Lead TBMB Youth Ministry specialist Jay Barbier stopped by the Radio B&R studio to discuss the 2020 Youth Evangelism Conference, keys to a successful youth ministry and the importance of a solid youth ministry to support parents, families and to reaching a community for Christ.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Jay Barbier:
Being in the community, serving the community. That’s when you can make a difference as a church. Because if your church is in this community, if your church didn’t exist, would the community ever notice a difference? When a student ministry, if you could take that on to say, “Hey, we want to make a difference here by serving our people and loving our people,” that’s when you’ll start seeing more kids want to show up, more parents want to be involved, and you’ll have buy in from your surrounding area.
Chris Turner:
Hello and welcome into this edition of Radio B&R. I’m your host, Chris Turner, director of communications for the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board. Today, we are talking with newly-named Tennessee Baptist Mission Board Youth Ministry Specialist, Jay Barbier.
Jay Barbier:
What’s up, man?
Chris Turner:
How’s it going?
Jay Barbier:
Fantastic.
Chris Turner:
Well, apparently we have lowered our hiring standards to have hired an LSU fan here in Tennessee, but I guess you’re the best-
Jay Barbier:
Go Tigers.
Chris Turner:
Yeah, there you go. Well, it’s obvious that there’s really nothing that I can say at this point because you are reigning national champions. But hey, Tennessee, next year, we’re there. National champs, baby.
Jay Barbier:
Let’s go. That’s awesome.
Chris Turner:
So, yeah, I hear you.
Jay Barbier:
Hey, I’m a Tennessean now.
Chris Turner:
That’s true.
Jay Barbier:
I’ve been out of the state of Louisiana since 2011, so I feel like I’ve earned my right. My children actually have been in Tennessee longer now than any other state.
Chris Turner:
Yeah. But I’ve noticed that you still have a closet full of purple.
Jay Barbier:
Purple and gold, because that’s the way Jesus intended. Purple for the royalty and the streets of gold.
Chris Turner:
There you go. I would say something about orange, but I don’t know how that correlates to heaven. Other than Knoxville, Neyland Stadium. But anyway, we’re not here to talk about SEC rivalries, because right now, there’s really not one. But we’re here to talk about all things youth in Tennessee. And you are the officially named youth ministry specialist. What is exactly does that mean
Jay Barbier:
As youth specialist, my job is to serve churches. Working with the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, it has been an honor and privilege for the last two years to be able to go around to build relationships with youth pastors, with youth leaders, with churches. For me, one of my main focuses is as I go around with these relationships, I’m also taking opportunities to preach, to do any kind of conferences, just to help a church where they are and how do we help move the ball forward when it comes to evangelism, discipleship, anything that we can do to serve them.
Chris Turner:
Yeah. You are one of our biggest advocates for evangelism, but you’re also one of our biggest advocates for discipleship, especially among youth. Just talk a little bit about your background because you come from a youth ministry background and still see yourself very much as a youth minister who happens to work here. Just talk a little bit about why you see discipleship is such an important component of the youth ministry in a church and as it relates to evangelism.
Jay Barbier:
Oh, no doubt. You can’t separate the two. That’s one of the things is, when I got saved at 18, my view as I went through high school, I was a nonbeliever. I think of things a little differently. But as a minister of the gospel with my background, in my early 20s where I felt God started to call me into ministry, one of my first mission trip exposed me the first opportunity, I got to evangelize, and the Lord laid it on my heart that if I’m going to do it anywhere, I better start doing it back home.
Jay Barbier:
I’ve taken that mentality into the ministry, into the community, wherever I live, wherever I serve. I’ve been a bi-vocational minister. I was actually a bread man for Wonder Bread for years. That has helped me in ministry, because I have that salesman mentality of how do we go and provide for the customer? I feel like if we look at our communities, if we look at our churches with that understanding of the customer is always right, the person, we’re there to serve them, not the other way around, it changes the mentality and understanding of how you do ministry.
Jay Barbier:
When you look at evangelism and discipleship, you can’t just go tell people about Jesus and then leave it like that. You leave them then in the chair as a new believer, that they’re a babe in Christ. They need to be fed. They need to be cared for. So, how do we move that forward? The way that happens is through discipleship, disciple-making. As a minister, our job, our goal is not to just go in a real quick, “Hey, let me lead them to Jesus,” but it’s how do we go forward with this for disciple-making as we lead somebody to Jesus, as we trained other peoples to lead people to Jesus, they go and do that, and then it’s replicating over, and over, and over again. That is never something that stops. It’s ongoing.
Chris Turner:
Well, excuse me, and you’ve talked about just that whole idea that you’re trying to, in your youth ministry, raise up kids, have a great commission vision. You’ve talked about what missions means to you and you see yourself as really a missionary in many respects, and that the completion of that cycle is to have that long-term vision where kids do see themselves as missionaries, not just disciples or youth. Is that possible to see that type of vision really give birth inside of somebody that’s 15 or 16 years old?
Jay Barbier:
Oh, no doubt. It’s all because of relationship based. As a person that follows Jesus, our marching orders are Matthew 28:19. “As you go, make disciples.” What we do is we have to gather people around us and pour into them just the way Jesus modeled this with the 12 disciples. You’re always going to be around a small group. You’re always going to be around a large group. You have all these opportunities. But how do we gather people? And as we go, we train them, we show them, we teach them. Honestly, I think people learn best by example.
Jay Barbier:
I am a person that wants to lead others to Jesus, not only because of what scripture says, but I had pastors, and deacons, and individuals in the church that helped me. They showed me, they brought me to visitation. They brought me when they had conversations with people in the church, so it started for me as a young man, as a new believer, being mentored and discipled. That led into me when I surrendered to the ministry of doing the same thing, because I learned best when I watched other people do it.
Chris Turner:
Yeah, and you’ve talked about how in a perfect world, youth ministry is great. All kids come to the Lord and they all get discipled. But the truth is, a lot of our youth ministers face a lot of challenges. What are some of the challenges that you not only experienced when you were a youth minister, but some that you’ve just seen as you’ve been going across Tennessee and building relationships with these ministries these past couple of years?
Jay Barbier:
I think everything starts with creating a culture of you can’t do this alone. A youth pastor that tries to be the one man show or the one person show, everything is on them.
Jay Barbier:
If we do this in a way of how do we try to gather an army, build an army around us, and this means how do we raise up kids, as in students, to be a student ministry about them, that they’re the ones giving mission moments. They’re talking about their testimony. You’re building the student ministry on them. I believe churches can be successful in a student ministry. When you take the focus off of one personality and you lay it down to where it’s many people now that are carrying the mantle of student ministry. In student ministry, one of the most important things that was ever taught to me was it’s a threefold ministry. You have to spend time with students, you have to spend time with leaders, and you have to spend time with parents. When you look at that, that means really a third of your time should be with students. A third of your time with these leaders. How do you invest in these leaders so that they go and they pour into these kids?
Jay Barbier:
Because one person can probably effectively reach one to 20 people, but if you pour yourself into five people, you have just of expanded your army. But then if we spend a third of our time with parents and giving them resources, the discipleship can go so much deeper because you have that going on at home.
Jay Barbier:
I have the privilege, I have two teenagers and my home, that my son is about to be 18 and he’s called to ministry. Why is that? I have put people in his path for mentoring, for discipleship, but I’ve also, as a father, and my wife, we have kept him accountable. We constantly preach the gospel. We constantly love him. If we mess up, we let our family know our faults. When he messes up, we help him to see that, “Hey, it’s okay. Look, let’s try to get you back on path.? And praise God, there’s never been any major problems, but I think it’s because of the accountability of the word of God, but also a constant discipleship. That’s what discipleship is. It’s this ongoing process of loving Jesus, and as you love Jesus, you love others.
Chris Turner:
Yeah. You touched on something there that I think is just really very important. Youth ministry is not just about the youth, but you mentioned the parents. I’m a parent of a 17-year-old, and boy, in today’s world, kids just have everything coming at them, and parents are just not equipped to deal with the changing technology that’s on a smart phone or the things that the kids are exposed to or that they have access to. You very much have a passion to see youth ministers be successful with that parent component as well. Just talk a little bit about why a successful youth ministry definitely helps create successful parents.
Jay Barbier:
Oh, no doubt. A successful youth ministry, you’re going to be pouring into these parents. Now, granted you might only have less than half of your students actually have active parents. But even if it’s one family in your church that you can pour into, you’re doing more than you did before. When we look at that, we’ve got to look at this from a perspective of let’s try to just move this forward instead of setting unreal expectations. But how do we pour into some parents and tell them and teach them, “Hey, how do you have devotion? How do you have a family worship time?” I think some people take that as, “I don’t have time every day to get in the word and do a family worship service.” “Well, why don’t you just do that once a month? Start off like that. Then, you take it from an opportunity, how can I do it every week?”
Jay Barbier:
Then if you’re a gung-ho family that wants to spend a lot of time together doing this, do it every day. But let’s just try to move the ball forward a little from where we are to where we want to go. I know in my family, I’ve had some great moments of we’ll sit down and actually, when I was going through school, I studied this from the reformation. I looked at what was the difference from when it was very religious to then when people started owning what the Bible taught. We saw where the movement that started from God was families would actually sit down and read the word together. Then they would just sing a song together and they would pray. That can be an awesome family, alter family devotion time, that is very simplistic. And just read the word together. Because I believe any movement we’ve ever seen of a God, it started with the reading and teaching of the word.
Chris Turner:
Yeah, and as you mentioned earlier, it is, I mean, to go into it with the expectation we’re going to do this for an hour every night, six nights a week.
Jay Barbier:
There’s no way.
Chris Turner:
But even if it was five minutes, three times a week, that’s still more than, unfortunately, a lot of families even have time with, with all the activities. But to really concentrate on that time, I mean, something moving in that direction is better than nothing.
Chris Turner:
One of the things you’re going to be working on is just really trying to come up with a process or a plan for helping youth ministers. Just talk briefly about what you have on the horizon and direction you see the youth ministry here at the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board going over this next year.
Jay Barbier:
Yeah, we want to create a pipeline for student ministry that every church can adapt to what we’re trying to do. Our goal is to serve churches, so whether it’s a full-time guy that is just trying to maybe move to a new area, maybe it’s a bi-vocational leader, or maybe even as a volunteer. How can we have a model that a church can adapt it to their community, to adapt it to their culture, that they can do. It could be little things like ways on ramps for discipleship, for evangelism, for missions, for parent resources. What we want to do is how do we partner with them so that ministry can happen.
Jay Barbier:
The key, I think, that a lot of people miss is they think student ministry is done Wednesday night when all the kids gather and then Sunday morning, Sunday night, and they never get in their community. If we can start moving the ball forward when it comes to being in the community, serving the community, that’s when you can make a difference as a church. Because if your church is in this community, if your church didn’t exist, would the community ever notice a difference?
Jay Barbier:
And so, when a student ministry, if you could take that on to say, “Hey, we want to make a difference here by serving our people and loving our people,” that’s when you’ll start seeing more kids want to show up, more parents want to be involved, and you have buy in from your surrounding area.
Chris Turner:
Yeah. This plan that you’re talking about and thing you’ll be developing, I mean, that’s not some prescriptive thing that you’re just developing in a bubble and sending out. You’re going to be doing that in collaboration with youth ministers.
Jay Barbier:
Oh, yeah. We’re wanting to grab several student ministers across our state from different sized churches, different backgrounds. Because every one of these things, one molding is not going to fit every church. But if I can get a guy to give a perspective as a bi-vocational, if I can get a young lady that’s a leader, because the church doesn’t have the money to fund anybody for youth ministry, but they have some leaders in their church that, hey, this could be adaptive for them. We’re looking from just perspective from everybody. As I go around the state networking and building relationships, that’s the questions I’m asking, the opportunities that I’m doing just to listen to conversations.
Chris Turner:
Well, one of the big opportunities that people have here in Tennessee is right at your doorstep, the Youth Evangelism Conference, which has been going for 50 plus years now. A lot of people across the state can trace either their decision to follow Christ or their decision to follow the Lord and ministry back to YEC. Just talk a little bit about when that is and what’s going to happen on that date.
Jay Barbier:
Oh, yeah. March 13th and 14th is YEC, our Youth Evangelism Conference. I am a static, excited. For the last a month, we’ve been walking through 30 days of prayer for YEC. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YEC Tennessee. You’ll be able to see what we’re praying for and we’re specifically praying for things.
Jay Barbier:
Yesterday was kind of a fun day for me, that we prayed that every student ministry, as they travel to, YEC as they’re here in Nashville and as they travel back home, how can they be the hands and feet of Jesus? That means how can they love others. When we look at that from a perspective, oh, it’s incredible what we can do, because YEC exists so that we can preach the gospel unashamedly and we’re going to offer an opportunity for students.
Jay Barbier:
What do they do with the gospel? Some of them have never given their life to Jesus. They’ve never surrendered to Jesus and we’re hoping that this could be the time that they give their everything to him. For some people, this might be the opportunity for them to say, “You know what, I need to start telling people about Jesus.” For others, it could be I’m going to surrender to full-time ministry. We want to help capture that. We want to help use that as a way of this marker in their life so that they could go back to their community and win people to Jesus.
Chris Turner:
Well, I know that registration for YEC closes here at the end of February.
Jay Barbier:
Yes.
Chris Turner:
But if you miss that, it doesn’t mean you miss out on YEC if you still want to go.
Jay Barbier:
You can still buy tickets at the door, and we will take as many people. Let’s pack out that place. We’re really excited. This year, we’re opening up on Friday and Saturday with two concerts with Colton Dixon local sound, a great Christian artist with awesome stories, and they’re going to be lifting high the name of Jesus. But then we’re going to go into Worship with Daniel Doss. He’s one of our own Tennessee Baptist worship leaders. I’m loving to use our local people that are doing ministry as Tennessee Baptist. Then on Friday night, we have Clayton King. He’s one of the best evangelistic preachers that I’ve ever been around and just knows how to preach the gospel. But then, what do you do with that? Then on Saturday, we have Nick Person. He is another one of our Tennessee Baptist pastors. Just really excited about that. For fun on Friday night, we have 321 Improv, just an opportunity maybe to break the ice for some of these kids that this going to give them a view of Christianity from a different perspective.
Jay Barbier:
We try to hit YEC at so many different angles, from the concert field, but none of those things are as important as the preaching of the gospel. That’s where my main focus is. When I lay everything out on what we’re trying to do, we want to proclaim Jesus as king and offer students an opportunity to give their life to him.
Chris Turner:
Well, and YEC has for years, and years, and years drawn thousands of kids to Nashville for this. Every year, there are hundreds of decisions that are made, whether it is a call to ministry or you a call to follow Christ as a disciple and those types of things. His track record speaks for itself. For a lot of our churches across Tennessee, this is their big, big event for their youth. They just don’t have a lot of resources maybe to invest in big youth projects, but they see this as a priority, and they come, and they expose their teenagers to this opportunity. It is important and I know you’ve just been passionate about people, just if the best way they can to participate in is to pray and just lay a foundation going into that, that you’ve been really focused on that, as well.
Jay Barbier:
And just to move the ball farther when it comes to discipleship, we have now introduced, we give each believer … So, if a student comes forward at YEC to give their life to Christ, to surrender to Jesus, we give them a new Believer Book. That walks them through what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus for the next 30 days. For us, that’s just an opportunity to give them a resource to move forward with. And now, we’re partnering with several Christian universities that are going to give us a book for the call to ministry. We’re trying to do everything in our best effort. How can we help the local church grow and develop these students to be the world changers of tomorrow?
Chris Turner:
Yeah, definitely. Jay, one thing we’ve loved about your heart since you’ve been here is just a focus on exposing kids to the gospel for the purpose of seeing them come to a relationship with Christ and then setting them on the road to discipleship so that they will be the next generation of missionaries, whether that’s just in their school or possibly around the world someplace.
Chris Turner:
Jay, what’s the best way for somebody to reach you? I’m sure email is probably. If they’re just wanting to bounce an idea off of you or try to connect with you to have you come out and just visit with them and maybe give some assessment, or some support, or whatever, how could somebody get in touch with you?
Jay Barbier:
Through email, social media. If you email me, you’ll end up getting my cell phone, and I would love to have a conversation. But I would love to even come out and visit with you and your church and just what can I do as a Tennessee Baptist missionary to help serve the local church.
Chris Turner:
Awesome. Well, Jay, thanks so much. We’ll definitely probably follow up with a podcast, a Radio BNR on how YEC We’re expecting great things for that, for the Lord to really move, and so we’ll be like look forward to reporting that. Thanks for being with us.
Jay Barbier:
Thank you.
Announcer:
Thank you for listening to Radio B&R, a podcast production of the Baptist & Reflector, the official news journal of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board. This and other episodes can be downloaded baptistandreflector.org/radiobr. The ministries of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board are supported through the cooperative program and gifts received through the Golden Offering for Tennessee Missions. For more information, visit tnbaptist.org.
