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

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

“The reality is that when you get busy doing the things that matter to you, you actually have more time to do the things you love and less time to do the things you like.”  Jon Acuff in his book Quitter.

Cory in Flagler said it this way, “I have spent my life walking the beach and picking up shells.  The shells represent great things that I enjoy doing.  But then I came across my starfish and i knew that this was my life’s calling.  But my hands were full of shells.  In order to pick up my starfish, i had to put down some shells.”  He finished the illustration by saying, “When First Priority came along, I knew it was what God had been preparing me for.  But I had a lot of other things going on. I had to give up a few responsibilities with my church youth group and adult ministries.  I had to clean up my personal life as I was also getting ready to be engaged to my future wife.  But I knew it was worth it to be able to hold First Priority.”

A successful businessman wanted to take his company to the next level, so he brought in the best consultant money could offer.  A very simple strategy is what he left with the businessman.  When asked for the bill for the consulting, the consultant said, “Wait six months, implement the strategy, and send me a check for what it is worth to you”.  Six and a half months later the consultant got a check for $10,000.

Here is the strategy the consultant left: Each night before you go to bed, write down the three top priorities for First Priority tomorrow, the three “if I did nothing else today but these three things and I would be successful” things.  Then, when you wake up, you know what you need to do.

Now, if you aren’t full time FP, and you have a wife, three kids, two dogs, and a job and a half, then maybe you write down on Sunday the three things for the week.  But, the results are still the same.

This is why we have redone our Phase process to simplify launching a new First Priority movement.  Whether this is your first week reading or you’ve been around for a year, here are the three things for today:

1. Pray and Fast

2. Learn First Priority

3. Build a Team

Very straightforward.  Probably not going to be done in a day.  But if you stick with these three for a month, you will be on your way to seeing students reach students at school for years to come.

In Christ,

Brad Schelling

Who: First Priority Staff, Spouses, and Ministry Leaders

What: Cross Training, FP Leadership, FP Swag, Good Food, Great Conversations, The Gulf Shore Beach

 Where: Gulf Shore Beach Retreat Center – Gulf Shores, AL

How much: $80 per person includes all meals, housing, swag, and leadership materials

Options: ***FPOA Covenant Participating Communities retreat fees included in 2013 covenant giving

Monday Morning Golf – $75

Tuesday Private Boat Deep Sea Fishing – $100

Everyday walks on the Gulf Shore Beach – FREE

Register HERE.

You are reading this because God has burdened your heart for the students in your community. Your adventure with First Priority is based on the book of Nehemiah and we highly recommend you study through that book.

The Call of God on Your Life:
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 similiarly 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! We like to call it the “sleep test.”

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.

There is Hope,
The FPoA Team

As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. And I said, “O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants.

Nehemiah 1:4-6