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Kristina Sears

Jun 18
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Student Testimony from Crystal River High School

By Local FP Communities, First Priority Of America, Student Leaders

Growing up in school talking about Jesus is hush, hush and frowned upon. So naturally, everyone was a little surprised when First Priority came about. I was very excited because once a week I got to sit and have lunch with people who shared my faith, listening to someone educated on it give a message. Now that the school year is through I can reflect on all the wonderful things First Priority has done for my school, my friends and me.

Everyone who knows me knows my passion for Christ via my opinionated mouth. So when it was time to head up stage to talk about Jesus in school none of my friends were surprised when I invited them. The courageous and daring went with me, the shy and self-conscious remained at the table. People came and went during the school year, some seeing First Priority as it was, a wonderful midday escape from public school life, others didn’t find it as beneficial and let the mockery of the remaining students as the curtains closed sway their decision. Regardless of what was whispered behind the closed curtain the First Priority students stuck together because we finally had something to show off and be proud of. We finally had something to drag our friends into.

Bringing people to Christ is an unspoken goal among all those who follow Him, so doing it as school was even cooler. I’ve met a lot of new people I normally wouldn’t get the chance to talk to, or even know follow Jesus. I’ve seen a plethora of my friends and fellow class mates come closer to Christ through First Priority. It means so much to me to be alongside them in their walk with Christ. The pastors and student leaders who take time out of their day to come to our school and preach to hungry teenagers are important to me just the same. I’m very thankful for these people and for the opportunity to bring my friends to know my Savior. I can’t wait for the years to come.

I hope it becomes popular among Citrus County students and we see that following Christ should indeed be our first priority.

Taylor

Jun 06
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Truth of God

By Nehemiah

The Word of God in Romans 9:6 says, “But it is not as though the word of God has failed.” Romans 10 states, “All who call on the name of The Lord will be saved.”  So why do we see such failure in our country?  Could it be because many of these teenagers have never heard the words of the Good News found in Jesus?  Could it be that they got their view of Christianity from the media and the leadership of Hollywood?  Could it be that if someone was sent into the middle and high school(s) in your community to share the words of Jesus that many would call upon the name of The Lord?

We do not need to tell anyone that our nation is in crisis. We have been deceived by the great deceiver who took something that was meant for good and twisted it to mean something else. Our founding fathers made a statement and wrote in the Constitution about separation between Church and State to protect people from the government establishing a church. Our culture has used it to remove God from our public debate and have taken all references to God and the Ten Commandments out of our schools. Now, our culture is heading towards no moral foundation. We have a culture that is defined by Hollywood and the Supreme Court. We have babies having babies. We have kids killing each other. The list goes on and on. The hopelessness of students is shocking. These are eye-opening statistics that need to get the Church’s attention:

Every day in America:

  • 5 children are killed by abuse or neglect – one death every five and a half hours
  • 5 children or teens commit suicide
  • 186 children are arrested for violent offenses – one arrest every six minutes
  • 4,133 are arrested in total
  • 386 are arrested for drug offenses
  • 3,312 high school students drop out – one student every eight seconds
  • 18,493 public school students are suspended – one student every second and a half

(Numbers are from the Children’s Defense Fund website: www.childrensdefense.org. Children are ages 5 – 17.)

Could Romans 10:12-13 come true: “For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” (Romans 10:13-15 ESV)”?

For the Good News to go forward in the 2013-14 school year,

Brad Schelling

May 29
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Greater Shaols Implementing A Strategy That Simply Works

By Priority Parents

Casey Hagle of Greater Shoals writes.” We have seen almost 100 students receive the hope of Christ through salvation. Most of these students are unchurched and were disconnected from the local church. This has been made possible because the strategy of First Priority effectively unites the body of Christ on the campuses of our schools. I never thought student pastors all over the area would buy into the strategy like they have, but many of them have commented about the access it gives them to the campuses that so often seem closed off. Not only have we seen the obvious eternal impact, but it continues to unite youth leaders and pastors over three different counties for the mission of reaching the 12k + students in our area. First Priority is the most effective strategy to share the hope of Christ with every student! ”

This plan is working! And it’s our desire to see every community in the United States have First Priority. Pray for us as we work with cities and communities across the country.

May 23
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Following God’s Call

By Nehemiah

I work from home sometimes.  Other times I work in the office.  Sometimes I am on the road to speak, attend a local FP board meeting, golf fundraiser, or coach a director.  Sometimes I have a day with the family or a Sabbath to journal, read scripture, and the latest preacher book out there.  How do I know what I am supposed to be doing that day?  Under the premise of setting and reaching goals and objectives each year, I have the freedom and flexibility to structure a day, week, and sometimes month accordingly.

I was reading in Acts 16 this morning.  I want to share with you a few verses and the questions that I wrote down following.  Here is verse 35-40:

 35 But when it was day, the magistrates sent the police, saying, “Let those men go.” 36 And the jailer reported these words to Paul, saying, “The magistrates have sent to let you go. Therefore come out now and go in peace.” 37 But Paul said to them, “They have beaten us publicly,uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and do they now throw us out secretly? No! Let them come themselves and take us out.” 38 The police reported these words to the magistrates, and they were afraid when they heard that they were Roman citizens. 39 So they came and apologized to them. And they took them out and asked them to leave the city. 40 So they went out of the prison and visited Lydia. And when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed.

 Paul and Silas stood up for themselves, letting everyone know they were Romans and were treated unfairly.  Notice in verse 39 that Paul and Silas didn’t share the gospel with them but instead just listened.  In verse 40, Paul and Silas honored the request by departing town.  How does it look for us as believers to live life and listen to God vs. listening to man?  Did God tell Paul and Silas to leave town through the chief magistrates who were only reacting and scared?  Shouldn’t Paul and Silas have had a better plan for their lives and better time management than that?  Do these questions lead into ‘Many are the plans of man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails’ or ‘Where God guides, God provides?’

Living in our world only able to see and hear and experience the moment, we are faced with these questions every day.  Where is God laying the burden on your heart?  Can you see the need for Hope in the lives of students at the schools?  What is God calling you to do about it?  How can you structure your day to influence the schools with the Good News of Jesus Christ?

In Christ,

Brad Schelling

May 17
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Are You Challenging Your Students to do Hard Things?

By Church Leaders, Community Leaders

First Priority wants to say thank you for being a leader and a light on the schools in your community. The school in America is considered to be part of the 3rd largest mission field in the world consisting of 25 million students. The hard work and your passion to see Christ made known at your local schools has been amazing almost 10,000 students have put their hope in Christ! Praise!
If your looking for a great resource to help equip your students to become a stronger leader you should check out  the book Do hard things by Alex and Britt Harris. They wrote the book when they were 18 years old.  They have had over 35 million hits on their website challenging teens all across the country to do hard things. They also talk about views about teenagers and challenges them head on. One of the challenges they discuss is the idea of being a teenager is not  a vacation from responsibility.
The Harris brothers bring out that most teenagers have bought into this idea of teenagers are on a vacation.The book will challenge students to look beyond their potential and inspire them to do hard things for God. When we look through the Bible we have seen teenagers do some hard and amazing things. One story from the Bible that we all are familiar with is David and Goliath. David was a teenager and he trusted God to defeat the giant Goliath. Yep a teenager slayed the giant in front of the armies of Israel and the philistines. Sometimes we just read over that familiar story and miss that God chose a teenager not the king, experienced solider, or a adult but God chose a teenager to lead Israel to victory.
“Unfortunately we often get praise for things that weren’t particularly difficult to achieve. If we focus on the props and encouragement of those who have low expectations for us, we become mediocre. It can be challenging to set our sights on excellence, particularly when we’re hearing that we’re already there. One of life’s greatest lessons, which we all must learn, could be expressed in the phrase “That was nothing. Watch this.” Challenge yourself and others to call the normal things normal and save that word excellent for things that really are.”
― Alex Harris
What a awesome statement! Our hope is this for you  students too! If your wanting to find out more about this resource check out their site.
May 08
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Financial Stewardship

By Nehemiah

Let me paint a picture for you. It’s an overwhelming picture that points to a dream we’d all like to achieve.  Let’s take an average small city school: McDowell High School, comprising grades 9-12, enrolls approximately 2,400 students annually.  I am going to use two assumed averages about the church.  First, that an average church spends a minimum of $50,000 to run the student ministry department including salary.  Second, that on average, the student ministry has about 50 students in it’s mid circle of influence.  Now, some churches will be higher and lower in either or both of those assumptions, but look at your situation and do your own math.  Youth Ministry Architecs agree with me that an average church will spend $1,000 per student per year.  Based on this, a single church would need to have the following in place if it hoped to have a student ministry that involved half of these students:

     – A budget of roughly $1,200,000

     – 24 full-time staff

     – 240 volunteers

     Keep in mind this is effectively reaching half of ONE high school in our area.  How many schools does your student ministry draw from?

The dream I mentioned above that we’d all like to see, but are scared to begin the journey to, points to this… churches must work together as the church. We don’t have a choice. No church in our area that hopes to reach every teenager in the community with the Good News can afford the money, staff, and volunteer power it would take.

What if we worked together for the Kingdom and combined our resources, not to form one congregation, but to provide extensions of every local Church to the school in the form of an evangelistic club?  First Priority is a non-territorial place for the churches to come and unite with the sole intent of sharing with students the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Students do reach students.  There are more students who call themselves ‘Christian’ than any other group at the school, including the band and the football team.  Let’s give that group a strategy to influence their peers and support them as they do it.  The potential of seeing thousands of students come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior is there, ONLY if we, the local church leaders will work together to reach our schools with the gospel.

Keep Hope!

Brad

May 08
Love0

Great Resource “Do Hard Things”

By Faculty Sponsors
First Priority wants to say thank you for being a leader and a light on the schools in your community. The school in America is considered to be part of the 3rd largest mission field in the world consisting of 25 million students. The hard work and your passion to see Christ made known at your local schools has been amazing almost 10,000 students have put their hope in Christ! Praise!
Being a teacher is such a awesome job, you have the opportunity to inspire and teach students a skill or give them information to learn. You play such a vital role in the shaping of our young people. We wanted to share some reading material with for the summer. The book ” Do Hard Things”.
If your looking for a great resource to help equip your students to become a stronger leaders you should check out  the book by Alex and Britt Harris. They wrote the book when they were 18 years old.  They have had over 35 million hits on their website challenging teens all across the country to do hard things. They also talk about views about teenagers and challenges them head on. One of the challenges they discuss is the idea of being a teenager is not  a vacation from responsibility.
 The Harris brothers bring out that most teenagers have bought into this idea of teenagers are on a vacation.The book will challenge students to look beyond their potential and inspire them to do hard things for God. When we look through the Bible we have seen teenagers do some hard and amazing things. One story from the Bible that we all are familiar with is David and Goliath. David was a teenager and he trusted God to defeat the giant Goliath. Yep a teenager slayed the giant in front of the armies of Israel and the philistines. Sometimes we just read over that familiar story and miss that God chose a teenager not the king, experienced solider, or a adult but God chose a teenager to lead Israel to victory.
“Unfortunately we often get praise for things that weren’t particularly difficult to achieve. If we focus on the props and encouragement of those who have low expectations for us, we become mediocre. It can be challenging to set our sights on excellence, particularly when we’re hearing that we’re already there. One of life’s greatest lessons, which we all must learn, could be expressed in the phrase “That was nothing. Watch this.” Challenge yourself and others to call the normal things normal and save that word excellent for things that really are.”
― Alex Harris
What a awesome statement! Our hope is this for you  students too! If your wanting to find out more about this resource check out their site.
Apr 10
Love0

Tears of the Saints

By Nehemiah

I write this tonight out of a thankful heart for you guys believing in what we do.  I have been in the “ministry” for 30 years and I do not what to persuade you with these stories that always seem to be told, but my heart is breaking tonight. My wife Tonya, who is a Registered Nurse at the top hospital in Florida (Tampa General), came home tonight in tears. She took care of a 14 year old boy that tried to commit suicide by putting a 12 gauge shotgun to his face. He pulled the trigger and is still alive. He managed to blow his face off, but is still alive for a reason. I listened as my wife told me and my oldest son the story of how this kid thought his life did not matter and he had nothing to live for.

I know the older I get the more emotional I become, but I have not stopped weeping for this kid. I thought about all the kids that hear the gospel because we are out there pushing the church to take the gospel to the schools.  Our students’ foundational need is hope.  The Hope of Christ in Every Student!  It’s spiritual, not anything else.

Tonight I am dealing with a burden in my soul of the hopelessness of students in our country. I am also heart crushed that we have a ministry leader that walked away from a 300K job to do First Priority and now his wife has cheated on him and left him. The devil is alive and well and trying to bind us. Sometimes I get down and depressed, and wonder if anyone cares.   Sometime I feel like we are losing the battle, but I know that Jesus already won the war!  So I keep on.  Thank you for having the heart, desire, and courage to step up to unite the church to influence the schools.  This is a lonely adventure without you all.

I think of you all that have invested and prayed for us.  I would love to say that all is well and things are going great.  The reality is that in First Priority, it is not pretty. We have been filling out our goals template today and were a little disappointed in some of the categories, but I realized it is Zechariah 4:6 where it says, “So he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty”.  In John 3:27, John the baptist helps us realize, “A man can receive nothing, unless it has been given him from heaven”.  We will press on to see  you lead your community, organizing the churches to help students reach students at school.

Please keep fishing!

Mark Roberts

Apr 04
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A Plan of Action

By Priority Parents
 We had an amazing meeting! We brought in a worship band to the chorus room and had a mini concert to kick-off our club, with amps, drum machines, piano, electric guitar and more. After the concert Jeff gave a gospel message and 14 students responded to the call. Awesome day, but we need more pizza  – we ran out!
This is awesome… and this is happening on 150 other campuses in South Florida.

Encouraging reports like this one remind us of the “why” behind every fundraising effort we undertake.

The development focus I’d like to share with you is our upcoming events. Events are a great way to introduce people to the ministry. We have two great events in May.

May 3 – Golf Tournament @ Coral Ridge Country Club
www.golfforthegospel.com

May 10 – Clay Shoot @ Quail Creek Plantation
www.sportingclaysforthegospel.com

Here are some options for you to consider:

1. Participate in the events. (Golf, Clay Shoot or both)

2. Who do you know that you could invite to participate?

3. Do you know anyone that would like to be a corporate sponsor? There are various levels of participation.

4. A tee sign or shoot sign is an easy way for someone to give $250 and give their company exposure.

5. Use your influence to spread the word… social media, small groups, your church, etc.

6. Pray for these events!

Go ahead and click on the web sites and make yourself familiar with each event.

Let’s get fired up!

Chris Lane
Executive Director First Priority of South Florida

Development is happening in First Priority South Florida. Just like Chris said the salvations are the Why in development of ministry. We hope that this will be encouragement to you in your development to make ministry happen in your community.

Mar 29
Love0

The Call of God

By Nehemiah

The walls and gates of Jerusalem had been torn down for over seventy years. During those seventy years there were probably hundreds, maybe even thousands of people who thought to themselves or said to a friend, “We need to fix these walls.”

How many times has it been said in our country that, “We need to reach these schools?” Everyone in the church would agree with the statement and might even go so far as to try to do something about it, but they get busy with all their other obligations and it becomes just another great idea. Many churches are doing good things, but nobody is organizing them all to share the hope of Christ with every student. Like in Nehemiah’s example, if there is not a person waking up every day to organize the work, it will not happen.

When Nehemiah inquired about the Jewish remnant and the conditions of the city and was told of the situation, he was moved to tears. Nehemiah 1:4, “When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.”

The difference between all of the thousands who had seen the condition of the walls and Nehemiah was that Nehemiah was burdened. He was burdened to the point that he spent days fasting and praying to God. If you are similarly burdened, fast and pray.  We tell others who are thinking about starting First Priority in their community to pray, familiarize themselves with First Priority, and with the conditions of their community. If they can’t sleep, then it is a good indication that God is calling them to do something about it!

The call of God to unite your community and reach students is very important. This is no easy task! If it were easy, someone else would have already done it. There will be very hard times and a lot of frustrating moments, but the call God places on your life is what will keep you keeping on.

Brad Schelling

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