What Is Project 13
HELPING THE PASTOR’S DILEMMA
Many Pastors have known for decades that impacting youth is imperative, but have experienced ongoing frustration knowing:
- They have spent significant money over the years but not seed dramatic impact on the youth of their community for Christ.
- Parents in their church are scared of the culture overpowering their kids.
- Youth program leveled off or declining.
- Youth who have grown up in their church losing their faith after college
Now there is actually HOPE for church leaders to see dramatic and sustainable impact on the young
generation! Welcome to PROJECT 13!
Background
After hosting more than 3 million youth in life-changing conferences all across North America over 30 years, and seeing hundreds of thousands come to follow Christ, we have finally curated a proven process for the local church to have ongoing impact for the young generation! Introducing PROJECT 13!
The most common question Ron Luce received from pastors and parents almost every weekend at the mass events, after witnessing 1000 each week come to Christ, was “How can we do this back in our church and our city on a regular basis?” Back then, he had nothing to tell them. NOW HE DOES! PROJECT 13!
Some context to understand the situation at hand will provide a better understanding. After 3 decades of working to rescue the young generation, along with hundreds of other national youth organizations and thousands of churches trying their best, we keep losing more of each generation to the Gospel. This graph depicts the trend for the past 4 generations (demonstrating less and less who call themselves Christians) and extrapolates that for the next 2 generations if the trend is not significantly disrupted.
What you are reading is a viable blueprint to significantly disrupt this negative trend, and you could hep make it all possible! For so long, people have known there is a huge departure from the Gospel for the younger generation, but had no idea what could be done, or what they could possibly do to make a significant difference. Now there is a proven framework to disrupt this trend and as you will see, a very specific role for you as an investor in Kingdom initiatives to play to make it a reality.
EQUIPPING THE CHURCH
Church leaders must confront questions that have been presenting themselves for quite some time and wrestle with them until we discover solutions that work. Some of these looming questions that have direct impact on this trend include:
- How do we shut down the exodus of young adults from the faith and from the church?
- How do we not simply keep youth in church but help them arrive at adulthood as strong leaders in their generation and pillars in our church?
- How do we fundamentally reach the young generation for Christ and turn them into passionate growing followers of Christ that multiply?
Finally, there is some good news on how to answer these conundrums! During on’s research for his doctoral dissertation, he discovered and got to know a number of churches on 6 continents that have answered these questions and so much more. THEY ARE REVERSING THE TREND BY FOCUSSING ON REACHING AND DISCIPLING THE NEXT GENERATION!
After doing a deep dive into their processes for his dissertation, Ron curated their best-practices and put them into a Masterclass for Pastors and their teams who are eager to understand a fresh approach
called EXPONENTIAL 101. (www.exponentialpastor.com), and refined a PROCESS of IMPLEMENTION described in the PROJECT 13 PLAYBOOK and MASTERMIND GROUP PROCESS.
EVERY CHURCH CAN BUILD A ROBUST NEXT-GEN MINISTRY
There is finally HOPE for pastors and churches who are interested in making dramatic impact in the young generation! We have taken the best practices from these extraordinary churches and simplified their processes for churches to begin the journey of impacting the young generation and disrupting the horrible trend for the last 4 decades!
At first glance, these Exponential Churches can look just like a big cool church with lots of young people. When looking deeper, they all contain 3 key practices that they constantly seek to improve upon. It turns out that reaching and discipling the young generation is not rocket-science. It is simple but profound as the diagram depicts.
At first glance, these Exponential Churches can look just like a big cool church with lots of young people. When looking deeper, they all contain 3 key practices that they constantly seek to improve upon. It turns out that reaching and discipling the young generation is not rocket-science. It is simple but profound as the diagram depicts.
"I AM SO RELIEVED!"
These are the words expressed by a pastor of one of the largest African American churches in America once he heard the vision and tools I am about to share with you!
The goal for PROJECT 13 is to help churches build and implement proven systems to reach and disciple those most likely to come to Christ! (which of course are young people)
1. Training young leaders
The first best-practice of these remarkable churches is that they take very seriously the training and deploying of young people into leadership! The idea is that Jesus wants to use everyone, and so they begin to train youth to get involved in ministry opportunities and leading small groups. To assist churches, we have developed PATHWAY TO LEADERSHIP, Trimester 1 (12 weeks long) to train their older youth how to disciple 13 year olds once they come to Christ! We have tools to help churches how to spot those who have been raised in their church who have demonstrated godly character, then enlist them in this 12 weeks of growth as a Young Leader! They are preparing them to be small group leaders and disciple the 13 year olds who are about to come to know Jesus!
Part of PROJECT 13 is a very clear facilitator’s guide to teach the Young Leaders exactly how to facilitate Spiritual Formation in their small groups, and a very thorough manual for those training the Young Leaders to insure they continue to experience exceptional growth as they are training others.
2. Epic Events for 13 year olds
As I mentioned, we hosted hundreds of mass events for young people called Acquire the Fire over 25 years. We are now teaching churches to host events themselves, so that once the Young Leaders are ready, they can begin to disciple the new Followers of Christ! It is so exciting to watch the planning teams of these Early Adopter churches choose a date, a title for their event, a theme and then begin the very simple marketing plan we have helped them assemble. As you can see from the chart below, the statistic is overwhelming and FAR MORE LIKELY for someone to come to know Christ if we reach them by age 13. Hence PROJECT 13! After decades of successful Epic Events, we are now training churches with the very tools that helped us impact millions of youth so they can do it in their regions.
THE GLOBAL STUDY BY THE INTERNATIONAL BIBLE SOCITY INDICATING THAT 83% OF ALL CHRISTIANS MAKE THIER COMMITMENT TO JESUS CHRIST BETWEEN THE AGES OF 4 AND 14.
3. Implementing DEEP DIVE DISCIPLE-MAKING
One of the most profound dimensions of these Exponential Churches is how deep and well thought through their tools are to ignite ongoing growth in Christ in new followers.
They take seriously the fact that young people are known to be radical, and that hunger for Christ is matched with deep growth tools and practices.
Almost all of them use a trimester system (12 weeks) and use small groups to help the new followers process and apply to their lives what they have learned.
These churches are not ashamed to challenge young people to go deep in Christ. That means, memorizing lots of scripture, reading through the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs the first year in faith, having quiet times every day and discussing what they learned each week in a small group format.
We have developed an entire first year we have called PATHWAY TO FREEDOM, and these books guide the new Followers of Christ in to a daily intimacy with Jesus.
As you can see to the left we have multiple levels of learning that engage the young disciple’s heart, mind, time with Jesus and their social relationships.
In addition, we have developed spiritual assessments for the youth to take every 4 weeks for churches to get a peek at the intangible elements of spiritual growth in their lives. It is so important to know if what you think is happening in the growth groups is actually happening. Usually the only thing measured in growth programs is attendance, but now we can measure so much more!
In addition, we learned that Exponential Churches set the goal of what they want their young people to look like as they arrive at their 21st birthday, and then set learning goals for each year from 13 years old through 21. We have actually done the same process for churches that want to implement PROJECT 13, and are presently developing 7 years of trimesters of growth tools to keep them growing aggressively until they arrive at adulthood.
It’s not just a great plan for reaching the next generation, but also for building a healthy Church into the future!
Where do churches start?
We are in the Early Adopter stage and are seeking for more churches who are eagerly ready to implement this proven change strategy by starting PROJECT 13. They will engage in a 6 month play-by- play plan to help them implement the process of PROJECT 13. This fresh approach to reaching and discipling the young generation successfully deals with the systemic problems churches all over the world have had for decades.
This 6 month intensive is designed for the PROJECT 13 Task-Force of 5 members to walk through 4 simple phases and complete the objectives for each phase. By the end of the 6 months a church will have:
- Recruited and trained their first group of Young Leaders
- Hosted their first Epic Event for 13 year olds
- Launched New Followers into DEEP DIVE DISCIPLE-MAKING
The Project 13 Playbook describes for each church exactly what to implement month by month, with a series of check lists, benchmarks and measurement tools to help measure their progress! With the assessment and checklist we provide, you will be able to document every step you take, and you will see the effectiveness of reaching and discipling the young generation!
As an Early Adopter Church, Ron Luce will personally meet with the staff and PROJECT 13 Taskforce, to kick off the process, and then monthly meet on Zoom or in person to coach them through the launch sequence!
OVERALL ENDGAME: PROJECT 13 NETWORK OF CHURCHES
Based on the best practices of churches all over the world who are exceptional at reaching and discipling the next generation, PROJECT 13 has been developed as an onboarding 6 month intensive to train and coach Pastors as they implement the planning and processes necessary to have a successful launch.
Built into this 6-month intensive are metrics, benchmarks, and assessments (using google forms) for churches to regularly grade themselves on all initiatives and adjust accordingly as they endeavor to reach and disciple those most likely to come to Christ.
As a church enters into the second iteration of the 6-month process, they are requested to invite 10 other pastor friends to come and witness their EPIC EVENT and learn about how PROJECT 13 is thriving in their church. As these 10 friends sign on to initiate PROJECT 13, Ron Luce will provide the training for them (either live or via videos) while the inviting pastor coaches those they invite through the process of making it a success in their own church.
The map below shows the various regions of Early Adopters who are already beginning to implement PROJECT 13. Thanks for praying for them as you think of them and for your investment in charting a new direction for the youth of America with these tools.
Next steps
After filling out the Project 13 readiness application (QR code below) and a church is deemed a good candidate as an Early Adopter, the church will host Ron Luce as a speaker for Sunday morning. While there, Ron would also spend an extra day helping the team prepare for PROJECT 13 BY:
- Spending a half day with the church staff, presenting the overview of the Master Class as an executive education for the staff as they become proficient in global trends impacting the Church, and the best practices of the Exponential Churches studied around the world.
- Spending the second half of the day with the PROJECT 13 task force, laying out a very specific game plan for the next 6 months and each person’s role month by month to launch with success.
A CHURCH WILL SCAN THE QR CODE TO TAKE THE PROJECT 13 READINESS ASSESSEMENT AND COULD BE ON THEIR WAY TO DISRUPTING THE NEGATIVE TREND AND REACHING A WHOLE NEW GENERATION FOR CHRIST!
PROJECT 13 is provided by Generation Next, PO Box 522, Lake Dallas, TX 75065