You are listening to the Passion City Church DC podcast.

To learn more about Passion City Church,

including our gathering times in Atlanta in Washington, D.C.,

visit us online at passioncitychurch.com.

Today's talk comes from Pastor Ben Stewart.

Well, right out of college, the first thing I ever really led was I was a youth pastor.

At a brand new church, so there hadn't been a youth pastor before, and I really didn't know how to build a youth ministry.

I remember asking my pastor, what is success?

And he said, I don't know.

I'll tell you if you do it.

So I did my best to try to figure out what am I trying to build here.

And over those first few years, I remember we began.

Our church would meet in a middle school we rented.

And my youth ministry consisted of a circle of about four high school kids sitting around in a hallway,

none of whom wanted to be there, me included. None of us wanted to be there. And yet here we were.

But by the grace of God, we were able to grow to about 15, 20 students, and we would move to the

choir room. And then by the grace of God, we grew to about 50, 60 students and moved to the

lunchroom. And at that point, we had hit critical mass that we started to build a band of high school

students and we're trying to figure out how to play instruments and how to sing worship songs and

have people do announcements. And we were trying to build the structure of a youth ministry.

And I remember there was one particular Sunday that I was standing in the back by the sound booth, watching the band and kind of getting ready for my message. And as I was doing that, there were two college age guys sitting right in front of me at the back of the room, which I don't even know how they got there. They weren't even supposed to be there. But there they were.

And I was standing behind them, so I overheard their conversation.

...