Archive for August, 2009

You plan a mission project for your students. You are going to surprise some of your older church members by doing yard work for them. However, one elderly grandmother is a little too surprised at your students raking her leaves and calls the police. After the embarrassment of trying to explain what you were doing to a couple of angry police, you start to get the calls from angry parents and an angry pastor. As one parent hauls her son home, you hear the youth say, “That’s the last time I come to any of these mission projects.”

Maybe nothing like that has ever happened to you. Personally, I’ve led my share of projects that just haven’t worked. I had a prayer meeting at my house once not realizing my air conditioner had gone out. It was cool enough, until all the kids started showing up. We prayed together . . . but I probably should have cut the prayer time shorter. I got chased out of a mall once for trying to get students to distribute tracts there. I even managed to get students all mad at me once for taking them to an amusement park. (I still can’t figure that one out.)

So, what do you do when the wheels come off and things just don’t work?

First, don’t pretend like the event was okay. If it was a disaster, just admit it was a disaster. The fault will probably not be yours alone, but don’t try to explain why things went so bad. It is seldom any good to try to pass the buck. Admitting an activity didn’t go very well and asking for forgiveness is usually the best strategy.

Second, figure out how to head off similar problems that might come up in the future. A phone call to the elderly lady or the mall might have solved a lot of problems.

Third, may of us in youth ministry are not detail people. We tend to think about the big picture and miss the little details it takes to produce the big picture. Make sure you have some detail people who are helping you in ministry.

While youth, their parents, and the pastor are likely to forgive you for messing up on some activities, they will be more forgiving if that is the exception. Make sure that you take the time to do careful planning, even if that means you have to do fewer activities. Approach youth ministry with a passion for excellence . . . and then forgive yourself when one of those activities inevitably falls apart.

Christian music has come a long way since the days of the Imperials. (Most of you are too young to remember the Imperials, and that’s probably for the best.) The message of Christ is being presented in a lot of different kinds of music today. If you poke around on the Christian music page at iTunes, you find everything from praise music to southern gospel to hard-core garage band. Of course, most of your students are probably barely aware of the music that is available to them. How can you introduce them to great Christian bands?

• Play the music in your car or in the church van when you are going to youth activities. Talk about the music so your students know it is something you are playing for them.
• Plug some speakers into your iPod and let students listen to a song that reinforces your Bible study lesson. Follow up by asking what the song writer was trying to say.
• Use music during Bible study times. Play it as students are coming in or working on group assignments. It’s amazing how quickly students will gather when you turn off the music to get started or to gather the group back together.
• Take students to Christian concerts when they are in your area. Decorate your youth room with posters of the Christian artists your students like.

What are some other ideas? How do you use Christian music in your youth ministry?

I remember sitting in this 7th grade speech class. The class only lasted about nine weeks. It was pass/fail. And all we had to do to pass the class was present an acceptable speech to the class. The teacher spent our class time explaining how to come up with a topic, how to prepare a speech, and how to present it. Then, it came time to give our speeches. The summer before, my grandmother had taught me how to make ceramics, so I had planned a speech that explained how to make a ceramic dish. As the time for my speech drew near, I listened to one classmate after another say he or she hadn’t prepared a speech. The teacher reminded us that we would fail the class unless we presented a speech. When she called my name, I froze. It took me a minute to say anything. Finally I said, “I don’t have a speech.” It was the only class I ever failed. To make it more ironic, I ended up majoring in Speech Communications in college. Why do I share this story? As I was thinking about this experience, I suddenly recalled some of the fears of being a middle schooler. Maybe those of us in youth leadership need to stay in touch with those kinds of experiences.

Why didn’t I give the speech? I can remember two reasons.

First, I didn’t think what I had done was good enough. When I compared my simple efforts to the research some of my classmates had done, I realized that my speech was not going to be nearly as good. I think this is a common experience for younger teenagers. They often lack confidence that their efforts will be acceptable. They may not want to answer a question you ask in Bible study because they are afraid their answers will be wrong . . . or worse, stupid. They hesitate to share the Gospel with a friend because they are afraid they will mess it up, get it all wrong, look stupid. How do we address those insecurities with younger youth? Take things slow. Don’t stress if a middle schooler doesn’t answer a simple Bible question right away. Ask some yes/no questions. Lead them to the answer slowly. Then, affirm them for their answers. Don’t flatter them. They will see through hollow flattery. Look for things they do well and affirm them for those things. Let them watch you do new things before you ask them to try it. Admit that you sometimes fail and help them to see you comfortable with times you mess up.

The second reason I didn’t give my speech in that 7th grade class was that I was afraid other students would make fun of me. The teacher would have kept students from making cruel jokes at my expense while we were in class, but I would have been at the mercy of my buddies . . . and worse, the kids who didn’t like me . . . in the hallways and bathrooms and lunch room. Sometimes you will see a young teenager who is comfortable with the group and talks openly in class suddenly clam up when a visitor he knows from school shows up. He may be afraid of ridicule. The truth is, the fear is probably not without reason. Younger teenagers can be cruel with each other. How do you deal with that? I think the best thing you can do is understand. Don’t insist that students have the courage to speak up in class or participate in the drama. Give them time to develop the courage on their own. Be careful that you don’t ask them to do things that will be too much of a risk. When I ask students to do drama, I usually try to set it up as a stupid situation that allows them to act as goofy as they want. Oddly enough, younger youth almost never get ridiculed for acting goofy. They are more likely to get ridiculed for being serious.

Younger youth will grow by taking risks. I probably would have learned something about courage by doing my ceramics speech (although it would have robbed me of the opportunity to write this article). We need to encourage students to do hard things. But even as we do that, we need to be aware of the world of younger adolescents. Challenge them, but let them try new things a little at a time. And keep believing in them when they back out the first couple of times they are asked to try something hard. Raise the bar for them, but help them to find the steps to get over it.

My friend, Ferdi, is a Philippino of Chinese descent. He was recently called to work as the youth leader in a Korean church in the Philippines. In an e-mail, I asked him how the work was going. “Well,” he said, “but I have to make sure I say everything in the simplest words I can so that they can be translated for the students who only speak Korean.” That got me thinking. Do the youth we work with understand what we teach them, or are they as lost as Koreans trying to understand a Philippine language?

Some youth ministry leaders think those of us working with teenagers are engaged in a cross-cultural enterprise. They say that the adolescent culture in the United States is so far removed from the culture we live in as adults that, to reach young people, we have to reach into a different culture, translating the Gospel into something they can understand as we teach them. Certainly, teenager share much of the American culture of adults, but I suspect there is an element of truth to this claim. Teenagers today are more multi-cultural, more technologically savvy, and have access to more information than my generation ever did. Most of your younger youth view the 9/11 attacks in a way that is similar to how my generation viewed Pearl Harbor. It was a tragic event of the past, but it was long ago.

So, how does this affect the way we approach teaching them. Many youth leaders believe the best approach is for us to learn as much as we can about the world of teenagers. They say we need to study their trends, watch the movies and TV shows they watch, play their video games, and walk the halls of their schools. This has a lot of merit. You will have a better sense of how to teach your teenagers when you understand what it is like to walk in their shoes. You will have a better sense of how to address the lies they are being fed . . . about sex, God, and their own value. Study of their culture will also help you to anticipate things that just don’t connect with them. If they are constantly taught that humans are amoral, born without a good or bad nature, then they are not likely to understand when you talk about our sin nature. You may need to explain it a bit further.

However, I think my Philippino friend had it right. Mostly, we need to present the truths of the Bible as simply as we can. We need to translate every truth of Scripture so that teenagers can understand. I don’t mean that we need to make the Bible simplistic. The Bible is anything but that. But, in teaching complicated and profound truth, we need to slow down and make it clear to them.

Want to know if they got it? Ask them to explain it back to you . . . preferably a week later.

Yes, I did go for the sensational title. Sorry. Please teach them that True Love Waits! But encourage your teenagers to become spiritual parents. Your youth will never have so many rich opportunities to make Christ known as they will while they are attending high school. Don’t let them skip through their school days without giving a moment’s consideration to the spiritual direction of their classmates.How do you get them to share their faith?

First, make sure they understand what it means to be a Christian. You would be surprised how many teenagers claim to be Christians, but don’t really understand what that means. We don’t become Christ-followers by going to church, doing good deeds, or reading the Bible. Salvation is what the Holy Spirit does when we repent of our sins and place our faith in Jesus Christ. Go over it again and again.

Second, help your teenagers to learn to verbalize their faith. Lead them to talk about how they came to know Christ, what it means to follow Christ, and how their faith impacts their lives. A technique I learned from one of my mentors, Clyde Hall, is to ask them to write a one-page statement of how they came to know Christ, then ask them to pair up and tell their story to each other in one minute. After the two minutes, they change partners and share it again. Keep repeating it as long as you have time.

Third, guide your teenagers to understand what eternity without Christ is like. As believers, we acknowledge a real place called hell. It isn’t some place you would want your friends to go. However, don’t just focus on the negative. Help them to grasp what an amazing thing it is that they can know God personally and how sad it is that so many in our world lack a personal relationship with him.

Fourth, pray. Pray for them. Get them to pray for each other. And pray together for their lost friends. Create experiences that they can invite their lost friends to so that they can start the conversation.

Keep talking about being a spiritual parent to other people. The more students grow to walk in Christ, the more it will mean to them to take their friends with them.

The most common problem I hear from youth leaders is not having enough help. Planning games, teaching, finding mission projects, working on camp . . . youth ministry is a lot of work. In a lot of churches, the work all falls to one or two volunteer leaders. How do you get more help?

God calls leaders when he wants to accomplish something. When we don’t have enough leaders in a ministry, it is because of one of two problems: either we are trying to do things that God never called us to do, or the people God is calling to invest in the ministry have not yet responded to his call.

Perhaps the first strategy to implement as you look for more help is to ask God to show you what he wants you to do. It is possible that the best way to help your ministry is to quit doing some things that God never called you to do. The denomination may have told you that you need to do it. Other churches may be invested in it. Folks at the church may expect it to be done. But, ask the question of God and of other church leaders: Is this what God has called us to do?

So, how do you find the help to do the things God has called your church to do in your youth ministry? Here are my suggestions:

1. Pray. I suppose that sounds trite, but I’m serious. If God is the one who calls out the workers for what he wants done, we need to start our enlistment of workers by asking God to reveal to us who he has called.
2. Watch. Look for people who love God and love teenagers.
3. Train. Strange that I would list training above enlisting, isn’t it? Too often, we enlist people who don’t understand the job we are enlisting them for. Training may be a formal training class at your church, a training seminar offered by someone else, or a mentorship where someone watches you do ministry. However you approach training, invite people you think God might be calling to find out more about youth ministry.
4. Enlist. Ask adults to consider serving in the youth ministry. Tell them specifically what you have in mind, but leave the door open for them to suggest a different role for themselves.
5. Support. Once you have a new youth leader, expect him or her to be more work for you for the first few months. New youth leaders will need some time getting acquainted with the youth, getting to know youth materials, and getting comfortable with their role. Give them lots of support as they get started.
6. Freedom. New youth leaders who are worth their salt are going to want to try doing things in a different way. They are going to have their own opinions about how to disciple teenagers. Allow them to experiment (in ways that won’t cause damage to the kids or the church).

Most youth leaders get in a hurry when they start enlisting new youth leaders. Fiinding the right youth leaders is not a quick process. It takes careful prayer and an investment of tiem. Take your time and look for God’s guidance.