Archive for December, 2008

So, you took the kids to camp last summer. By fall, they were ready to win their campus for Christ. Then, one of your leaders got a new girlfriend and started going to her church. Two of your students are playing soccor and their games are scheduled on Sundays. Your younger students feel discouraged because the older kids they look up to aren’t around at the activities you plan. Maybe the New Year could be time for a fresh start. Try something like this . . .

Designate one Sunday early in the year as a day to remember 2008. Plan for food. Bring tons of pictures of camp, youth activities, and kids doing stuff together. Ask two or three kids (preferably some of your leaders that have been missing in action lately) to share the most important spiritual moment of 2008 with the group. Call, email, and Facebook the kids . . . and their parents to let them know it is a special day. If you have some much loved students that have gone on to college, arrange for one or two of them to come home for the weekend.

On Sunday, put up two big sheets of paper. Lead the students to spend time laughing together and telling stories. Then, read 2 Corinthians 5:16-21. Ask youth, as you read, to pick out one idea they think is important. Read the passage twice. Then, ask: What jumped out at you? Let them share for a few minutes. Then, lead them to think about what the youth group accomplished in 2008. Write the ways they carried out the ministry of reconcilation, built fellowship, and experienced being God’s new creation on the first sheet of paper.

Then, ask them: What do you think God would have for us as a group in 2009? Write the things they suggest on the second sheet of paper. Lead them to talk about what it will take to accomplish some of these things. Ask: What is our first step? You might be able to plan a ministry project or fellowship time on the spot.

Close the time with prayer. Ask as many students who are willing to pray for the youth group to start something new.

In Merton Strommen’s book, Passing on the Faith, he calls for youth leaders to establish a Christian youth subculture. Strommen says, “When the culture of the nation no longer supports the Christian faith, a Christian youth subculture becomes a safe place for youth to discuss their questions and concerns about faith, to develop Christian leadership skills, and to form relationships with other youth and caring adults” (Strommen, 187). But, how can you do that in a small church?

Most of the things Strommen suggests are do-able with a few teenagers. In fact, some of them are easier. Here’s what Strommen recommends:

1. Discuss youth issues. Teenagers face tough problems: families that fall apart around them, friends trying drugs, sexual thoughts and feelings, and a lot more. They need to be able to talk about how those things are addressed in a life of faith.
2. Faith-sharing experiences. It makes a huge difference in the faith experience of teenagers when they are able to make Christ’s love known to other people. This can be as simple as saying, “I just wanted to share the love of Jesus with you today,” after they wash the car windshield of a stranger in a parking lot.
3. Fun and Fellowship activities. Teenagers love time to be together. Events like bowling, laser tag, or eating pizza are easy to organize when you have a small group.
4. Service and peer ministry. At church, teach teenagers to be encourager. On Monday at school, it’s game day.
5. Involvement in music. A lot of kids would balk at being in a youth choir. Few dislike attending a praise concert when the music is targeted to them.
6. Informal friendship groups. Small youth groups ought to be places where friends are welcome and everyone is a friend. Don’t force it, but tell kids that is the goal.
7. Adults counseling youth. Not “counseling” in the clinical sense. More offering counsel as a grandfather or older brother would.
8. Congregational leadership. Teenagers need the opportunity to try out leadership roles in the church. It creates a sense of connection to each other and to the body of Christ. This is much easier to accomplish in a small church.

Youth ministry is not the only way teenagers will develop spiritually, but it is huge in its influence on kids.

Strommen, Merton P. and Richard A. Hardel. Passing on the Faith: A Radical New Model for Youth and Family Ministry (Winona, MN: Saint Mary’s Press, 2000).

The social networking web site, Facebook, claims to have more than 140 million active users. Teenagers and college students use Facebook to communicate with friends, share photographs, and express themselves. One of the ways students do relationships these days is on social networking sites like Facebook. Do you have a Facebook page? Perhaps you should.

Personally, I shunned social networking sites for years. I surfed around on some of the sites and was disgusted by so much of what I saw. Besides, I saw social networking as something that would take too much time that I didn’t have. Then, after a mission trip to Ukraine, a student from Kiev sent me a friend request for Facebook. I decided to begin a Facebook page for the sole purpose of keeping up with my Ukrainian friends.

Several American friends asked me if I was on Facebook. I told them I was, but I only had Ukrainian friends. They usually found that humorous. A year later, I started realizing how many of the students at church were on Facebook. I decided to expand my list of friends. When I invited the kids to be my Facebook “friends,” I was surprised at how excited they were to connect with me on the site.

Some youth leaders have found social networking sites to be a useful way to keep up with their students.

• Facebook allows youth leaders an easy way to communicate with their students. After I failed to get a response from one of my teenagers to an email, his mom told me, “Send him a message on Facebook; he’s on it every day.” I posted a message to his “wall” and got a response that night.
• Facebook gives you an easy way to send your students birthday greetings, congratulations, and encouragement. After attending football games or other school activities, I post a note of affirmation on the page of students who participated.
• Facebook gives your students an easy way to ask you questions and keep in touch with you. Recently, one of my students was looking for a verse to share with a friend at school. I don’t think he would have called to ask me if I had a suggestion, but while he was on Facebook, he shot me the question in a Facebook message.
• Facebook allows you to keep up with students who are active in your group . . . and those who attend infrequently. I have several Facebook “friends” who are friends of students from the church that have come to a few activities.

Social networking sites have some inherent concerns. On many sites, you are two clicks away from pornography. Social networking sites have been used by predators to attempt to gain access to minors. Some students have used the forum of social networking sites to post inappropriate and unchristian information, things they would never say in a face-to-face discussion.

Personally, I think Facebook is a much safer and healthier format than other social networking sites I’ve clicked through. Still, dangers exist when students put personal information on the Internet. Facebook will only allow you to see the page of people who accept you as friends. So youth leaders can only interact with students who agree to be their “friends.” For most students, Facebook is a way to keep in touch with people they know rather than building relationships with people they don’t know.

So, should all youth leaders have a Facebook page? I’m not sure. But, if your students are on Facebook, perhaps you should consider being there, too.

One of the challenges of small churches is that finding youth leaders may be more challenging. Small churches just don’t have as many adults to choose from. And, in a small church, leaders end up being involved in many places in ministry. The best leaders may not be available to help in youth ministry. So, how do you go about finding new leaders? At the risk of sounding too simplistic, I believe the most important key is prayer.

Calling people into leadership is not really the responsibility of the pastor, the youth committee, or the youth leader. God is the one who calls people into ministry. Any kind of ministry. That may seem obvious, but I think it is important. If finding youth leaders is my responsibility, I’m going to look for people whose gifts I can see, who fit my idea of youth minsitry, and who I think I can work well with. If God calls people into the ministry, I need to allow him to decide who is the best fit for our ministry.

How does that work practically?

1. Nothing is more important in finding youth leaders (or any other kind of leader) than begging God to call someone out to meet the needs of the youth.
2. Don’t try to do everything yourself. If people perceive you can do all of the ministry yourself, they won’t see the need and might not believe they are needed.
3. Never beg people to get involved in youth ministry. The students in your youth group deserve people who are passionately committed to Christ and committed to them. Never beg people to help in youth ministry or make people feel guilty about not being involved.
4. When you sense God might be calling someone to work with the youth group, talk to them about what you see. Ask them to pray about helping. Give them time to pray.
5. When someone agrees to join your youth ministry team, take things slow. Allow him to come and watch. Explain why you do things the way you do them. Allow her time to get to know the students before you give her leadership responsibilities. Invite him to attend training events with you.

Finding leadership for your youth ministry is important. Despite how gifted you are, you will never be able to do all that is needed in your youth ministry. You will never be able to connect with every student who shows up at your church. More than that, God is calling people to work with you with students. They need to be involved.

This week I was speaking with my friend, Roger Glidewell. Roger made a comment about youth ministry that I haven’t been able to get off my mind. He said, “Youth ministry shouldn’t be ministry for youth as much as ministry by youth.”

Teenagers have some unique needs. Because adolescents is such an important time in life, having ministry that addresses those life issues seems essential. I suppose a ministry that is for youth teaches them the Bible, entertains them with fun activities, and gives them a place to connect with each other. None of that is bad.

But is that enough? I think the Bible has bigger things to say about youth ministry. Paul told Timothy not to let anyone look down on him because of his youth, but to be an example in life and ministry. What if that was true for our students? What if youth ministry was something they did more than something they received?

Youth Ministry that is “by youth” might look like this:

• Instead of listening to adults share the Bible, our students would be leading Bible study. Students might lead part of the Bible study at church each week. They might meet together at school to study the Bible on their own.
• Students would be on mission together. We need to help students to discover their gifts and then put those gifts to work. What if our students began implementing ministry without us? Would that be scary or exciting?
• Students would be encouraging their peers. Friendships are important to students. But no one knows better than a student how much loneliness hurts. What if our students made it their mission to be friends with the lonely people around them?
• Students would be sharing their faith. It is not the youth leader’s job to make Christ known at the middle school. That is a job that God has called middle school students to. What would it look like if they took that calling seriously?

I think Roger is right. We need to begin to give up our role as ministers to youth and become ministers with youth. We need to allow them to have leadership in their youth ministry. Our youth ministries need to be ministries developed and implemented by youth, not just ministries provided for youth.

How many marshmallows can you cram in your mouth and still say “Chubby Bunny?” I bet if you grew up in church at some point in your youth group experience you crammed about 15 big, fluffy marshmallows in your mouth and tried not to gag as the wet sugary slime slid down your throat. Skip ahead 5, 10, 20 years and here you are, a youth leader with kids anxiously awaiting another night of youth group. It’s tempting to just do the exact same thing we did when we were in youth group. But the world is a different place. For many of us, while the world has changed, our youth ministry tends to look much like it did years ago.

As the leader of a small youth group, you may feel paralyzed in your charge to spiritually educate students. The challenges you face seem daunting. Parents of your students and even your pastor may not be supportive of the hard work you do. You work a full-time job and have limited time to plan activities. On top of that you can’t get students to show up consistently. (Ever sit alone 15 minutes before youth group starts hoping you’ll have 2 to 5 students so the game you planned will actually work?)

As the world has changed, so our approach to ministry has to change and adapt. If our students are seeing, traveling, experiencing more and more at an earlier age, why shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to guide them and help shape their world views? One way we can have more influence in the lives of the students we serve is by taking students on international mission trips. Really? But the costs!? The prep time! It’s too complicated! I know these thoughts are flying through your head, but international travel has never been easier — and more and more youth groups, small and large, are taking students overseas to get out of their comfort zones and serve those less fortunate. The result: life change.

Kelsey, a 17-year-old girl who has been on two Sweet Sleep Mission Journeys to Moldova, a small country in Eastern Europe, says her life has been forever changed by being exposed to orphan care ministry halfway around the world. This past summer she gave nearly a month of her time to serve in Moldova, Chicago, and Guatemala.

“Leon and I are so proud of our little girl,” said Kelsey’s mom, Debbie. “When we returned from serving in Drochia, Moldova, two days later we were in the US Virgin Islands for family vacation.  While on the beach in St. John, Kelsey said, ‘If I could leave the beach right now and go back to Moldova, I would.’  And, she meant every word of it.”

Students these days have many options when it comes to activities, vacations, and traveling sports groups. And while students enjoy what they do at church — hanging out with friends, singing, and shoving an occasional marshmallow in their mouths, it seems today, more than ever, students are seeking experiences from their churches that challenge them to give back, help others less fortunate and make their mark on the world.

If you’ve never considered taking your students on an international mission trip, I hope you’ll take a look at just how simple it can be. Sweet Sleep, our ministry of providing beds to orphaned and abandoned children around the world, takes groups of 8-20 students on mission journeys from Haiti, to Moldova –- even Africa! We book your airline tickets, give you a leader notebook walking you through everything to do in your prep meetings, book in-country lodging, meals, translators – we take care of everything. We’ll even send a staff member from our U.S. office along to meet up with our staff in-country to walk along side your group as you serve making international missions easier than you ever imagined. If you’d like to discuss options for your group, just give me a call at 615-730-7671 or jennifer@sweetsleep.org.

So this week, be creative! Be a trail-blazer. Plan something to get your students to think deeper and to help your group get our of their comfort zones –- where life change happens. Just step away from the marshmallows! And now you can rest easy knowing that even taking students half a world away to serve is not out of your reach.

About the author:
Jennifer Gash is the President and Founder of Sweet Sleep, a non profit ministry that exists to share God’s love by providing beds to the world’s orphaned and abandoned children. Jen is an active member of Brentwood Baptist Church and lives in Nashville with her dog, Chinch, and Galina Tiscenco, a teenage girl from Moldova who grew up in one of Moldova’s orphanages, and is now living with Jen while studying in the U.S. on a student visa.

About Sweet Sleep:
Sweet Sleep is a non-profit ministry which provides beds to the world’s orphaned and abandoned children. According to recent estimates, there are more than 210 million orphans worldwide. Every day, 5,760 more children become orphans. Sweet Sleep works closely with indigenous staff, and U.S. churches and businesses to provide beds and bedding with a goal of providing “a bed for every head.” Since 2003, Sweet Sleep has provided nearly 2,000 beds for orphans in Eastern-Europe and Haiti and is working on a new project in Uganda launching in 2009. Sweet Sleep arranges custom mission trips for churches and youth groups to build these beds and minister to orphans around the world. For more information, visit www.sweetsleep.org.

I was teaching a lesson that I thought was touching the spiritual lives of my students. I was just getting to the good part when one of my students said, “Your shoes don’t match.” Students can be hard to teach because they have the strangest habit of distracting each other from the lesson.

Okay, the truth is my shoes don’t match. I wanted some Merrill walking shoes. I tried on about 10 pairs before I decided on the ones I liked. About a month of wear later I discovered that I had accidentally bought two similar shoes instead of two matching ones. I guess I mixed them up when I was trying them on in the store. But, is that any reason to interrupt the lesson? I mean, an adult might have noticed the slight difference in my shoes, but they wouldn’t have pointed it out in the middle of class. Well, they probably wouldn’t have.

Sometimes students become distracting just because their teenagers. They are still acquiring some of the adult filters that will eventually keep them from blurting things out in class. In other situations, students can be intentionally distracting.

• Sometimes students cause distractions because they are bored. This may be because you are not engaging them in the way they learn best, or it may be because they have no interest in spiritual things.

• Sometimes students cause distractions because they want attention. Some students just need to be the center of attention and will do most anything to get the attention from you and the class, even if it is negative attention.

• Sometimes students cause distractions as a way to protest when they really don’t want to be there. They may have been drug to church by parents; or they may have come to be with friends and resent having be in a Bible study. “Can’t we just run wild through the sanctuary?”

Regardless, you can never teach a group of students if you don’t deal with students who insist on being distracting. Here are some strategies that have worked for me:

• Keep the lesson moving. If you have young students, get them doing something different about every 10 minutes. Don’t try to discuss the Bible for the entire lesson; most Middle Schoolers don’t process information well enough to do that. Use simulations, story-telling, creative writing, videos, and stupid art projects to help them understand the truth of the Bible and determine what difference it should make in their lives.

• Build relationships with students that make them feel loved and accepted. This is especially important with kids who are a constant distraction. When they know you love them, they will be much more hesitant to interrupt your teaching time. Besides, they will be more receptive if you have to confront their behavior if  they are confident that you love them.

• Use peer pressure. When a student continues to disrupt the class, try just getting quiet. Often when students perceive that you are frustrated, they will begin to put pressure on the disruptor to quiet him down.

• Use your presence to quell distractions. If you are sitting, try standing to teach. Sometimes just standing up will get students to calm down. Move closer to the student who is being loud. Sit between students who are poking at each other.
• If a student appears to be out of control, isolate him or her. Smile and tell him you need to talk to him in the hallway. Only do this in extreme situations because it will likely embarrass the student. Avoid lecturing or yelling at the student once he or she is isolated. Use “I messages.” Try something like, “I’m frustrated right now because I am having a hard time accomplishing what I think God gave me to teach you guys this morning. How can I help you to calm down and engage with what I am trying to teach?”

Distractions can be frustrating but if you keep a sense of humor, express genuine love for students, and let them know that you believe what you are teaching them is important, they will usually come around.

For many of us, the time comes when God calls us to leave a ministry . . . to move to a different town, a different state, or a different church. At those times, I believe how we leave is incredibly important to the spiritual growth of the students we lead.

This is a very personal issue to me right now. As I write, I am preparing for my final Sunday as the volunteer youth minister at my church. Following God’s leadership in my life, I am moving to Texas next week. My heart aches at leaving these people . . . and especially these teenagers . . . that I love so much. But I can only do what I believe God has called me to do.

Some people say that, when you leave a church, it is best to do it fast . . . like ripping a bandaid from a wound. I could not disagree more. In some ways, the last weeks of your ministry in a youth group may be the most important. After four years, I believe I owe my students more than that . . . and I want them to continue to grow in their faith. I have made many mistakes at our church, and my last weeks are no exception, but let me share with you what I have tried to do.

• I have tried to assure our students of how much I love them. I want them to know that departing is not an easy thing for me, that I will miss them.
• I have tried to help the teenagers understand that I am responding to my best understanding of God’s call on my life. When God calls me to follow him in some new way, I have no choice but to follow. I hope they will follow God with abandon when he calls them.
• I have tried to prepare them for new leadership. In our case, the new volunteer youth minister will be one of our current youth leaders. I have assured them he will be there to love them, to take the youth group in new directions. And I have asked them to follow his leadership. Sometimes students feel like they are not being loyal to the old leader if they follow the new one. I want them to feel like the best thing they can do to honor their relationship with me is to continue to invest in the youth ministry when I am gone.
• I have tried to say things I want them to remember. A couple of weeks ago, I took a Bible study hour to meet with the guys in the group. I told them I wanted them to invest themselves in being men of God. I spent an hour telling them what that means–in their devotional lives, their families, the church, their investment in personal ministry, their friendships, and the expression of their sexuality. I doubt if they heard me say anything they had not heard me say before. Still, I think making this my last challenge to them may add meaning to it. That is my hope.

Acts 20 tells of Paul’s final meeting with the leaders of the Ephesian church. The leaders tried to convince Paul not to go to Jerusalem. They were afraid for him. However, Paul told them that he believed God was leading him. Even though he knew his path would be full of hardship, he had no choice but to go. He told them honestly that he did not think he would ever see them again. The parting was drowned in tears, but I think the elders were strengthened in their faith and their resolve because of their final time with Paul. That is my hope for the students I love–that they will find greater resolve in their own walk with Christ because of their time with me . . . that they will not lose heart because I am leaving, but that they will have one more reason to obediently cling to the Lord.

I remember trying to lead a discussion. Students were not particularly engaged. Getting them to respond was like putting extra thick ketchup on French fries. A couple of boys started giggling. It took me a moment to figure out what they were laughing about. A little spider was inching close to the foot of one of the girls. She looked down to see why the boys were laughing, saw the spider, and screamed. The class descended into chaos.

This may seem like a ridiculous problem, but I am amazed at how often little distractions can get a Bible study off track. Maybe you deal with similar problems. Some Sunday mornings it seems like you just go from one distraction to the next.

So, how do you keep kids from getting distracted?

In my experience, you can’t. Teenagers are curious and are beginning to find humor in the oddest places. When someone pokes his head into the room and then leaves again, they can spend ten minutes talking about what the person was looking at, why he came to the room, and who on earth that guy was anyway.

If distractions are inevitable, how do you handle them? You will probably have to work out your own methods, but here are some ideas that have been helpful for me.

• Acknowledge the distraction. I’ve tried ignoring the distraction in the hopes that students would also ignore it. That tactic hasn’t worked for me. Students tend to keep laughing under their breath and nudging each other—especially the younger guys. After a girl screams, try a comment like, “A little afraid of spiders?”
• Don’t take the distraction too seriously. If you laugh along with students, they are more likely to be ready to get back into the lesson with you. I used to teach this class that met in a room at the back of the auditorium. Inevitably, just as I was trying to make the point of the lesson, the organ would start to play. The irony was not lost on the guys in my class. I don’t think they would have heard what I was trying to say if I had scolded them for not being serious. Instead, we would laugh, then I would say, “Okay, here’s what I was trying to say.”
• If you can find a way to use the distraction, do it. Suppose you are teaching about Simon Peter walking on water with Jesus when the girl screams. You might say something like, “I think Christina was trying to demonstrate how Simon Peter felt when he started to sink.” Let them laugh, then say, “But seriously, what do you think it would have been like for Peter?”

Ultimately, our students probably remember more about how we handle distractions than about the lessons we teach. Bible study that allows them to laugh a little can communicate that you understand them and love them. Refocusing on the lesson also communicates love for them. It helps them to see that you value the things you are teaching them and believe in what you are saying.

Of course, the toughest distractions are the students who constantly interrupt to try to get the lesson off track. I’ll write about that next week.