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| Meet: Casting Crowns |
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At the Creation East festival this summer, interlinc hosted a TalkBack session between Casting Crowns and a crowd of youth leaders.
How does your touring and ministry work?
We all work within student ministry one way or the other, either leading worship singing, teaching small groups, or being the youth pastor. We gear our traveling around what we do in our church. When our tour starts in the fall we will finish up with Refuge, our Wednesday worship time, and at midnight we will load up. We will be gone Thursday through Saturday, and then roll back in Sunday morning just in time for church. Most weekends we will fly home at 9am on Sunday and race to get to church. I’ve been a youth pastor forever, and have been in my current church for six years. Megan and her husband Ryan are in a brand-new church. Hector is one of the youth leaders in the youth group that is without a youth pastor. There are all different stages of youth ministry represented here. This summer we did a 10-day trip of concerts in Ireland and Scotland. Then we did youth camp last week. You know youth camp; you do all you can to get them all there. If there are just 10, you know at least one will come home with the lights on. You just take a handful more, and then they start getting it. We are in a place now where the core of our student ministry is spiritual. You have to keep that balance—many student ministries grow so fast that the core of their group is lost. We are finally ready to start drawing people in because our high school students run the youth ministry. They are doing a great job; we will have a good year.
Your songs are so easy to use in a youth ministry because we know where they are coming from. Tell us about the story behind your latest music video.
“Does Anybody Hear Her” talks about a girl who can’t seem to fit in at church. That was a real girl that came to our church when I was about 22, three or four years ago... (laughter)... in youth pastor years. It was a very small town and the girl was about 15 and had made many mistakes. Our church wasn’t ready for her, our youth group was not ready her. They were still like, “Who is going to sit by me?” and “Who is going to sing my song?” and “Who is going to miss me when I’m not here?” They were a youth group—not a student ministry at all. When she came in it only took about two or three Wednesday nights for her to understand that she was a threat to the girls and an opportunity for the guys. On her way to Jesus, she tripped over us. I have never forgotten her face, or the things that happened.
Tell us a little bit about some of the new stuff on your new album, maybe what you are excited about and some of the stories behind them.
“Somewhere In The Middle” is my favorite songon the new album. One of my students said, “You need to get on MySpace and see what’s going on out there.” I went on and started look- ing at some of our teenagers and just seeing one life at church and one life on MySpace. I wasn’t mad at them, because we are all like that. When we are in church and walking with Jesus, we know how we are supposed to live, everything makes total sense, and temptation smells bad. Then we get out in the world, and there are compromises that make us numb. There is a journey that has to happen. Those highlighted verses in our Bibles have to come out in our hands and our feet and how we think. The Christian life is such a long journey, and we are all somewhere in the middle trying to live it. Thematically we are doing the same stuff we always have, and talking about the things that aren’t getting talked about enough. We are dealing with moral decay, and about what the internet is doing to men. We are dealing with a lot of stuff, and shaking things up.
Youth Leader Question: You said that your youth group was not ready for a
young woman with a bad reputation. How did it go from that to where it is now?
One of the biggest things is staying there with them. I had a new youth pastor every year when I was in the youth group. I think that hurt us. You earn the right to speak to your students; you don’t get it because you are the youth guy. You have to earn the right to speak truth into their lives through your relationships with them. I think you teach more in the van on the way to Burger King then you do at church. Relationships are a big deal. Kids seeing you doing it is a big deal. They need to see you do it. You can teach, but they need to see you in real life.
One of the biggest things for me is investing in students. I can say it all day, but when you get a student that is doing it, all the sudden it’s possible. When I went to a new church, I brought my leadership students from my last church to them and they got to see what leaders looked like. It’s just sticking it out, and understanding they are not where you are; they aren’t seeing what you are seeing. You need to understand that you are not better than them because of that. They just need to grow and catch up to where you are. For me it is spending time with them, pouring
into them, it’s praying for them by name ... a lot, and just waiting for those lights to come on.
The biggest thing a believer has to get is his or her own quiet time. I had a high school student walk up to me one time and say, “They were talking about this in my school, what I believe about that subject again?” They have just been sitting in a chair watching me talk. They need to have their own quiet time, their own time with Jesus. It’s not me talking to them; they can’t ask me into their heart. They need to have their time withJesus; it’s a big deal.
When I look back over the years and see the ones who are still in the church and pouring into others lives—I realize that they are the students who where not smarter or better looking or the most talented. We are fooling ourselves with that kind of stuff. The people that are really doing it now are the people that had some sort of ministry that was their own when they were back in the youth group; something they had ownership of. They weren’t the audience watching Mark talk.
One of the big things for me is to get them out of their chairs, the chairs are my enemy, and the chairs are killing them. I have to get them out, serving and doing things. We try to get every student to have his or her own ministry. Anything creative we can come up with, email teams, news letter teams, sports teams, karate, dance, drama, band, and all that stuff. We have a scrapbooking ministry starting up, because I have senior high girls that scrapbook. They will start gathering up six and seventh grade girls and teaching them how to scrap book, and learning their names and praying for them, and showing them a cool verse to look up. Not memorizing Leviticus, but loving on them and showing them what a Christian looks like.
We are teaching our students that everything is ministry. Doing what you do for Jesus is what ministry is, not up on a stage. Somehow we have communicated that ministry is singing and talking. But, when I can get them out of those chairs and get them to start doing something, then their spiritual gifts just start rising to the top and they start realizing they are encouraging to people. You start encouraging them, and they start living up to the encouragement you give them.
Want more? You Can hear the entire talkback session! Listen here!
By the way... Join Youth Leaders Only (YLO) and we'll make sure you get a Back-List copy of Music Video Loop 57.including the latest Casting Crowns video "Does Anybody Hear Her" and the Bible Study that goes with it! Make sure you type "Casting Crowns Video" in the customer notes section when you join online.
Casting Crown's NEW album "The Altar And The Door" is YLO Box 69! Click here to sample a few tracks!
Casting Crown's latest video "Does Anybody Hear Her" is on Music Video Loop 57. Watch it here! |
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