Dear
Fellow Youth Worker,
You got into ministry because you
were called. Called by God Himself.
Called to touch young people with
His life-changing Gospel. And as
you look back over the last year
of ministry, undoubtedly you have touched
many lives. You have seen some come
to accept Christ’s grace, some
commit themselves to a deeper walk,
and some commit themselves afresh.
And, like the rest of us, this is
the stuff that thrills you! And yet…
If we were to add all our many successes,
one very disturbing fact remains: we
are still only reaching about 3-5%
of Toronto’s 200,000 High School-aged
teenagers!!! In other words, there
are over 190,000
UNREACHED TEENS!
Many of us know the frustration
of trying to be more creative, to
come up with more exciting activities,
more pizza parties, more sure-fire
ways to attract unchurched students
to our meetings and only getting
one or two new teens into our programs.
Of course, each teen counts! And
of course, it is about every single
teen! But when we consider that there
are 190,000 unchurched teens, we
have to agree, we haven’t even
scratched the surface. They are not coming
to our churches or our youth groups
for answers. We must go
to where they are to reach them with
the Answer! We need to do something
different to reach them! But what?
How can we reach them?
Imagine a ministry environment
where each youth worker and youth
ministry, each church and each
para-church organization, work
together, strategically and co-operatively,
across denominational, cultural
and traditional boundaries, to
optimize each other’s efforts
and to maximize all our results.
Imagine an entire city, where
each of us is connected to our
peers, to pray for, equip, empower
and mentor our teens to be the
church’s missionaries, as
they carry the Gospel message into
their mission fields.
Imagine a school, with all the
Christian students from all the
churches that feed into it, working
in unity, to accomplish the Great
Commission and reach each one of
their unchurched classmates.
Just imagine!
Our prayer is that this is not
something we only imagine, but a
reality we experience!
This reality is what Jesus prayed
in John 17; that we be ONE, so the
world would know that the Father
sent His Son! For this reason, we
feel this is the only way
to reach today’s generation
of teenagers in our city! We call
this the Toronto Youth Network – TYN.
Will you join with us and bring
your share and your input to help
establish this reality?
The TYN is NOT another ministry
but rather a unifying force bringing
together all Toronto’s ministries
from churches and para-church organizations.
The TYN is local church focused as
it aims to bring unchurched teens
into the church to be discipled.
The TYN does NOT replace any of the
existing regional networks within
Toronto, instead, it strengthens
each as it links them across the
entire city, augmenting their reach
and communication. Simply put, we
wish to allow each member to bring
its part benefiting the whole church
in Toronto.
The
TYN is NOT asking
you to commit to joining a city-wide
networking
meeting, NOT to
sign-up for a bunch of events, and NOT to
combine your ministry with someone
else's.
Here’s how you
can get involved:
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