Bobby Bosler: Welcome to the Thee Generation podcast. I’m Bobby Bosler, and I’m here with Dr. Jim.
Jim Van Gelderen: Yes, good to be here, and we’re grateful that you have joined us for our Thee Generation Youth Summit podcast.
Bobby: All right, we just wrapped up. We’re in the lobby right now, just like we do every year. You can probably hear some of the ambient noise and people talking. We’re in the lobby of Falls Baptist Church. The day today is October 13th, as of the time of recording. It’s about 9:40 p.m. We just finished, well, a little while ago, the evening service, the final night of the Thee Generation Youth Summit. Boy, was it a great time.
Jim: Yes, I mean, we’ll start first of all with that, which is probably not important, but a lot of the kids enjoyed it, and that’s the final score. 200 points separated first and second. You can hardly script it that way. The Marines had a tough day yesterday. They came roaring back today but were 200 points behind the Army, who won. But it was a lot of fun.
Bobby: Oh yeah, Air Force looked like they were gonna win from the beginning. But that’s often what happens in the multi-team thing. One team gets in the lead, everybody piles on, and then it was Navy. Navy was in the lead for a while; they got piled on, and by the end of things, it was back and forth between Army and Marine until the very end.
We had some pretty awesome competitions today, though.
Jim: We had rain for one day, which was really good.
Bobby: Yeah, I ran in the morning tube tug, and it was slipping and sliding. We did something unique this year. We had six tubes on each side of the field, one of them had a red tape around it, and that was the bad tube. If you got that tube, you lost two points. All the other ones were worth one. But spoke tackle though. Spoke tackle. I don’t know that you were out there for that.
Jim: No, I stayed in.
Bobby: It was pouring rain, like not just a light sprinkle; it was a downpour, and we had nine spokes of guys, nine spokes of girls, two separate wheels, and it was the biggest, it literally looked like guys skiing as they were going down. Oh, it was amazing. Best spoke tackle ever.
Jim: Well, some of you out there, if you’ve never attended Thee Generation Youth Summit, it’s unusual. It’s four teams, 14 competitions, all 14 same field, same time. Some of the trademark competition, then sometimes we do spin-offs. But if you’ve never done it, you ought to just save up and find a good plane ticket if you’re far away and come. We had kids from all kinds of states this year.
Bobby: Yeah, I just talked to two guys from South Dakota. We’ve had guys, we have kids from Florida, again from all over. I think I heard that our registration was from 20 different states this year.
Jim: That wouldn’t surprise me. Oklahoma was a new one. Arkansas was there. So some farther away states, I don’t know. Some drove, but some flew. And it was just a great crowd.
Bobby: You know, one of the things that was really neat, again, this is probably more the important stuff. Our theme this year is Total Devotion. You know, we talk about total surrender to God, total dependence on his power, but really kind of the point of that is to be devoted to the Lord, not just in like a devotional sense like doing devotions and not even not even just in a surrender sense of being devoted to the Lord, but being devoted to him in a relational sense. And it really felt like those concepts were developed really well this week.
Jim: Well, it was interesting to see the progression. And the fun part was most of these guys have traveled on the Minutemen evangelistic team. Of course, Brother Bosler leads the team, but he traveled with me in ‘05, Ryan Swanson traveled with me in ‘16, and then ‘20, and Joe Mueller in 2010 and then Caleb has traveled both with Brother Bosler and myself, and so just was great to have a crew of guys. We’ve traveled together, worked together, and I don’t know, it was special. Every Youth Summits been wonderful but this was just kinda a unique twist here as we got some younger preachers preaching, and God used their messages.
Bobby: Yeah, and I actually personally love the fact we had a lot of our guys. Not just from Minute Men but even our ministry here and guys who’ve been through here and that we’ve poured our lives into and it’s just neat. It was neat to just in the actual progression itself, and actually young people over the next couple of weeks, we’re gonna be kind of on a slow release track of putting all of the episodes out on the podcast all the sessions, rather sessions and workshops and so on. I think there’s gonna be some that are available in both audio and video form because the live stream team here was working on that today as well and the progression, the actual progression of truth was really cool. Just how things unfolded. I won’t spoil all that because I want you all to listen through it, but it was a very exciting time.
Jim: Something else that you need to be aware of is Ryan Swanson’s releasing his app, the Cord app, and very exciting. I think he’s already got 70 people who have downloaded it and already got 10 Cord groups, you may not understand that until you look at the app, which is just the very first day so very excited about what God’s going to do with that, and if this is an accountability app that really helps, particularly in moral purity areas, though it can really help in any besetting sin, but particularly it’s designed for moral purity. So if that’s something you or a friend or a pastor or if you’re a youth pastor or pastor, you can find that if you just Google the Cord app, c-o-r-d app, I believe the information would come up
Bobby: Yeah, it was actually awesome to me too to have him in a main preaching session here. He’s been to the Youth Summit before. I think he’s done some workshops, but there’s something about those main preaching sessions. And he knocked it out of the park. The whole concept of putting Jesus on a stool in the corner of your life. I mean, it’s so, I love those messages where like at the first point you’re like, yes, that’s what I want. But then they take it the next step and just, I don’t know, I’m probably not explaining it very well, but it was a very, very helpful message.
Jim: Of course being my son-in-law, I’m certainly proud of Ryan and the journey he’s been on and the fact that God is using him in this arena. And of course, he’s burdened for purity ministry and coming out in just a few months will be the Renew Series and we’ll keep you posted on that. And Brother Bosler is a part of that as well. Ryan is, I’ve been involved in it. And it’s a 14-week video series that’s designed to help men, really, who are struggling with purity issues to get on the sanctification trail of victory.
Bobby: Yeah and one of the things I want to mention too is I know there’s some of you listening maybe you are across the world, right and you’re like oh I just wish I could come to one of these Thee Generation News Summits. Do please listen to the messages, try to listen to them in order but also one of the things I think that could be helpful and impacting is I challenged them tonight to call up our Thee Generation hotline and leave their testimony of what God did. And I plan to hopefully we’ll get a good amount of those and string them all together into maybe a special edition podcast episode at some point in the next week or so. So you can hear not just from us and what we say happened, but so you can hear from the young people themselves and what God did in their hearts. There’s a real power in a testimony and we trust it’ll be a real encouragement to you in going forward.
Jim: Yes, it was just encouraging to see young people who do have a heart to have victory. And that’s really Thee Generation Youth Summit, we have some young people who are, you might call it hardened or just not right with God and know it. But most of the kids that come do have a heart for God. They want to grow. They want victory. And it’s great to see that hunger. And of course, the thing that thrilled me this year is, four of the preachers, if I’m counting this right, are younger, either 20s or 30s. And that is a great thrill to me, to see God bringing up some young men. And I believe there’s some young people here at Thee Generation Youth Summit who God is preparing them for full-time ministry and that’s what it’s all about.
Bobby: Actually, it was really neat in the testimonies from the services. Two of them, a key part in their testimony was the Thee Generation Youth Summit and it’s kind of all in the process. You know we’ve got young people who are here receiving, we’ve got young people who are you know still in the training stage but they’re now testifying and God’s using their testimony and we’ve got people who’ve been impacted by these things are the preachers. I mean it’s really cool.
Jim: Well and that’s the great thing about truth. It doesn’t stand still. It has power. It doesn’t return void. The truth of the Word of God. And young people, God wants to use you. As we talk about this, it doesn’t matter if you’re out in the corner of the world. God has a plan for you, and I tell young people all the time, God has a plan for you, and it’s way bigger than you realize what it is. And don’t get discouraged with your own failure and some of the circumstances you’re going through because God has a plan. If you’ll follow Him, one day you’ll realize, why this is way bigger than I thought it was going to be.
Bobby: Yes, you know what? The biggest, sometimes the biggest failures turn into the greatest testimonies. And I don’t mean that in a trite way at all. I was impacted even just last night hearing Ryan Swanson share the story of what brought the Cord into being. And even just so grateful for the fact that he is now getting revenge on that sin in his life and helping many others to do the same.
And you know, young person, you may be struggling right now like Dr. Jim said, but God wants to bring you to a point where not only does he give you victory, you personally victory, but where you are brought to a point where you are helping others to victory and kicking the devil in the teeth.
Jim: Amen. Divine optimism is the order of the day. And if you’re pessimistic, if you’re a spiritual Eeyore, if you know what I’m talking about, that’s not biblical. God wants us to have a divine optimism. It may look like things are falling apart, but God is moving in your life. One of the testimonies today was, God was pursuing me. They realize it now. They didn’t see it at the time, but God was pursuing them and still is. He’s pursuing you in the sense that He wants you to be effective. He wants to have a relationship with you and He is working in your life even though you don’t see it all the time.
Bobby: Amen. Praise the Lord. Well, young people, we hope you’ve at least caught a little bit of a glimpse of what the Lord’s been doing here this week and what he can do in your life as well. And we are thrilled. Thank you for joining us on this podcast episode. And remember, surrender your life to the Lord. Total surrender. And you can’t do it though. What he calls you to do is impossible. So you need to be totally dependent on his power to reach the world with the gospel. Thanks for listening. God bless you.
