Doug Fields' on Faith

I was not sure what to expect at the conference. I was seeing that all these California people were going to be there. All these Saddleback people. Was that good or bad? I had no idea. And who was this Doug Fields guy that was co-sponsoring the conference with Group?

Well, Doug got up Friday night to speak on the topic of Faith - the keynotes were going to be on Faith, Hope and Love.

Before his talk, he told a story of a young youth pastor he met from Waco, Texas named Gabriel. He was a former gang member and had an extremely successful ministry to kids in downtown Waco. The youth group at Saddleback heard about Gabriel and actually did a surprise visit to Waco to give the youth room an "extreme makeover" - tore out walls, painted, fixed up an office, gave him a laptop, put in tvs and gameboxes. They had a video of it.

And then, right before Thanksgiving, Gabriel's church told him they could not afford his salary and let him go. So, yeah, he was pretty crushed.

Doug invited Gabriel to the conference and brought him out on stage. I think he was really trying to let everybody know that everything does not have a happy ending in the short run, but that we don't give up on our ministry and we don't give up on God.

Then Doug moved into his talk. He said that he pondered what was the most important thing he could say to all these full time and volunteer youth workers looking back on 25 years of youth ministry. I will do a poor job of summarizing, but this is the best I can do. If you were there, add comments....

We all have an issue with control. We like the comfort and safety of being in control. We control for a whole host of reasons. But, Doug said he believes that the need to control is the opposite of faith. The opposite of faith is not so much doubt or fear, but the need to control. Doug said:

"We need to work on what is possible and let God take care of the impossible".

He acknowledged that youth workers live a life of frustration, disappointment and sacrifice. We are always giving more than we are receiving. We live for results that we don't always get to see. We need reminders that what we do is worth it all. We never have enough money or resources. We never have the full unquestioned, support of the church board or the senior pastor.

As we left the auditorium, they passed out cards that had CONTROL on the top and faith on the bottom. He said it was to remind us that if we had a little bit of faith, that we could start learning to give up our need to control.