Tapatio and the Bible

For those of you non-Hispanics who might not know, Tapatio is a hot sauce and we Hispanics love to put hot sauce on everything. Once I even witnessed a mom add hot sauce to her baby’s bottle…okay I’m exaggerating just a little but, it was an experience I had with Tapatio that caused me to alter the way I did youth ministry. And just in case you’re wondering it was not because I got sued for playing a crazy game during service…although it has crossed my mind.

Growing up, my brother and I were very plain eaters. No mayonnaise, mustard, onions, pickles, or condiments of any kind. The only thing allowed to touch our food was ketchup. Unlike my brother though, whose staple continues to be pizza with no sauce, baked chicken breast and French fries, I dared to venture out into different culinary experiences. One thing that was off limits though was hot sauce. I think mainly because, as a kid, my dad used to make me eat jalapenos whenever I cussed. It was a fitting discipline. After getting married my wife introduced me to various types of foods I had never tasted. Most I liked and some…well…not so much, specifically a certain type of enchilada, but we’ll save that for another time. The most important thing to her was that I at least tried it. So one day as we were watching a movie and eating popcorn, unbeknownst to me, my wife sprinkled a few dashes of Tapatio on the popcorn. I reached in and grabbed a hand full and what happened next can only be described as a sort of Pentecostal religious experience. My eyes were open to the wondrous glory of Tapatio and buttery popcorn. I think I even rolled around on the floor. I couldn’t stop eating it. God bless my wonderful wife!!! I remember suggesting to her all the things I could put it on and she would just give me a sympathetic smile. But it all came down to what my wife would say. “How can you not like something if you never try it?” To this day I put hot sauce on my food because I once tried it on popcorn.

So how does this relate to the Bible? Well as almost every youth worker that I have spoken to has gone through that stage of trying to stay relevant and sometimes placing more importance on events and curriculum than actually ministering to students. Well I had hit that stage. I was wondering why the youth ministry was feeling shallow and the students didn’t seem to have a hunger for the Word of God. Now don’t get me wrong, we had plenty of students attending and they had a hunger, but it was more for worship experiences and activities than actual bible reading. As I was pondering this and asking God if I needed to attend better seminars a funny thing happened. He brought back that moment I first had Tapatio and I remember feeling the Holy Spirit saying, “They need to taste the Word in order to have a hunger for it.”  BAM!!! It blew my mind.

The Changes

After praying, searching scripture and seeking some counsel my team and I made some changes to our programs. It wasn’t a major reconstruction, more of realignment. Now please understand we have always taught from the Bible. What we did was re-shift our focus to the Bible and not so much on the hype of youth ministry. Trust me; I was just as skeptical as you. Once the realignment was made we saw a huge jump not just in student’s desire for the Word but, in their maturity and desire to evangelize to their peers. What we did was nothing new. Its basis is biblical and that’s why it worked. To give you a better picture of what we did here is our schedule before and after.

Before:

·         Mid-week Jr. High & High school bible studies @ church

·         One combined youth service a month

·         Sunday youth discipleship class

Changes:

·         Mid-week bible studies were canceled and we replaced them with our Jr. High service: Midweeks are devoted solely to Jr. Highers and this allowed our High schoolers and young adults to volunteer in the ministry.

·         High school bible study (Biggest Change) was moved to Fridays and location changed to homes. We also included our young adults in this study. We study one book at a time verse by verse. This has now become our single greatest attended youth program.

·         Sunday discipleship class was canceled. We encouraged our students to attend the adult discipleship class given by our churches awesome discipleship pastors.  They responded in numbers creating the need for them to add an additional class. Youth now make up the largest percentage of students in our churches discipleship class.

Be prepared

As a result of these changes not only were the students studying more but so was I, partly because I was answering more and more questions they had. One sure fire way to measure if your students are reading the bible is in the questions they are asking. The more they are reading the more questions they will ask. This is a great opportunity to spend some one on one time with them while digging into the Word together. So hopefully the next time you see a bottle of Tapatio or any other hot sauce you’ll remember this blog.

So what about you

·         How would you rate your hunger for the Word?

·         How would you rate your student’s hunger for the Word?

·         What are some things you doing to create a hunger for the Word of God in your ministry?