Chandler Jackson, youth pastor at Crossway Church, didn’t always intend to become a youth pastor. Now he leads The City, the dynamic youth group at Crossway Church for grades 7-12.

Jackson started college with the goal to become a teacher. As he took courses, he realized teaching school wasn’t going to reach kids in the way he desired. He graduated with a degree in business and went to work for an electrical manufacturing company. Eventually, he began volunteering with the student ministry at Crossway, growing into a place where he was offered the position of youth minister in 2021.

Jackson said he leads the youth ministry with one goal.

“I’m less concerned about the number of students that walk through our door and more concerned about when they leave,” he said. “Did they hear the gospel? Have we planted seeds for the Holy Spirit to work and actually change their hearts?”

At age 34, Jackson jokingly refers to himself as “the old guy” who leads the youth. He said he doesn’t know all the current trends the kids are into, but the kids know what he is most concerned about.

“Our conversations are not about TikTok,” he said. “We may joke around about it, but the conversation is going to be about their relationship with Christ and their understanding of scripture.”

Although The City has its own modern building at Crossway, complete with a worship center, coffee bar, games and comfortable couches, Jackson said that isn’t what keeps kids coming back.

“This is all a blessing,” Jackson said, referring to the building and its amenities. “But, even if we were meeting in a shed, the message would still be the same.”

Jackson said the church uses a program called the Life Leader Model.

“I’m not the only adult they come to with spiritual matters,” he said. “I’m not the only one that they pray with or have salvation conversations with. I’m here to teach and make clear the scriptures, but we are the church, and where other people are gifted, I’m going to lean into their gifts.”

A Life Leader will commit to leading a group of teens through four years of high school.

“They talk with them every week,” Jackson said. “They reach out to them with a phone call or text message. They go to their football games or band competitions. They’ll hand-write letters to their students. . . just to say, ‘love you, care about you.’ When students come in here, they know they aren’t here just to hear me preach. Those things go a long way.”

Jackson meets regularly with the Life Leaders and said the model ties back to the approach of Jesus.

“He trained his disciples and sent them out,” he said.

Presenting the Bible to teens, Jackson found, requires a specific approach.

“Kids have a radar. They know genuine when they see it. They know when someone’s being fake.”

He has found that kids have trouble digesting passages of scripture and the disconnect for the kids is often that they don’t understand the words.

“We started shifting some of the things we do in our ministry to accommodate that.”

He began teaching them in the context of the book the scriptures were in before digging into individual scripture. At the beginning of the lesson, Jackson asks the kids, “Who wrote it? Who are they writing to, and why did they write it?”

One of the challenges facing young people today, Jackson said, is apathy. He said he believes the Covid epidemic had a larger impact on kids that a lot of people realize.

“I think some sense of it is that all these students, in a very formative part of their years, saw how fragile society was; how quickly things can crumble down, and it caused a sense in their mind that ‘all this doesn’t really matter.’ ‘Is there really a point to all this?'”

He said he finds that kids are surprised when he continues to reach out when they have pulled away from the group.

“I think, with the social technology we have today, people lack genuine relationships. I don’t think it’s just a student problem. I think it’s people in our culture today. When I say genuine friendships, I mean in a Christian context, where at the center of our friendship is our common ground of belonging to Christ.

“At the end of the night, my goal is not (the kids) came and had a good time. It’s that they came and were confronted with the truth that calls them out of their sin into a life with Christ.”