My name is Stephen McCormick, I am currently the interim youth teaching pastor at First Baptist Church of Ozark, and I am not ashamed of the Gospel. But I am also unashamed before God in many areas of my Christian life, and being unashamed gives a person great confidence, sense of purpose, direction in life, and much, much more.
As a teenager there were many things I was ashamed of, so many things in fact that just going over the list would likely cause the reader to lean toward the depression that once overwhelmed my life. I remember being depressed for months at a time. I remember hating myself and my life to the point that, for the 10 year period from 1969 to 1979, my single most recurring thought was ending my life. For a time I thought about it every day and planned how I might do it. No one should have to live like that, and yet I know there are many teens today, just like me at that age, who live with such thoughts.
At one point in 1969, after a particularly embarrassing experience one night, I remember being out on a country road in southwestern Michigan staring hopelessly up into an empty ink black sky. I can take you to the exact spot on the road. The sky was black and empty that is, except for the twinkly stars that fill the universe… and an unseen Listener. I remember the emptiness and despair inside as I said, “If I ever find anything that gives meaning to life for a teenager, that is what I will give my life to.” I had no idea how that statement was to affect my life. Be careful what you say when you think no one hears you.
I did not know Jesus Christ as my Savior yet, nor God as my heavenly Father. Oh, I knew about them, a lot about them. My parents cared about me, cared about my understanding of God. But for all the church attendance, teaching I heard, catechism classes I took, none of it became more than “head knowledge” for me. I was in the terrible no-man’s-land of being religious without the reality of a relationship with God. I know there are many, many teens, perhaps the great majority, who live in that same dismal land, where, in the words of C.S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia, it is “…always winter, but never Christmas.” And it was a place of great shame.
This site is dedicated to helping high school and college age students move out of that wasteland. I want to help them to be unashamed in the following areas of life:
Not ashamed of the Gospel.
Not ashamed of Jesus or his teachings.
Not ashamed of public testimony.
Not ashamed of Bible study.
Not ashamed to suffer for Christ.
Not ashamed of passionate worship.
Not ashamed of public prayer.
Not ashamed of our weakness and scars.
Not ashamed when He returns.
This list does not define all that is required to live a life that is the exact opposite of what I once knew before July 17, 1979, when my “address” changed. But if we can get young people solidly on that road less traveled, I believe the longing for more of what it means to be a genuine disciple of Christ will compel them to complete the journey on their own.
I personally believe that perhaps the single greatest threat to this generation of young people, to any generation of young people , is the pervasive opposing force which would cause them to doubt or disbelieve what The Bible teaches. The purpose of this website, of my life and ministry, is to counteract and overcome that opposition by impacting the lives of as many as possible for Christ.