Bill Hendricks: 

Well, welcome. My name is Bill Hendricks. I'm the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And, it's my privilege to welcome you to The Table podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. Today, we're going to look at youth ministry, and particularly youth ministry in churches. For many churches, the youth ministry is something of a need to make sure that families have a place where they can bring their kids while the adults worship. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Our guest today though, is going to show you how a youth ministry and a youth group may be the most potent force for taking the gospel to your community. So it's my privilege to welcome to The Table, Greg Stier, who's the founder of Dare 2 Share Ministries and your mission: Help youth leaders empower students to reach their world. Welcome to The Table podcast, Greg. 

Greg Stier: 

Thanks, Bill. So glad to be here with you. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah. Well, it's a treat. We've been looking forward to this, and I'll just say from the outset for our listeners' sake, Dare 2 Share, this is coming out of a life message for you, right? So go back and tell me your story and how you kind of got into Dare 2 Share. I know it goes all the way back to your childhood, I guess. 

Greg Stier: 

Yeah. I was raised in a very violent inner city home. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Wow. 

Greg Stier: 

And three of my uncles were competitive bodybuilders. The fourth one was a bouncer at the toughest bar in Denver, and the fifth one was a Golden Gloves boxer and a Judo champion. And my ma was the only girl in the group and they were all afraid of her because she used a baseball bat when she fought. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So there was real competitive fighting and- 

Greg Stier: 

Yeah, but not with each other as much as with gang- 

Bill Hendricks: 

Just in the neighborhood? 

Greg Stier: 

Gangs, yeah. The Denver Mafia, the Smaldones had a nickname for my uncles. They called them the Crazy Brothers. So when the Mafia thinks your family's dysfunctional- 

Bill Hendricks: 

You're in trouble. 

Greg Stier: 

You're in trouble. And, I was not that way. I never knew my biological father. My mom met my dad at a party. They partied, she got pregnant. He was in the Army. He found out, he got transferred 2000 miles away. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Wow. 

Greg Stier: 

Mom had been married several times so I was just a scared, scarred fatherless kid in the hood, and my family terrified me and my neighbors terrified me be we were at the highest crime rate area of our city. And, a hillbilly preacher who's nickname was Yankee, I guess his dad was a counterfeiter and a bootlegger in the deep south and he was born on the run from the law, so his dad nicknamed him ___ Yankee. I won't fill in the blank. So, he kept that title. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, it shows you how people in the south thought of Yankees in those days. 

Greg Stier: 

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so, Yankee planted a church in the suburbs, reached my toughest uncle with the Gospel, my Uncle Jack, and he trusted Christ. One by one, my entire family put their faith in Christ and I sat there as a kid watching my entire family transformed by the simple Gospel message. There was no complication. It wasn't a turn or burn message. There was no list. It was you put your faith in Christ, and Him crucified, that He died in your place for your sin and you are saved. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Wow. 

Greg Stier: 

And that message, the simplicity of the Gospel, transformed them. And, I got involved with Yankee's youth ministry. Yankee believed, he had a philosophy that the fastest way to reach a city was through the young. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Wow, yeah. 

Greg Stier: 

Because he said teens come to Christ quicker, the spread the Gospel faster. So he trained and equipped us, and we had 800 teenagers in our church. We only had 300 adults. 800 teens in our youth ministry. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Wow. 

Greg Stier: 

And, he equipped us in sound theology. He equipped us in evangelism. It wasn't like first grow … it was both and at the same time. He gave you a Bible and a stack of tracks and said you're going to learn to master both of these. I read Biblical Preaching by Haddon Robinson when I was 12. I got a Lewis Sperry Chafer eight volume Systematic Theology set when I was 15, and I wasn't the exceptional kid. I was just one of the leadership students. 

Bill Hendricks: 

But you were drawn to that? 

Greg Stier: 

I was drawn to it because I had seen the power of the Gospel. So, reading the prolegomena and the Systematic Theology of Chafer's, I wept. Because for me, it wasn't just cold dead theology. It was I'm learning to know who my dad is, who my big brother, Jesus, is, what salvation is. I mean, it's putting words to everything, all the questions that a teenager from the hood who's fatherless and struggles with identity … I remember when I was a kid, all my uncles, before they were saved, they were ruthless. Most of them were just downright mean. My Uncle Dave gave me a gift in front of our entire family when I was six, and I opened it up. It was Christmas. And, it was a girl's doll. 

Greg Stier: 

I thought it was a mistake. I go, "Why'd you give me a girl's doll?" And, he's like, "I figured you don't have a dad so you like to play with dolls like a little girl." 

Bill Hendricks: 

Oh my gosh. 

Greg Stier: 

That scarred me. 

Bill Hendricks: 

How shaming. 

Greg Stier: 

It shamed me. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Absolutely. 

Greg Stier: 

But I want to tell you something, that began the search. As a six-year-old, I said, "There's got to be more." And, I began to study my little King James Bible underneath the kitchen sink with a flashlight. I still have that red King James Bible. I couldn't understand it, but I knew the answers were in there. So coming to Christ, watching my family transformed- 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah, that's the big thing. 

Greg Stier: 

… studying this theology and then getting mobilized for evangelism hit every major question a teen has. Dr. Kara Powell talks about the three big questions; identity, belonging and purpose. Well, identity, I'm a child of God. So I don't know my dad, that's okay. I have a heavenly Father. Belonging, I have the people of God, the family of God. And purpose, I have the cause of Christ to make disciples of all nations. So for me, as an inner city kid- 

Bill Hendricks: 

It put the pieces- 

Greg Stier: 

It put everything together. So, I don't have a story like, "Well, and then I strayed years later." It was like, "Why would I stray?" 

Bill Hendricks: 

Right, you'd found life. 

Greg Stier: 

I found life. Why would I stray? 

Bill Hendricks: 

And this may sound like an obvious question, but just briefly, what did that transformation in your family look like that was so … basically you saw power at work there. 

Greg Stier: 

Yeah. So my Uncle Jack, Yankee goes to his house on a Saturday morning and knocks on his door. Jack comes to the door, no shirt on, tats everywhere, two beer cans, one for drinking beer, one for spitting chew and goes, "What do you want?" He didn't know who he was. He didn't know who he was. He goes, "My name's Yankee Arnold. I'm here on a dare from Bob Daley to tell you about Jesus." 

Bill Hendricks: 

Wow. 

Greg Stier: 

He goes, "I don't know Jesus. I know Bob and I'll give you five minutes." So, Yankee just went in there and laid the Gospel on him and asked him, "Does that make sense?" And my Uncle Jack said, "Hell yeah." That was a sinner's prayer. He trusted Christ. He started devouring his Bible. He brought 250 people out to church in one month, body builders, street fighters, gang members. Then my Uncle Bob, he came to Christ as a kid actually, but then he went far from God. Got in a bar room brawl with a guy that stabbed his best friend, Doug Johnson, five times. Beat the guy to death, gets arrested. Throw him in the back of the squad car. While the EMTs are working on this guy to resuscitate him, he called out to God, "God, I'm in." 

Greg Stier: 

Well, he found out the next day they did resuscitate him. He was released from jail. A year later, he was at Florida Bible College where he went and grew and just … So, it was over the course of time. It was messy. My mom was one of the hold outs. So I got equipped to share the Gospel when I was 12, so the first person on my heart was my ma. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Oh, sure. 

Greg Stier: 

Because mom … 

Bill Hendricks: 

She had been there for you. 

Greg Stier: 

She was a partier. She had been married several times. She was like the woman at the well with a baseball bat, just tough lady. One day actually, a guy pulled up she had married in a car, brand new car, and I was on the porch. I was five. I go, "Mommy, one of my daddies is here." And she's like, "Where's the bat?" And she reached behind the door, got the baseball bat, runs out there, cigarette hanging out of her mouth … because he had left us. We had no idea where he was … shatters his front windshield, shatters his headlights and is like, "Get out of the car. I'm just a gi