Ministry

Maybe it is the student who threatens suicide on the youth trip. Maybe it is the teenager who tells you he thinks he may be gay. Maybe it is the girl in your group that just quits eating and begins to waste away. But at some point in your ministry, you will encounter a situation that, if you are honest with yourself, you know that you cannot handle. How do you get help for a teenager that needs help you cannot give him or her? A Marriage and Family Counselor from San Francisco, Maggie Arbino, spoke to my youth ministry class this week. She shared some ideas that I think are fantastic and I wanted to share them with you.

The best time to build a list of people you can refer kids and their parents to is BEFORE you encounter the crisis. I know, you never expect to hit the really big problems with your group. After all, you know them. You know their families. However, some teenagers will experience crises and your students are not immune. Yes, Jesus will be there for them. Your prayers will make a difference. But sometimes kids need a professional counselor to work through the tragedies they face in their lives. Start now building your referral list. When a teenager encounters a crisis, you will be ready to connect her family with professional help.

Who do you need on your referral list? Locate a psychiatrist, an M.D. with expertise in psychiatric problems. Locate family counselors and professional counselors who have expertise with adolescents. Include someone who is a clinical social worker. Also, get to know school counselors as well as other emergency medical personnel in your area. If your town has a crisis pregnancy center, get to know the people who run that as well.

How do you find the right people? Ask medical personnel in your church to suggest individuals. Before you add people to your referral list, contact them. Ask them about their credentials, the kind of patients they usually work with, how they support the faith of the people you would refer to them, what their fee scale is like, whether they accept insurance, and whether they are accepting new patients.

When do you refer? When you realize you are dealing with something that is beyond your training, you should consider connecting the family of the teenager with an appropriate person. Talk with the family and the teenager about why you think he would benefit from professional counseling help. Contact professionals ahead of time and make sure they are willing to accept new clients. Try to give the family two or three names and let them select the person they think can best help them. Keep in mind that referring a teenager to a professional does not mean you back out of her life. Stay connected and keep investing in her life.

In Luke 9, Jesus’ Disciples came to him and asked him to send the crowds into the local towns to find a McDonalds. I suppose the Disciples were showing some concern for the people, but I wonder if the stomachs they were most concerned about weren’t their own. Of course, Jesus had another plan in mind. He told the Disciples to feed the crowd themselves. And the story goes on to show an amazing picture of Jesus as God; just as God provided manna in the wilderness, so Jesus, God in flesh, provided bread for the crowds. But the tendency of the disciples to send the crowds away may be similar to a problem faced by many small youth groups.

Small youth groups can become very inwardly focused. When you ask your students talk about what they would like to do as a group, do the activities begin to sound pretty self-serving? Does Bible study ever feel more about your group feeling good about itself rather than driving your group members to become missional servants of God? It is not unusual for a youth group to become inwardly focused, and it is important that students develop close relationships with each other. But, Jesus’ plans for his disciples seemed to be that they reach out to those lost and without a shepherd all around them, and I think that is the same plan he has for your youth group.

Help your students to see your youth group as on mission with God. Most teenagers get involved in youth groups because of their friends. They come to Bible studies and activities to be with their friends. However, students need to grow to see their youth ministry as something more than a group of friends. God’s mission in the world is to reclaim those who are lost. He uses many ways to accomplish that purpose, but his desire is to forgive and redeem the lost in your community and around the world. How can your students begin to see their part in God’s plan? How can you paint that picture for them?

Guide your students to understand what it means to be lost. We never want to talk about the futility of life without Christ. It feels better to say things like: Everyone just has to find his or her own way. But the truth is, without Christ, people are missing the deep relationship with God that fulfills their very purpose of life and they are in danger of spending eternity separated from God. Lostness is not a lifestyle choice; it is a blindness that is caused by our own sin clouding our sight of what is right and true and good. The cure is the dazzling revelation of Jesus Christ and his forgiveness. How can you help your students understand what it is really like to be without Christ? How can you help them to care?

Encourage your students to pray for their lost friends. There is nothing that will open their hearts to the things of God like praying for the salvation of their friends. Look for your prayer times at youth group to be more about people who need Jesus and less about the list of ailments of everyone they can remember. Invest in times of prayer in which students are able to lift up their friends (perhaps without mentioning their names), and asking God to lead them to faith.

Lead your students to make your youth group a place where all people feel welcomed, included, and loved. Regardless of how many students you can get to come to your youth group because of your dynamic personality, few will stay for very long if they don’t feel loved and accepted by the group. On the other hand, when your group becomes a place where people feel welcomed, love, and included, it will be hard to keep students away. How can you help your students to embrace new students? How you can help them to build real friendship with new students and not just say the obligatory “hi and welcome”?

Death is one of those subjects most of us would just as soon avoid. Many teenagers in your youth group will face death. They may lose a grandparent. In a few crisis situations, death may strike a friend. A few may experience the death of a member of their immediate family. When teenagers face death, how do you help? Here are a few things to keep in mind when one of your students experiences the death of someone close to him or her:

1. Every grief experience is different. How a teenager will experience grief depends on a vast number of factors: the personality of the student, how close the student felt to the person who died, the extent to which the death will change the student’s life, how profoundly the student experiences the death as a threat to his or her own mortality, the social support system that surrounds the teenager, and more. Don’t expect teenagers to follow a script in the way they deal with death. Allow each of them to express their feelings of grief in ways that fit them.
2. Students may act out their feelings in ways that are harmful to themselves or others. Some teenagers may lash out at others. Some may be violet or destructive. Some may turn to alcohol or illegal drugs. Stay close to the student. Make contact often, especially when the student loses someone very close to them to death. Watch for danger signs. If you discover (or suspect) the teenager is engaging in dangerous behavior, get help. Don’t try to address this on your own. Talk to the parents and then find a Christian counselor who can help the student with intense anger and pain.
3. Death comes in many forms. The hardest losses to get over are usually sudden. When a parent dies with a sudden heart attack or a friend is killed in an accident, teenagers will tend to play the event over and over again in their minds. They will question what they could have done to prevent the situation. They may blame themselves for the death. Listen to teenagers thoughts and concerns. Make sure they know that you are seeking to understand how they feel. It is unlikely the teenager could have done anything to prevent the death; assure them that they are not at fault.However, death can also come in the form of long, drawn-out illness. A parent may contract cancer or a grandparent may die after months or years of illness. While the long illness can be tormenting, teenagers usually have time to say good-bye and to work through some of their feelings during the illness. Occasionally, parents will try to shield their teenager from the news of impending death. That is seldom helpful and can be harmful to teenagers. It may help parents to talk through with them how to tell their teenager.

When a teenager in your youth group faces the death of someone close, the most important thing you can do is be close. Offering love, support, and a listening ear, and assuring them of God’s love and concern for him or her is normally the most valuable thing you can do.

The age of marriage has risen sharply in recent years. The idea that teenagers should be preparing for marriage may sound archaic. Robert Havighurst included preparation for marriage as one of his developmental tasks for adolescents. So, should we be helping teenagers to prepare for marriage or is that an old-fashioned idea? And if we should be helping them, how should we go about it?

Assisting students with their developmental issues is really not our primary calling in youth ministry. We are called to make disciples. However, discipleship involves a total life commitment. Helping teenagers walk with Christ means paying attention to all of those things they are going through.

Still, is Havighurst out of date, or do teenagers really need to prepare for marriage? Our culture seems to view dating and sexual relationships as recreation. Some teenagers “hook up” with multiple partners for heavy make-out sessions and sexual encounters, but they don’t see this as related to their future marriage partners at all. That is a gross perversion of everything God says about male/female relationships.

The Bible never really talks about dating. (It was more typical during biblical history for marriages to be arranged than for individuals to find their own partners.) However, in American culture dating is the way young people learn about opposite-sex relationships, discern what qualities in a partner fit them well, and ultimately find their life partner. Teenagers are learning to relate to the opposite sex. The problem is they often get bad instruction on what makes a healthy relationship. The flirtation with members of the opposite sex IS preparation for their future marriage . . . even if it is preparation for a bad marriage.

How do you help your teenagers prepare for their marriage? A marriage that may be many years away?

First, teach them what the Bible says about romance, marriage, and sex. Help them to understand that they are building their character in the way they treat members of the opposite sex now.

Second, guide them to begin to think about how they can be architects of godly families. Talk to them about potholes many people fall into that cause their marriages and their families to fall short of honoring God.

Third and most importantly, give them godly examples. If you are married, work to make your marriage strong. Help them to see that, though good marriage is work, marriage can be a partnership in service to God. And whether you are married or not, find other people in your church who can model what godly marriage can and should be for your students. Help them to have opportunities to interact with and hear from people who are working at creating a godly home.

Adolescents are developing into the people they will be as adults. It can be a frustrating passage for adolescents . . . and for adults who work closely with them. In a large church, emotional outbursts may not disrupt the entire group, but the raw feelings that are so much a part of adolescents can really derail a study or event in a small youth group. Have you ever had anything like this happen?

You are sitting in church devotionals at the end of camp with your band of students. The students are sharing ways they experienced God during the day. Suddenly one of the younger girls bursts into tears and runs out of the room. Everyone sits in stunned silence. Later you get a chance to talk to her one-on-one. Her eyes water again as she begins to tell you how she really likes an older boy in the youth group. Right before devotions, she claims he looked at her like he wished she was dead. “I just couldn’t take it,” she explains. You talk to the young man. He has no idea what you are talking about, but he doesn’t want the girl to think he doesn’t care about her so he goes to apologize.

Emotions in teenagers are driven by hormones. The rapid changes in their bodies often lead them to respond with extreme feelings. Teenagers are seldom just happy . . . they are DELIRIOUSLY OVERJOYED. Teenagers can fly into a rage with a minor annoyance. And a wrong look can send them into depression.

In describing the developmental tasks of adolescence, Robert Havighurst suggests that, during their teenage years, teenagers should achieve emotional independence. The goal is not for teenagers to lose the need for any emotional support. None of us ever really achieve that, nor should we. Rather the goal is for teenagers to learn how to manage their emotions so that their emotions don’t control their lives.

So, how do you help the youth you work with to move toward emotional independence?

First, realize that “emotional roller coasters” are a part of growing up. Don’t over-react when a teenager responds to you angrily or with tears. Accept them as they are now.

Second, give teenagers permission to feel. Tell them that, when it seems like someone is snubbing you, it makes sense to feel hurt. When someone does something mean to you, you should feel anger.

Third, teach them the importance of “self-talk.” It is often not the situation but rather what we tell ourselves about the situation that leads to strong negative emotion. Don’t tell yourself: He looked at me in a nasty way; he must hate me. Instead, tell yourself: He seemed to look at me in a nasty way, but we are friends so he probably didn’t mean anything by it. I think I’ll ask him later if there is a problem.

Finally, encourage teenagers to carry their frustrations, hurts, and anxieties to God. He loves them and cares deeply about what they feel.

By Richard Ross

Students who have seen Jesus high and lifted up tend to shout, Send me! They know arising to join Him in bringing His kingdom on earth will be the greatest adventure of their lives. Increasingly, students awakened to Christ will be open to going to the front lines of kingdom expansion while they still are young.

Envision it becoming normative in your church that almost every student serve full time in domestic or international missions for a summer, semester, or year, around ages 18 or 19.

Working in concert with established missions and missionaries, students on such missions adventures could take the good news of Christ in our lifetime to the last groups of people on earth—both in the U.S. and around the globe. They could have a part in planting indigenous churches that disciple believers and continue to carry the good news of Christ in their cultural context.

Developmentally, eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds crave a grand adventure. They are ready to do the hard thing and go to the hard places. This is the perfect time for an assignment so challenging that it requires all they are and all the Spirit supplies.

Though students need leaders to guide them in strategy, they can be effective in sharing Christ. They tend to share their faith without fear. In almost every region of the world, youth are fascinated with American students and are motivated to talk with them. Even adults find youth far less intimidating than adults who share their faith. The proliferation of students on missions adventures in the U.S. and worldwide could result in immediate increases in people coming to know Christ.

Society increasingly is using the term GAP year to refer to a student who takes time from university studies for an extended trip or some immersive experience. Increasingly, universities are granting admission to high school graduates, but not requiring them to register for classes for one year. That period might easily become an extended missions adventure. Those who name this adventure a GAP Mission Trip can understand GAP to mean Go And Proclaim.

Envision parents opening savings accounts at the birth of babies that eventually will fund these missions adventures. (Envision that for now, parents of all ages of children and youth open accounts).

Currently, students in smaller churches can sell candy in the church lobby or write support letters to fund their ten-day mission trip. Such plans are inadequate for raising the $6,000+ (summer) or $25,000+ (year) that might be needed for missions adventures. Family savings seem to be the only viable plan.

Parents who open a missions savings account at the birth of a child will have no problem saving what is needed over a period of 18 years. And, they may be pleasantly surprised at the number of relatives and friends who want to insure that savings are adequate. Grandfather might say to the family gathered at Christmas: “You know we are going to sell this big house to move into something more manageable. We think there might be some funds left over when we do. For all you children with missions savings accounts, we want to add $1,000 to each so we can be a part of what you do for the kingdom some day.”

Wise pastors can present a small check to parents during family/baby dedication. He might say, “We, your church family, want to be the first to contribute to your son/daughter’s future missions adventure. We invite you to go to your bank tomorrow and use this check to open a savings account for that purpose. Then, as Christ leads, we invite you to contribute monthly to that account for the next 18 years or so. Other relatives and believers likely will make contributions as well. Then, when the Spirit tells your son/daughter it is time to go, all will be in place financially for this grand adventure.”

The funding of students to do full-time missions should measurably increase giving to existing missions offerings. When a church becoming more alive to Christ sends its own members to do direct missions, both their special missions offerings and their regular offerings tend to go up.

Parents who experience the thrill of their own children serving alongside missions organizations will always have more interest in the financial support of those ministries. Also, the students who have seen God at work in North American and international missions always will have a bond with those movements. Those bonds can lead to missions giving for a lifetime.

Is money tight for you this Christmas? It is for me. I have several friends who are feeling the crunch of the loss of a job. They are either unemployed or under-employed. It is frustrating for those of us who like to buy and give gifts to be unable to do that. We know that gits are not what Christmas is about . . . but being able to give gifts is . . . well, fun. Maybe you would like to do something special for your youth group, but you just don’t have the ability. Maybe it is harder this year for your teenagers to buy gifts for an Angel Tree child or contribute to a food box for a needy family. Maybe the tightening of the belt that many of us are having to do at Christmas this year is a blessing. In a culture where kids are looking for a new iPod Touch under the tree instead of a dolly, maybe we need to revisit ways to celebrate Christmas that are a little less commercial.

As you teach your youth group this Christmas, emphasize gratitude and contentment. I know, some of your kids will get the new iPod Touch for Christmas. Extravagance may not be a great way to celebrate Christmas, but our Bible study on simplicity may not penetrate heir adolescent brains. However, ask them what a person really needs to be healthy and happy. Help them to think through whether new gadgets and toys really make a person happy. Encourage them to be grateful to God for the things he has given them and content with what they have. Of course, it is a great time to mention people that lack those things a person really needs.

Encourage youth to give . . . to parents, family, and friends. But encourage them to find ways to give that don’t cost money. Often gifts that are given from the work of your hands or the sweat of your brow mean more than gifts that are given from your wallet (or your parent’s wallet). Encourage students to think of things they are good at and give those things away. One student might bake sugar cookies, while another prints and frames a picture of the family he has taken. A third student might offer his brother help with his homework for Christmas. Maybe it would be a good thing for us to practice this as well by thinking of some gift we can give our students that would be a gift of love from our hands, not our money.

Ultimately, Christmas is not about gifts. it’s not really about family meals or love between each other. Ultimately, Christmas is about the love of a Savior, lavished on us when we were lost in our sins. Ask your students how they can share THAT gift . . . a gift that is not their own, but comes from Jesus.

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.

Paul Gunn is a youth minister in Tennessee and the director of Mission Fever, a new ministry dedicated to providing ways for students to invest in international ministry . . . regardless of the size of their church. Check out their website at www.missionfever.com to learn about the ministry designed especially for students who want to go for it!

If our discipleship of students does not lead to students getting their hands dirty in the lives of other people, we are kidding ourselves about how much discipling we are really doing.

Doing a mission trip to Nicaragua may be a challenge for the typical small church. (Don’t rule it out. No telling what God will do.) But that doesn’t change the fact that our youth ministry has to involve students in ministry. Simple forms of ministry are cool. Collect food for a food bank. Send shoes to a mission in Mexico. Serve a meal at a homeless shelter. But get kids involved in doing the gospel.

We sometimes overlook the most important things. Prayer is not just a precursor to ministry; it is ministry. At my church this Sunday, we gave the kids some pizza and took about eight of them to the high school and middle school campuses in our community. We talked about the power of prayer and how to pray. Then, we gave each of them a partner and sent them around the school to be prayer warriors for the students, faculty, and staff at their schools.

Prayerwalking is a simple ministry that advances the kingdom in at least two ways. First, God really does choose to move when we pray. Second, our students are more aware of the spiritual needs as they go back to school on Sunday. They will be quicker to pray . . . and quicker to speak a word for Christ.