color inside the lines and then go then go and I'll see you next wednesday right, which is I believe in in the the church model.
Speaker 1:So I'm not against the service and I believe in that.
Speaker 2:You need a gathering point, like there needs to be a weekly occurrence where they can find you, but when they can't be, this is the 99, the one right, like at some point, like you need to be where the 99 know to be, but to go to the one, well, how do you find where people are?
Speaker 1:You got to go where they are. Like there's no other business in the world. That's just expecting people to come to them without marketing first. Going like putting the sign up somewhere where people can see it.
Speaker 2:Like that's the algorithm.
Speaker 1:And so that same thing is true, and I learned that here in Tulsa. It's the algorithm Exactly. And so that same thing is true, and I learned that here in Tulsa. Honestly, when I first got saved, I was spending my time in apartment complexes in North Tulsa just playing basketball.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I could earn the right to invite these kids to church. Yeah, I didn't assume I had the right. It doesn't mean I didn't. I could have asked anybody to come to church, yeah, but the likelihood of them yeah Was way higher, way higher.
Speaker 2:And it's such an unseen work and that's one of those that like keep saying it, because that's one of those for youth ministry leaders. I think they think and I think this is what we've talked about there's been big conversation on the podcast that the last few years of COVID have almost kind of rebirthed what youth ministry looks like, because all the conversations I'm hearing about what youth ministry is or the struggle that's happening, feels like old school ministry, like it's like people are using words, like relationships and presence. We aren't in 2016, 2017, where we're just trying to like tweak our program or like redesign our graphics or whatever. Like there's like very, because all of those tools got so easy. What we have to come back to, either because we're new or we've been around long enough, that revisiting it is some of this. Like not earning the right but investing enough, yeah, that the ask isn't void and I think that's it matters.
Speaker 1:It matters, yeah. So yeah, I love that. Ask isn't void yeah because there's so many times where invite, invite, invite, invite, invite, invite invite.
Speaker 2:Well, they're being invited by everybody else to every other thing. Exactly Like that's one of those, like all of, I mean TikTok is one big invitation, yeah yeah, yeah, 1,000%, but the relationship really does matter.
Speaker 1:That whole concept of the ministry of presence shaped what I'm living in now. I just thought how can I show up where kids are the best way possible and how do I go after kids that are not coming into the church? Statistically, the amount of kids that are leaving the church every year, the amount of kids with a biblical worldview right now, like all of these stats that are out there, that are super alarming.
Speaker 1:I am not worried about the church, I'm worried about the ones that are not in it, and I wish that more churches had the heart for those that won't walk through your front door.
Speaker 2:Why. This is one of the things about your story is massive, huge, mega youth ministry things, but also but also big youth ministry, but also ministry to some of the most like tough kids. It would have been so much easier for the churches that we have not named but we have mentioned, to maybe have sent a few less buses to the two or three hardest neighborhoods. You know how much that costs. How did they? How did they do that? Literally the physical cost, the emotional cost Like what?
Speaker 2:what? How did they do it? Like, how, why, why, what was what was true about that that we should know now?
Speaker 1:like I just think that if my last pastor said this hey, if you want your city to become your church, you got to learn to pastor your city. And the church that I was raised under pastored this city and there you can't deny that I know kids today that was like hey, I went to that church on the bus. Yeah, because that church on the bus because that church pastored the city. That church got in the community and was very present.
Speaker 1:And even though the church was 30 minutes away from where we lived at it got to us. That same thing is true in youth ministry today. How do I pastor the school, not just the Christian club?
Speaker 2:and not just the one that come to me Not just FCA when I'm asked, or the football team to come share the you know devotional, but like how do I become the presence on the campus that when chaos is happening?
Speaker 1:my phone is ringing because they know I'm a, I'm a resource and I'm going to support here, and that literally has shaped where we're. So 2015, san Bernardino had the big shooting that happened, yes, and because I was so used to being in the community and my church out there was already in the community a lot we got the call right away. If we just go to the like ground zero not to have answers but to sit with the community and say like, hey, we're here, can we pray? Yeah, with you, do what do you need? Is there somebody you're worried about? And I remember getting the call to come to this rec center where they were reuniting families. Man, there was no greater privilege than to sit in a tragedy like that with people who don't know the result and just to be there with them. Out of all my days in ministry, that is still one of the very highest honors. Not again. Not that we had answers, we had water and some food and here and can we just talk.
Speaker 1:But you were ready in there.
Speaker 2:That's it.
Speaker 1:But because we got really good at that. When, I think a year after that or two years after that, there was a school shooting nearby on a school that we had a presence on, my phone was the first one to ring because they knew we were going to come and be a presence on the campus. They were used to calling you.
Speaker 2:The kids respected us.
Speaker 1:It was way more than the Christian club, and I will never forget this. Principal told me this. He said this we were on the campus for about five years. We did a staff training and he comes up to me and he says hey, I just want to come and say thank you for staying in the trenches with our kids. He said so many Christians come in until they get what they want and we don't see them anymore. He said but I've seen you be here year after year after year, fighting to stay in here, cause it's not always easy. Yeah, but so and we're like we're like 10 years in now still on that campus, Like we're there and we're not going nowhere.
Speaker 2:You're planted. Oh, and the?
Speaker 1:results we're seeing today are drastically different. But that really is what we talk about the ministry of presence. How do we go where students are not in the church context and not in a place that we're going to benefit from, but in a place that I'm just going to be here, like picking up trash at lunchtime, okay, but in a place that I'm just going to be here like picking up trash at lunchtime.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I was going to ask, give us, if you can like give us some like some bullet points, some quick hits, because I think a lot of folks hear that and some of it's an imagination issue, like we. Just, you know, I'm going to go where the areas either look like church programs, so it's, you know, it's the FCA, the Christian club, or it's the invite only because I want to be respectful of the space. So what are some of the things just in a litany of stuff, what are some of those places and spaces?
Speaker 1:You can volunteer on a campus. Ask them what they need. What do they need? Pick up trash like you need Safety patrol, safety patrol- Like what do they need? How do I just be a presence here and be very clear about who you are?
Speaker 2:I'm a pastor from this church, because that was never the issue. Don't deceive them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other thing you could do is you can look statistically at what the needs of the school are. Now there are literal websites out there, so they're very practical. Yeah, you can Google Do the search what are the stats of this particular high school school dropout rates, truancy issues, grades Free and reduced lunch. Oh, economic like the whole thing, yeah, and then say what could we do to be a part of that?
Speaker 1:So bring staff lunch once a month A couple hundred dollars to feed 50 people, 60 people right, take one of those pizza dinners on a Wednesday. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Turn that into a school staff seating.
Speaker 1:And then ask if they'll let you serve it too, because now you get to build relationships and say hi, and connect with.
Speaker 2:Now your church gets to be actual presence on the campus, which is one of the things I think is so important is not just connecting with your students who are on that campus and their friends, but the staff, because, just like in ministry, hopefully your volunteers outlast your students, because kids get older but adults don't. Teachers and principals hopefully stick around four, five, seven years, and so yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Last thing I would say and this is where Rescue a Generation came about- at find a need and fill it.
Speaker 1:Like I love Bill Wilson from Metro Ministries in New York. He's a crazy guy, but he said this. He said I never got a call from God to have the largest Sunday school ministry in America or bus ministry in America. He said I seen a need and I stepped in, and I think so much of the impact that's waiting on us to make is finding a need of fulfilling it. For us, the need was kids getting in trouble. They didn't know what to do with the kids. You suspend them or expel them. Kids getting in trouble they didn't know what to do with the kids. You suspend them or expel them. Now they're in their neighborhoods hanging out with gang members, probably getting a ticket or arrested for something, and that just cycles. It gets worse and worse, right and so, instead of expelling the kid, we started thinking man, what if you gave us 30 of your worst students and let us spend 10 weeks with them? Now, of course, my story and my background. I'm really good at that.
Speaker 2:Like I can do that. If nothing else, I'm undaunted, unafraid, unafraid, yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
Speaker 1:But we started seeing crazy results, results that schools and districts couldn't deny. So things like a 24% decrease in chronic absenteeism from kids that were going through our program. I didn't start the program like oh.
Speaker 2:I want to start a program and again I didn't start the program, like, oh, I want to start a program, not all of them. This is like give us a manageable number.
Speaker 1:Correct, we say up to 30 each semester 30 is even a little high To manage 30 behaviorally challenged students Because I think with some people here adoptive school.
Speaker 2:They're like man, there's just one of me and two people. How could I even it's not everybody For y'all this?
Speaker 1:This is like 20 to 30 kids, 20 to 30 kids each semester and same kids for the whole 10 weeks, and we love them. We walk them through a curriculum that we use, that I wrote, and but to see the change, here's what. Here's what's undeniable. Number one every school in America needs a program like ours.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We could go anywhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Number two kids are not going to get better tomorrow. Yeah, Number two kids are not going to get better tomorrow. So there's some level of job security in this concept, right?
Speaker 2:There's always going to be 20 kids in need, always, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But number three, we need local churches. Yeah, if we're ever going to reach the kids that we're called to reach, it won't be because Rescue a Generation is some big name that did this great thing. It'll be because we've linked arms with local churches that want to impact kids in their own community and we found a vehicle by which that could happen. And so we're beta testing a model right now in Chicago. We're in California mostly, but we've got one school in Chicago. It's a partnership with a local church. We trained the youth pastor there. He's going to be on the campus in January and we're going to see where that goes. But really, like that is the thing. Like how do we people always ask me, like yo, how to rag? We're on 29 campuses in SoCal yeah, we're in SoCal. Of all places. We're unapologetically faith-based. Now, our curriculum is not, and that's very intentional. Okay, I can argue about that with anybody later, sure sure, sure, that was on purpose.
Speaker 2:But people ask the curriculum is not what the people are.
Speaker 1:Yes, okay, okay, that's an important distinction. That's an important distinction, oh, 1,000%. So.
Speaker 2:Some people play it the other way where the curriculum isn't, the people are not. We'll save that for next time. That's a whole different conversation.
Speaker 1:But, yes, I wouldn't put our curriculum in the hands of a secular person. Sure, I would believer. And so, even when we look for staff we look for are you plugged into a local church? Do you love God and you have experience with teenagers Like? Those are the three like?
Speaker 2:you got to check those things right.
Speaker 1:Before COVID, before anybody was on videos or anything like that, I felt like God gave me a blueprint on how to scale really well. I'm a communicator. We were doing a video curriculum back in 2015 before many people were doing videos. So when covid happened like it was so easy to scale because I didn't need to find great communicators yeah, I did the communicating already on the video. Yeah, and I just had to find people that really good at small groups, yeah that's way easier than finding great communicators, yeah and so we started to hire people.
Speaker 1:We went from two schools in 2021 to 23 schools that next semester, and that changed everything for us, and so we're on 29 campuses now. We're in like seven school districts across SoCal. Next year that number is probably gonna grow. We have at least three full districts that we're in conversation with now, and it's just unreal. I'm not smart enough to plan this out like on my best day. You know, this has been the strategy that God gave simple obedience, but really meeting a need in our community. I didn't think it was going to go as big as it is now. I just was trying to reach San Bernardino.
Speaker 2:Well, but all of it's grown out of the faithfulness to be rooted to now be flourishing.
Speaker 2:And I think that there is something to the garden seed metaphor that Jesus uses time and time again, that things that get planted in the right kind of soil for long enough can flourish 160 or 30 times, and that's one of the things that. But you have to trust that it's buried long enough to be truly like planted into rooted, and that's one of the things I think for ministry leaders like you. You don't get to become the phone call after a shooting or an incident because you were there for 18 months, Like you've got to be around long enough. If ministry is moving at the speed of relationships, then you have to be around long enough to be trusted enough that's rooted and relational enough and it's just, I don't know. I think that's one of the things that's going to be so hard for ministry leaders moving forward to fully accept is because everything else seems to move so fast and the most important things can sometimes flourish quickly after being rooted for a long, long time.
Speaker 1:The other thing I would say with that concept is like man, if you just play the long game even if you're not in the position for the long game, and that's the difference. Like the school I adopted as a youth pastor, that church is still serving every month because I put that church in position well after I was gone to still have the same presence on the campus and I think we just got to start thinking literally generationally what's going to happen if I am only here two to three years or if I'm not going to be here forever? How do I put this ministry in position? So real, quick story.
Speaker 1:I had a church ask me for some advice on how they're doing this like conferencing, and the pastor, the youth pastor, actually mentioned, like I think I might be on my way out and I was just like my heart kind of broke because part of me wanted to say, well, don't do the conference, we're leaving yeah. But I was just like look, if you're going to do this conference, you need to make the church the winner. Yes, yeah, good, like this can't be about you doing a conference now.
Speaker 2:This can't be your congratulations. No, goodbye, everybody, farewell tour.
Speaker 1:That church needs to be the big deal here. Yeah, the hero Because well, after you're gone, that church will still be here, yes, and still be serving the community. And do people know that that's a place that they can go and belong? And I think if youth pastors understood that long game concept, man, we could put things in position that will well outlive us and I think that's going to be important for just the longevity of ministry in general.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, and that's where a lot of churches now, I think, some of the ones that are flourishing didn't get that way yesterday, but there was something that was done a generation before or two before. That's now, like you know, taking real root. I think, in a lot of youth ministries. We can see that the struggle that a lot of folks are facing is we've inherited, in some places, a lack of rootedness, a lack of connectivity, a lack of, you know, corroboration, collaboration with others outside of whoever was the person before, and that's that's the lesson we have to learn, and we have to learn how to do it in a very, very different way. Teach us a little bit, though.
Speaker 2:So I wanted to ask you we got a little bit of time left talking and communicating to teenagers. It feels like again, 20 years in, it feels different. Some of that feels like it might be true, some of that just feels like I've gotten older, they gotten younger. What is some jose? What is some jose wisdom to talking to teenagers in 2024 and beyond? Like what would you say is like man? This is things that I'm doing differently now. These are things you should always do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I'll say because you the one thing I love about you is that you speak in a lot of different rooms. Sometimes you can be in the same room. Enough, yeah, that like. They're like ah, that's just funny things that he does. He's just a quirky dude or whatever. But when you're in a room of folks, there is no harsher audience than middle schoolers that don't know you. Middle schoolers that don't know you will destroy you, they will, they will.
Speaker 1:It really is. It's a gift number one to be able to share in any audience, and you got to understand that. I think if more people treated speaking as the gift that it is, they wouldn't go in there unprepared, haphazardly or thinking that it's about you in the first place, and to me that's the biggest difference in how we approach. So we do school-wide assemblies, which can be challenging If you're a guest speaker in their audience their auditorium and this is not a Christian event.
Speaker 1:So they really have no reason to want to listen to you, right? They don't have to listen to you, and if you understood that, then I think you would take the speaking part of it a lot more serious. So a couple of just quick tips that I always, always try to do. Number one is start strong and creatively. Okay, so I try to do, I'll do, like a finger touch sometimes.
Speaker 2:You have to explain that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I'll do like a, so I had a dance team back in the day.
Speaker 2:So this is my thing you know so it works for me. This is those breadcrumbs along the way. So is my thing, you know. So it works for me. This is those breadcrumbs along the way, so like. So the dance team in college has come back exactly. It's just. You're something you did when you're 17, it's coming back for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I used to try magic trick, whatever, whatever you used to do but you got to do something.
Speaker 1:You got to do something in those first few minutes to capture their attention. Yeah, if you don't capture their attention in the first two minutes, you're going going to spend the rest of your time talking trying to regain their attention, and you've already lost it. So you literally have to come in strong. So that is the first thing first. So you got to give them a reason, like I'm going to listen to you. Second thing is they don't need three points. They really need one point.
Speaker 2:Okay, I love that I'm here for one and a half. I'm here for a big idea, maybe like a I don't know, here's the thing, and then maybe, I don't know- and you could tell it in a bunch of different ways.
Speaker 1:But, man, when I was youth pastor and I realized, man, these kids are not going to walk out of here remembering all these things, but what could I get them to remember when they walk out of here? And if I can get them to remember one thing, then I did my job. So I always try to simplify one thing. Here's the one thing I want you to walk away with today, and I'm going to find a bunch of different ways to tell the story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do think some people hear one thing and they're like well, so I just talk about one thing one time. No, no, no, no, like. Do the prism thing, talk about it from multiple different angles, do a funny thing, do a thoughtful thing, do a quote thing, whatever it is, though it's all circling one idea instead of you trying to build a three point argument, building the argument. Get out of here Like. That's not, like. Our brains no longer work that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, two more. Third one I love leaving people on a cliffhanger. You know, who does this better than anybody in the world I've seen is Reggie Dabbs.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:He is number one, probably youth speaker in the world, Australia all over, yeah, and when he tells his story he doesn't wrap it up with a bow. It kind of leaves you like it leaves it Well, because what that does is now I'm going to spend the rest of my day thinking about that.
Speaker 1:So whatever that one point is I can give you the. Here's the one thing I want you to know. But as I'm telling my story, I want you to leave here almost scratching your head Like huh. I think some of the greatest messages I've ever heard weren't the most polished. They were the like raw and like oh shoot Like dang.
Speaker 1:Wow, you went through that like so, almost leaving it on a cliffhanger. That gets them curious, because that's how you really draw them in. Yeah, and then the last thing, and this really is the first thing, uh, before you ever speak, we talk a lot in, you know, um, pastoring around exegeting the scriptures yeah you have to find a way to exegete the audience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you don't know who you're speaking to and I learned this actually at the Tulsa Dream Center, like true story I was in college and I'm a decent communicator and I thought, man, I'm going to go do this and I get out there on a Friday night to speak to homeless people and they're all strung out on drugs and they're all like and I went and I preached my face off.
Speaker 2:I thought I was like I'm like yelling and I'm like giving them the points and I'm like, and literally they slept and I left there crushed.
Speaker 1:That's humbling.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:I was like, oh shoot, and the next Friday they let me come back and do it again, okay. And I said I'm going to do it completely different. Yeah, I went early and I ate dinner with them and I just connected with them because I knew that I wasn't going to have their attention until they knew I was with them. I got really good at preaching to displaced people Like I had their attention. You could feel God's presence in the room. It was probably one of the highlights of my speaking journey. And because I got good at speaking to people who don't have to listen, when people are in a captive audience, it's easy.
Speaker 2:Now I'm like yeah, Well, and that's one of those. So I have a friend that talks about so exiting the room 100%. That phrase needs to be a part of your planning process, and the way that he talks about it is this kind of there is no sermon done twice, Even if it's the same text even if it's your same notes, you can have your sermon of the sowers and the seeds and parables.
Speaker 2:The points could even be the same but because the room has changed, therefore the message will be received differently. He calls it the organic quality of preaching that literally, the room, the environment that it's in offers a shape or observer to it. Again, that message. In a gymnasium with no technology, to students you don't know, you may still preach that message, yeah, but that room to the multi-campus church with folks with Bibles and study notes out, it's different. It's the same passage, same idea, same speaker, but there is that organic quality to the preaching and the power that has to be as planned and prepared for and prayed for as much as it can be fully agree, but it makes.
Speaker 2:It makes it the gift and that's one of the things you showed. So good is that? Like it is a gift, because it isn't just an ask yeah, it isn't even just an honor. Like it is one of those, like you can still be an honorable person and not get asked to all the places that you want to go teach. Yeah, you, you. You may be a very commendable person and you may still want.
Speaker 2:Because it is the gift to be asked and I think it is the responsibility to put in the right preparation for it and not just the same preparation. So yeah, man.
Speaker 1:One bonus one that's been really fun as somebody who's got to speak in all types of audiences, from fuge camps to inner city schools to Latino churches, it's been the whole gambit. I remember being in Howell, michigan, at a. I forgot the denomination now it's going to come to me, but it was some denominational camp. All white kids I mean all white kids, and I'm as good, as they come like I'm like yeah, I'm talking slang.
Speaker 2:The whole nine yards. Yeah, and here's what I realized. I go over well on the quarter zips oh, it was great, actually, that's.
Speaker 1:that's. That was the ironic part. Okay, I went in there thinking I'm so disqualified, they're not going to understand where I'm at, like they don't understand my language. The world is becoming more urban by the day, through TikTok, through hip-hop culture, through what they're seeing, what Cardi B, what they're consuming, and obviously in context.
Speaker 2:So not every place is like, you know Well but that's one of the things Trends used to ripple out right From urban centers to suburban, but because of TikTok or social media, YouTube pick whatever you want. It's almost being absorbed instead of rippling, and so it's going to land wherever it's going to land, and you may be really surprised.
Speaker 1:I remember in Howard, Michigan, it was after a message. I walked out and I think the message landed well, but what blew my mind was these kids in Howell and Howell's actually known for like a KKK town.
Speaker 2:So even me being out there was like a little wild.
Speaker 1:Are out there singing Kiki, do you love me? And I was like our kids in San Bernardino are singing this song right now.
Speaker 2:I was, so our kids in San Bernardino are singing this song right now.
Speaker 1:I was so blown away and I just thought, man, it doesn't matter where you are, the world's becoming more urban, and not to say that a youth pastor has to go and listen to a bunch of secular music just to be able to relate. But I do think you have to at least have an ear to what's happening, because kids are talking about it every single day, Like and it can be from sports to Kendrick Lamar to Cardi B, Like it can be all types of stuff, but I think just an awareness as a youth leader around that, Like literally anytime, I would get a message if I ever got froggy and I'd be like, oh, krr, like the whole life. Or I'd be like, oh, like the whole life. Or or or I'd be like, uh, yeah, boo.
Speaker 1:I'll say something like like it could be the whitest audience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they still get it. Oh, they still crack up laughing Cause it's like pastors don't say that and like why are you?
Speaker 1:And so just being aware enough of the language and the terminology and like it just helps. It's a fun trick to just utilize. Also, don't be the old guy that's trying to be cool, and not that I was going to say as a word of caution to maybe some of my 40-year-older friends.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'm almost there though, just because you learn the words doesn't mean you get to use the words Very true, but you can reference the yeah.
Speaker 2:Very true the words, but you can reference the yeah, this is, uh, it's, it's the a little bit of the meme culture that like I laugh because I get asked by a lot of like parent age folks. You're like, you're the youth guy. Like what are the kids saying? I'm like, well, it's kind of two stories. There's like they all know certain things, but there's only like a certain bandwidth that are really using some of them like this was the funny part of like. So last summer, uh, I have a fourth grader so I went to kids camp as like sponsor dad, okay, but I also help with like youth camps. So, like youth camps, I'm like aware of all the things, but at like upper fourth, fifth, sixth grade camp they're trying to use all the things or whatever, like all the high school kids know, like riz, rizzler, whatever. But the fifth grade kids are like oh no, I am a rizzler and I'm like you're a twizzler, it's like get out of here.
Speaker 2:It's just one of those like they just land, like there's a little bit of like it's, it's in, it's a hundred percent, it's in it like I mean there are kids that are like buying sneakers. They got no business buying. Listen to music. They don't have an appreciation for it's just, it's just out there, and so I think the same is on us to be like aware and connected Just aware.
Speaker 2:Just aware because it's feeding them Again, it's literally in their feed, feeding them. Be aware, but don't feel like because you heard it somewhere else that they're like it's a little bit of the youth pastor, that's like hey, fam, and it's like nope, not their fam.
Speaker 1:You are not their fam. I have literally seen that. Recently we had a guy on staff and I loved him. He was great, but he was so disconnected from the culture. And because we work with a population that's really rough. He decided he wanted to learn, so don't do this.
Speaker 2:Give us a caution. This is the warning label. He decided he Give us a caution.
Speaker 1:Give us a caution, jose. This is the warning label. Yes, he decided he wanted to learn the culture. Yeah, so he goes to probably the worst thing you could have gone to which he went to a movie called Boys in the Hood. Oh my, and I'm like number one the kids we were reaching are not boys in the hood. Way to pick that one out of that Right. But he started using language like fam, like hey fam.
Speaker 1:And literally these kids were like yo, you don't know me at all Like there is a way to do it Like, but you got to have some relational equity in there before. You start to do it and he just came out the jump and so he kind of lost it from the very beginning.
Speaker 2:So we've had to re-coach and rework some of that, but just don't do that, Don't go to the extreme and be like but be listening, like, be listening to, like what they're saying and how they're saying it to each other, cause I do, I do think that's one of the things that still, like, language carries with it so so much of of it internalizes things like identity and internalizes things like ambition and care, and so don't miss it.
Speaker 2:Just because you don't understand it, don't miss it. Don't always feel like you have to seek to emulate it. To connect Research is not the same as delivery Facts facts, facts, yeah don't show all your notes. No, absolutely. Well, my friend dude, thanks for coming to hang out during the holiday. Anything on the way out for us, for youth ministry leaders, encouragement from 24 and 25?. What are you thinking?
Speaker 1:Man be present Honestly like this is the one thing that I can't shake right now. Even in all of our training that we're doing for our team, I tell our team no matter the level of training that we deliver, there's nothing that will be more powerful than your presence and such a real statement in the lives of students, and so the more present you can be for young people, the better off you're going to be. Period, no matter your context, I believe, love it.
Speaker 2:All right, you heard it here. Thank you so much, my friend. Good to be with you. Thanks, zach, a snap.
