Andre A. Samuels, a dynamic and enthusiastic Jamaican-born speaker and youth management coach who’s keen about seeing the expansion and success of others, needs church buildings to create an area the place younger folks can really feel welcomed.
“It will be important that we create an area the place younger folks can really feel welcomed, their voices heard, their presence might be felt, and their identification and personhood affirmed and appreciated,” stated Samuels, a youth minister at Mount Lebanon Baptist Church in Brooklyn, in delivering the message on Youth Sunday at Fenimore Road United Methodist Church (FSUMC) in Brooklyn.
“We should permit our younger folks to have an area in our worship service,” added Samuels, who works as a enterprise operation supervisor for a constitution faculty community in New York Metropolis,” preaching on “Go Get Them,” with Acts 20: 7-12 because the textual content. “We should domesticate an environment and neighborhood the place younger folks, with all their skills, abilities and fervour, can come on hearth for God.
“So many younger folks stay on the sting, dwelling in an area not designed or constructed to carry and care for his or her younger our bodies, an area that’s harmful and that may trigger demise,” he continued. “Residing on the sting resides between proper and unsuitable: the Phrase and the world: eager to do good however fighting peer strain, wanting to perform their objectives and desires whereas additionally wanting to suit into and be related within the day’s tradition.”
Samuels stated many younger folks lack correct steering and care to assist them see the place they’re proper now.
“Being on the sting of life just isn’t the place God intends them to be,” he stated. “Younger folks want mentorship and training from adults who aren’t there to evaluate, ridicule and belittle them however adults who care and relentlessly love them.
“We create a protected house for younger folks to thrive each time we join earlier than we appropriate; once we work to construct a relationship rooted in grace, love, and compassion,” added Samuels, stating that his hope is to problem the church neighborhood to “replicate upon spiritual protocols and traditions and query the place adjustments might be made to accommodate and embrace younger folks — a means of worship that additionally takes under consideration their presence and lived expertise; an area the place they’ll categorical themselves in a means that appears genuine to them; create an intergenerational worship neighborhood the place no age feels wearied, however all really feel accepted.”
Samuels famous that Acts 20: 7-12 tells the story of an event when Paul was talking, and a younger man named Eutycus was sitting on the sting of a window listening.
“Paul’s abundance of speech and lack of consideration to the place this younger man was sitting led to Eutycus falling to his damage,” he stated. “The church should not be so bottled down in going by the motions of church and following the protocol, litany and custom that we fail to understand that we’re dropping the eye of younger folks.
“In our effort to keep up custom, we will typically overlook the younger our bodies current – we should learn to deviate from custom and the church-as-usual mindset to make sure that younger folks’s presence is acknowledged and ministered to,” Samuels urged.
As a mentor, Samuels stated he has unwaveringly invested his time in offering management, communications, and self-empowerment coaching to younger folks, “serving to them to determine their higher potential and ignite an unquenchable ardour to succeed.”
He stated he endeavors to influence, equip and encourage whereas advocating for justice, each social and financial.
Samuels stated he has labored in a Youth Correctional Facility and has seen firsthand the limitless potential not realized inside younger males caught up with the legislation.
He stated this has fueled his ardour for empowering younger folks to “stay boldly in what God has ordained for his or her lives.”
Samuels stated he answered the decision to ministry at 12, whereas rising up in Jamaica, and has been serving in church since.
He holds a bachelor’s diploma in enterprise administration and has earned his grasp’s in divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary.
