On an old, country road not far from where I live, there is a church inhabited only by goats. I attended this church as a baby but for more than two decades it has set empty, until of course those goats moved in. I pass this church nearly every day, and the sight of those goats living in that church is deeply disturbing to me. The old, white, church has a quaint, little, belfry on top of it. Other than needing a new roof, the building appears to be holding up pretty well. The old place has some history too, besides being a church it served as a one-room schoolhouse until the 1940s. So how did a building that contains so much history and so many heartfelt, memories become a hovel for goats? I answer I believe will cause us all to do some soul searching.

The church building was owned by a certain denomination and run by a board of trustees. Over the past several years, many would be pastors have tried to get the board of trustees to let them open the church. Many times I have pictured this parade of men in my mind passing before a committee that must have resembled county fair judges. One man was not of the right denomination, another was too sloppy, this guy preaches too hard, and this loser can’t even run his own household! For one reason or another, every single candidate was shot down leaving the doors of the church shut. Not every man that petitioned for the church was the right man to open it, I agree with that much. Yet, surely out of all of these guys, surely one of them would have been better than a bunch of smelly goats! Unfortunately, when a building is left vacant long enough, someone or something will eventually occupy it….

I want to talk to you about how this concept applies to us spiritually. As I look at our Youth Department, not just our district, or our state, or our country, but our whole, world-wide Youth Department, I see something that disturbs me. What I see is an empty building. What I see is a group of people who has never found a suitable leader to open the doors of that building. I see the enemy waiting to step in and capitalize on our idleness. What my wife and I are trying to do is open the doors of this Association’s Youth Department so that God can work and move in it the way He desires to. I talk to pastors every week who confess that they do not currently have a youth program in place. While they have young people attending their churches they do not know how to reach them. Our goal is to help these pastors reach these young people for Christ. We want to help churches not only to attract the younger generation to visit their church but to give them a reason to stay.

I believe that today, perhaps more than at any other time in history people are searching for something. All age groups, especially the young are searching for something. They all feel this emptiness inside. I believe that in our Association we have a lot of good people who have filled that emptiness with Jesus Christ, yet they have children or grandchildren who are still searching. Brothers and Sisters, it is our urgent duty to present Jesus to them. I believe that a heart is just like a building, it will not remain vacant long. A person with an empty heart will try to fill that void with drugs, alcohol, sex, violence, and all manner of evil. We cannot afford to stand idly by while our children and grandchildren become vessels for evil to dwell in. Some pastors may say, “We can’t afford a youth program.” I personally cannot afford to see my loved ones go to Hell. Some pastors tell me, “We do not have any young people attending our church.” To them I say go out to the highways and byways and compel them to come. These are the last days, we have got to storm the battlefield for our Lord Jesus Christ as never before!

In closing I want to say, this is not Jeff and Tammy’s Youth Department, this is not Sister Rayl’s Youth Department, this is your Youth Department! Let me get a little more personal, these are your children or grandchildren. If their hearts are empty, goats will not move in, evil will. If they die without Christ, they are lost for eternity. We need to be just as serious about the younger generation’s relationship to Christ as we are about our own. We feed our children, we shelter them, we see to their medical needs, but above all of this we need to be concerned about where they will spend eternity. As disturbing as it is to see those goats living in that church, imagine how horrible it would be to see the evil spirits that dwell within the hearts of our lost loved ones. If Jesus does not live in their hearts, someone does. I ask that you would join my wife and me in this war for souls. Pray for us as we pray for you.