4 Camp Takeaways from My First 4 Years in Ministry
Camp is, without question, the most impactful rhythm in our ministry. It creates a space that students simply don’t get
The greatest compliment you can give to G Shades Youth Ministry Curriculum is to call us “the gospel-centered” one.
But when we say “gospel-centered,” we’re not trying to use a buzzword. We’re trying to be precise. Because if we’re honest, “gospel-centered” has become one of those phrases in youth ministry that sounds really good, but often means very little when you actually press into it. So before we talk about curriculum, before we talk about philosophy, we want to define for you what WE actually mean.
To us, being gospel-centered means every message starts with what Jesus has done and helps students see their lives through that lens.
That’s it at its core. But the implications of that are much deeper than a one-sentence definition. It means every message is grounded in what Jesus has done, who that makes us, and how that reshapes the way we see life. Instead of just telling students what to do, we are helping them learn how to see. Because the way that you see the world determines everything about how you live in it.
Most curriculum out there isn’t truly gospel-centered. And when I say that, there are a couple of things that I mean by that.
A lot of curriculum claims to be gospel-centered, but really what they are is biblical. And listen, being biblical is good. That’s baseline. Every curriculum should be biblical. But you can be biblical and not be gospel-centered, because the Bible is a large, expansive collection of books. You can faithfully exegete a passage, you can avoid proof-texting, you can handle the text with integrity, and still miss the point of what everything in Scripture is ultimately pointing toward.
The crescendo of Scripture is the person and work of Jesus. It is God’s treatment of us because of the person and work of Jesus. And so being gospel-centered is not just about handling the text well. It’s about not losing the forest for the trees as we handle the text well.
The other version of this that I’ve seen is curriculum that claims to be gospel-centered, but there’s really nothing behind that claim at all. What they’ve done is they’ve identified a handful of good values—things that are true, things that matter, things that are helpful—and then every once in a while they’ll tack on something like “Jesus died for your sins” and call that gospel-centered.
But that’s not being gospel-centered. That’s having the gospel somewhere in your orbit. And if we’re going to use the word “centered”, then it has to actually be at the center.
A not gospel-centered message doesn’t always feel bad. That’s part of the problem. A message like that can feel cohesive. It can feel engaging. It can even feel biblically strong. You can walk away having learned something helpful, something applicable, something that makes sense.
But at the end of the day, you’ve learned a principle, not encountered a Person.
You’ve been pointed toward God, but not necessarily toward Christ.
And that distinction matters more than we think because, over time, that kind of teaching forms a very specific kind of faith in students. It forms a faith that is built on principles, built on effort, built on behavior, but not deeply rooted in the finished work of Jesus.
Here’s the tension that we have to wrestle with: the human heart is already predisposed to drift away from the gospel.
Even though the gospel is about grace, even though it is about the sufficiency of Christ, there is something inside of every single one of us that wants to earn it. There is something inside of us that wants to justify ourselves, that wants to stay on God’s good side, that wants to reduce faith to effort and outcome.
So when we are not explicitly and consistently gospel-centered in our teaching, what we end up doing is reinforcing what students are already predisposed toward. They pick up pieces of the gospel, but it never becomes the lens through which they see everything.
And what you end up with is this vague, kind of karma-based Christianity where students believe in God, they believe in being good, they believe in trying hard, but the gospel is not actually the center of how they think or live. And that version of faith is exhausting. It’s fragile. And, as supported by Fuller Youth Institute, it is very easy to walk away from when life gets hard.
Part of the reason this is confusing is because the phrase itself has been overused. Somewhere along the way, “gospel-centered” became a really popular phrase in Christian culture. And it makes sense, because of course you want to be able to say that! If you are creating Christian resources, if you are leading a ministry, if you are discipling students, you want to be able to say that you are gospel-centered. It sounds right. It feels right.
But over time, it started to mean different things to different people. For some, it became tied to certain theological camps. For others, it became shorthand for emphasizing grace. Still for others, it simply meant being biblically faithful. And so now when someone says they are gospel-centered, the natural question is, what do you actually mean by that?
For us, it’s not about aligning with a specific theological system. It’s not about being labeled conservative or progressive. It is simply about keeping the person and work of Jesus central in what we teach and how we communicate.
One of the biggest distinctions for us is that the gospel is not just something THAT we teach. It is HOW we teach everything.
There’s a difference between teaching a passage and then pivoting to the gospel at the end and teaching a passage through the lens of the gospel from the very beginning. Take the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11). You can teach that story, talk about grace, talk about forgiveness, and then at the end say, “Jesus doesn’t cast stones at you either. Do you want to follow Him?” That’s not wrong. That’s good. But the gospel is functioning as an add-on.
Now take that same story and approach it differently. This is us. We are the ones caught in sin. We are the ones standing there in shame, staring at the ground, waiting to be condemned. And Jesus steps in—not just to forgive us—but to redefine how we see ourselves, how we see others, and how we understand sin and grace altogether.
Now the question becomes, because this is true of you in Christ, how does that change the way you see your own failure? How does that change the way you treat others? Now the gospel isn’t just something you hear at the end. It is the lens through which you see the entire story and your entire life.
Behavior-first teaching is incredibly easy. It really is. We see behavior, we want to change behavior, and so we say, “stop doing this and start doing that.” And on the surface, it works. Students can modify behavior for a while. But over time, what it creates is a version of Christianity that feels like gritting your teeth and doing what you don’t want to do because it’s the right thing to do.
That is not the gospel.
The gospel doesn’t just change what you do. It changes what you want. It changes your desires, your cravings, your definition of success. The gospel reshapes your heart. And so when we lead with identity—when we tell students who they are because of what Christ has done—it creates a completely different kind of obedience. Not obedience rooted in guilt or pressure, but obedience that flows out of a transformed heart.
It’s the difference between trying to follow a diet and actually changing your taste buds. When your taste buds change, what you want changes. And when what you want changes, everything else follows.
Every student walks into your ministry seeing the world through a lens. It feels normal to them, but it’s not. It’s cracked. Broken. Shaped by wounds, by experiences, by sin, by influence. So the goal of gospel-centered teaching is to give them a new lens.
The goal is to help the next generation take off the cracked, broken way they see themselves, God, and the world—and replace it with the lens of the gospel.
When we do that, we’ll start to see students transform. When someone hurts them emotionally, they won’t just see an enemy. They’ll see someone in need of grace. When they fail, they won’t let that failure define them because what God says of them in Christ defines them. When life gets hard, those experiences won’t become ultimate. Because what Christ has done is more real and more foundational defining than anything they will experience.
And over time, what changes is not just their behavior. It’s the questions they ask. Instead of asking, “What’s the right thing to do?”, they begin to ask, “What is true of me in Christ, and how does that change how I see this situation?” Changing the questions they ask matters. We’re talking about worldview formation, and while G Shades is taking this on in a new way, worldview formation has been the best pathway toward discipling students for a long time. Just check out the ongoing but well established research from Fuller’s Growing Young initiative.
We believe the gospel is like a diamond. And every week, we just turn it slightly. We show a different facet. A different angle. A different way that it gleams. And over time, as students see that again and again and again, something shifts. It becomes the way they see everything.
Same diamond. New angle. New glimmer. We believe our teaching approach in youth ministry is better when it’s a lot like that.
This approach matters right now because of who the next generation is. Gen Alpha is not anti-Christian. According to Barna, they are unchurched, but spiritually curious. That is a completely different starting point than what many previous generations had. We don’t have to spend all of our time reacting against a version of Christianity they’ve rejected. We get to introduce them to something new.
And at the same time, they are already reaching for the fruit of the gospel. They care about identity, healing, inclusion, justice. They are hungry for those things. The thing is: they just don’t have the foundation. They don’t yet see where those desires come from.
And so we get to connect those dots. We get to show them that the reason they long for those things is because God created them for those things, and that the foundation for all of it is the gospel.
This didn’t start as a curriculum. It started as my own journey. In my mid-20s, I started asking why what Jesus did 2,000 years ago actually changes me now. And I couldn’t get away from this idea that the way you see the world determines everything.
So I started identifying where my lens was cracked, and replacing it with the gospel. And it changed everything.
And that’s why I believe so strongly in this approach. I started seeing life through a gospel lens in my mid-twenties. What if I had started ten years sooner? Heck, maybe you resonate deeply with the approach to life and faith and teaching laid out in this post. Maybe you’re realizing you’ve had a gospel lens approach to life for the past few years, but never had the terminology for it. What if you had started approaching faith this way when you were fifteen?
If we can give students a head start on seeing life this way, I believe the future of the Church is incredibly bright.
And if you believe that too, then my hope is that you’ll partner with us in helping the next generation see life through the lens of the gospel.
No—and honestly, Scripture doesn’t let us do that anyway. If you go to Romans 6, Paul addresses this exact tension. He asks the rhetorical question, “Should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of His wonderful grace?” And then he responds, “Of course not.”
And then he goes on to explain why. He says that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. According to Paul, that we are no longer slaves to sin. He says that we should consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
That’s the framework.
What you are dead to, you don’t fixate on. What you are alive to, you pursue.
So the goal is not to create a version of Christianity where students are constantly staring into the grave of their sin, gritting their teeth, trying to be obedient. The goal is to help them see that they are alive to God in Christ Jesus, and to pursue that reality. Because when that becomes real to them, sin begins to shrink. Not because it doesn’t matter, but because it becomes small in comparison to what they are alive to.
So yes, obedience matters. But obedience is not driven by pressure or guilt. It flows from identity. It flows from being alive to God through Christ.
There’s still action. That doesn’t go away.
But the action we are calling students to is not always just “go do this.” Sometimes it is, but more often it is helping them see something differently and trusting that when their perspective shifts, their actions will follow.
We can absolutely give concrete steps. That’s helpful. But instead of centering everything on behavior, we are shifting their lens and then saying, “When this is true of you, here’s what will naturally begin to happen.”
It’s the difference between forcing behavior and forming desire. It’s the difference between telling someone what to do and helping them become the kind of person who wants to do it.
So yes, we call students to action. But we’re aiming deeper than behavior—we’re aiming at the heart.
Our experience has been that it’s not.
We’ve been doing this long enough, and in enough different churches, to know that students actually respond to this. And part of the reason is because we anchor it in something they understand.
The idea of putting on a pair of sunglasses to change how you see the world is incredibly intuitive for students. So even if they don’t fully grasp every theological implication of the gospel yet, they understand the concept of seeing differently.
And over time, that understanding deepens. A sixth grader is won’t grasp everything a twelfth grader will. That’s okay. That’s how growth works. It’s how God works with all of us.
He doesn’t download everything all at once. Over time, through experience, through teaching, through community, He reveals more and more.
So no, it’s not too theological. It’s actually forming students in a way that grows with them.
Camp is, without question, the most impactful rhythm in our ministry. It creates a space that students simply don’t get
Here in Michigan, we just got our first fake spring. For those who may not know what that is, it
Games are often the easiest thing to default to. If only five students show up and the room feels quiet,