Life on Life Urban Ministry

Shelley Pearson • May 6, 2022

The call he thought wouldn’t come for a decade or two came while he was volunteering with high school athletes. He was supposed to be the one ministering to them, but he couldn’t in that moment. Not with the news he just got. He couldn’t even return to the group right then. He couldn’t pour into those athletes in that moment. But because of a beautiful thing that’s been created over the past two years, he didn’t have to have it together.

If you’ve been reading our blog, you’ve likely read a couple stories about what God is doing through our urban ministry in Minneapolis. Jordan Dornbush, Kyle Fox, and Luke Gustafson have invested themselves in bringing Christ’s love to high school athletes through relationships built between college football players and high school athletes. It’s a different approach than what is seen in many places today, and the fruit of it played out in a special way after the college student received that call.

But what is it?

It's simply life-on-life discipleship.

Okay, so what is that?

Doing Life Together

When we think of discipleship, we often think of a weekly, one-hour meeting where we sit across from someone at a coffee shop, do a Bible study, share our (often surface-level) struggles, and pray. While the intentionality of that act is incredibly important, it is only a tiny part of what life-on-life discipleship looks like. According to GRIP Outreach, life-on-life discipleship is, “modeling what it means to be a man or woman of God–not just during a program or in a classroom–but while in our homes, running errands, playing ball, serving others in community, or studying the Bible. And as we walk life together, we’re extending to our youth an invitation to know the love of God, to know their purpose and identity, and to grow as young leaders in their homes, schools, churches and communities."

Christ’s Example

Life-on-life discipleship follows the example of Jesus seen over and over in the pages of the New Testament. Jesus literally did life with His disciples 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 3 years. At times, he was exhausted, but he still did life with them. At other times, there is no doubt it would have been easier to do ministry without his doubting, stumbling disciples. But Jesus knew that every moment was a moment of impact, from the seemingly mundane to the significant, from the way he spoke to people to the way he dealt with his arrest.

Today, over 25 college athletes and 50 high school athletes are doing life together in much the same way. They lift weights together. They eat together. They pray together. They attend sporting events together. They run errands together. By connecting outside the regular meeting time, they are being raised up to become godly men who love Jesus and model Him to a world in need.

Through their time together, college athletes model how to live for Christ moment-by-moment. High school athletes learn how to become godly men who walk with Jesus. They all learn how to extend care and compassion in difficult times and across cultural lines, and Cam, a college student from the University of Northwestern – St. Paul, saw it returned to him when his dad called to tell him that his grandpa had passed away unexpectedly after a brief battle with illness.

Ministering to the Leader

It was a regular night of FCA. The guys had just completed their small group time and were getting ready to play basketball together. Cam had stepped out of the room when he got the call, and when he didn’t return right away, Jordan went to find him. After Jordan sat with him in his grief for several minutes, he invited Cam to bring this to the guys in the other room and let them minister to him. Cam hesitantly agreed. He was hurting and wasn’t sure he wanted to be with anyone, but because his heart is to see the high school athletes grow in Christ, he agreed.

He said, “We went in, and Jordan told the guys that I just lost my grandpa. I’m usually pretty energetic in the weight room and they were seeing me in a different light. I was totally just broken down.” What happened next is a testimony to the culture that’s been built between the high school and college athletes. Cam said, “They were gathering around me and giving me hugs. Joon, one of the guys, just sat with me for 30 minutes and talked to me. That was the most helpful thing. He told me about when he lost his grandpa. They all comforted me. I felt like I was supposed to be there for them, but they comforted me.”

Christ’s Heart for His People

When people share moments like this, they can’t help but move into deeper relationships with each other - relationships where God can reach in and move more fully, where trust is greater, and people are more vulnerable. It wasn’t easy for Cam to reveal his heart with the group, but he immediately realized the impact it made on the group and on himself. Where he had been pouring into their lives, they were now pouring into his. This mutual care for each other opened the door for even greater growth.

Sometimes, as Christians, we think our lives should be completely together and we must never show weakness, especially to those we are trying to impact. We think we can’t show our doubts or our struggles but must appear perfect. If we’re honest, we have each lived that way, but that belief is a lie of the enemy. He knows the impact that is made when we are real with each other, pray for each other in our brokenness, and hold each other up.

God called us to live in community, and not just any kind of community, but a community where life-on-life discipleship happens daily. We don’t have to wait until our houses are spotless or we have the capacity to serve a 9-course meal before we connect deeply with other believers. Like these high school and college athletes, let’s do life together. It will benefit us and those we hope to impact, and we will all be drawn closer to Jesus in the process.

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