“ … the sooner we get the sin out in the open, then we can deal with it. You can’t deal with it as long as it’s private — it then holds power over you.
“I’ve tried to model this in our church by just not allowing our congregation to put me on a pedestal like I’m some holy man who’s above sin. I want them to know that I’m right there with them. I’m struggling with the same things that they’re struggling with. We have issues in our marriage. We have issues with parenting our children. We have issues with being good stewards of our money, staying pure sexually,” pointed out Mr Ramey.
About where the world was at today, Mr Ramey said because secular humanism was just basically being man-centred, as opposed to God-centred, the focus was no longer on God, but on man.
“It’s all about us, and satisfying ourselves. It’s a circle that starts with man and ends with man, and God gets left out of the equation altogether. Of course that just leads to worldliness.
“In the Church we have the truth. We need to hold up the standard of God’s Word.”
Mr Ramey, who served for many years as a high school pastor, and then as a professor of youth ministry at The Master’s College, said it was important that the Church treated young people as adults and ministered to them in a way that built their faith and discipleship.
“Youth ministry today, unfortunately, is like ‘let’s have a pizza party, let’s watch videos and play games and then we’ll give a 10-minute devotion and get the kids to start thinking about God.” Mr Ramey said at his church they gave their students a 45-minute exposition from the Bible.
Mr Ramey stressed how important it was for adults in churches to spend time with young people training and equipping them to share the Gospel, before sending them out to invite their friends to church.
“I think we need to first of all view young people as responsible adults who can learn, who can grow, who can change. They don’t have to go through the time of adolescence where it’s a ‘survival mode’.
“This is the time that they should thrive. Young people need to be discipled. I think a church that really wants to have an impact on young people, needs to get them involved in discipleship relationships with older, more godly people.”
Mr Ramey added that the mind-set of the Church should not be that it does not want people in it who look or are different. For example, people with tattoos or body piercings.
“Some people in churches are not comfortable having such young people in their midst, but you need to create a mentality amongst the students and the parents and the elders of your church that we want these kinds of people to come into our church because we want to reach them with the love of Christ.”
