Youth Minister and the Electrician

Working in youth ministry means that you have to wear a lot of hats. From event planning, to accounting, to web design, to tech guru, to management skills, counseling skills, biblical scholarship, crisis management, and team dynamics the skills are vast and mandatory. One skill I never thought I'd need was to be an electrician. Now I've done my fair share of mission trips where that skill would have been helpful but to be honest electricity scares me. It's invisible, fast, and can kill you. Scary.

A few weeks ago it struck me how the Holy Spirit is much like electricity and to work in youth ministry is to operate like an electrician. As a youth minister I can't change hearts. I can't heal situations, I can't open eyes. (Eph 1:18) What I can do is create opportunities for the spirit to do those things.

• Like an electrician designs a circuit I can put together a program. 
• As an electrician puts wire down I can build relationships with teenagers. 
• As an electrician understands grounding, voltage, and amps I can preach the gospel faithfully and let the spirit flow freely over those areas channels. 

We do all these things with the desire that electricity will flow over our plans and Christ's kingdom will come. Hopefully like a defibrillator the spirit like electricity can bring back from the dead the heart that is far from it's creator. 

*Thanks to the preaching ministry of Dr. Piper for the original idea of electricity and the spirit.