If You Could Share One Message with Teens Today, What Would it Be?

The following is a transcribed Video Q&A, so the text may not read like an edited article would. Scroll to the bottom to view this video in its entirety. 

So if I could preach one thing to teenagers to make sure that what they need to know would definitely be from 1 Corinthians 15. We know when it comes to students today, to teenagers, that statistics are all over the board. Some people say 50%, other people say 90%, so I like to stick in the middle. Around 70% of teenagers who quit going to church after they graduate high school, and that's for teenagers who went to student ministry and they were involved in church all the way through middle school and high school, and once they graduated high school, they quit going. About 70%. And then as well we see statistics say about 85% of people that do give their life to Jesus do so before the age of 18. So I like to look at student ministry as often the last stop before hell.

This is a very serious age, very urgent time in someone's life. So the reason I think that they don't continue in the church after graduation is not because of the transition into college ministry, but it's because of salvation. 1 John 2:19 says if they have left the church, they have made it manifest or they've revealed that they never truly were a part of the church. They never truly were in the gospel. So I think that one sermon is to make sure that they truly do. How they can know for sure that they believe the gospel. And that's one that I get to preach all over the country and I preach many different nations as well. 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul says that he wants to remind us of receiving the gospel. Not just that you know its essentials or that you know its elements, but that you have received the gospel, knowing who Jesus is, what Jesus has done, and how we respond. In repentance, in faith, in the Lordship of Jesus.

And then he says that we would remain in the Gospel. So in other words, the same way that we have believed the gospel is the same way that we should be living the gospel as well. So knowing that it's a legit faith in the sense that we are remaining in the gospel, then lastly he says, "Holding fast to the Word that I preached to you." Or that word means, holding fast means to remember. Remembering the gospel. So 1 Corinthians 15:1-5. I love preaching that wherever I go because it's the foundation that they must know for their life to make sure that they truly have believed the gospel, and when they have, they are truly living the Gospel.