Strategy

By Pam Boucher

Preteens–what to do with them? The preteens in my church keep me hopping. I wish I had just a little bit of their energy. They can be quite challenging to work with since they are between childhood and teenage years in maturity and development. In our town sixth graders are in middle school in the school district but still in children’s ministry area at church. Like many of my colleagues in other churches, I’ve created a Preteen Division. Since we are a small church, I include both fifth and sixth graders just so we have enough of them to have a small class. If I had enough sixth graders, I would put them in their own group and use a separate curriculum of study for them.

I believe preteens need a little more in-depth Bible study than the younger children in our church, but I’m not ready to give them the kind of study they will enjoy as they grow into youth. In recent years we have begun scheduling special events that are only for the preteens in our church. For example, we created a mini-retreat–a four hour Friday evening which included Bible study, supper, and a special event like playing laser tag. I learned the hard way to have the Bible study early in the evening . . . once they play laser tag it’s really hard to get their focus back on something more serious. We have other special field trips and events throughout the year planned just for them. It gives them more to be involved in than the rest of the children, but they are still not yet doing everything they will be able to do as youth.

I think the use of technology is one of the largest yet most challenging opportunities for us with preteens. Most of them have their own cell phones at this age. A lot of them have computers or even iPads. Utilizing them in Bible study can be an effective way of getting them involved and keeping their interest. Using preteens as leaders in Kids Worship is a wonderful way to begin utilizing their leadership talents and keeping them involved. We have used our preteens to study the Sunday morning lessons in such a way that they plan ahead for the last Sunday of the month and then teach that lesson to the younger class. They all love it! It gives the preteens a chance to have some responsibility and the younger kids love having the preteens teach. I have also tried to get them involved in mission work in and around our community.

Preteens can be a challenge but what a wonderful opportunity God has given us to minister to and teach and prepare for adolescence. Preteens are unique and at a special time in their lives. They want to be kids but they want to be grown ups too. Wherever preteens are placed in your ministry line-up at your church, they need curriculum that both challenges but is easy to understand. They need opportunities for service and ministry. They need ways to expend their energy in positive and productive ways. Yes, preteens are a challenge, but oh, what a blessing!

After many years as a consultant in children’s ministry with LifeWay Christian Resources, Pam Boucher now serves as Children’s Minister at Richland Hills Baptist Church in Richland Hills, Texas.

Leading a youth group in a small church often means you have limited time and limited resources. It is easy to over-program, stretch the church resources and your stamina to a breaking point. Youth ministry doesn’t have to be harried to be effective, but it does need to include a few essential components.

First, give your students a solid diet of Bible study. You may only be able to meet once a week, but make sure the Bible study helps them to catch a vision of who God is and what he wants to do in their lives. Focus on a walk with God. Even when you are teaching them about ethical issues (sexuality, honesty, compassion), help them to relate that to their relationship with God. Challenge them to develop their prayer life and invest in personal Bible reading and reflection. Teach them how to do those things during your class sessions.

Second, give teenagers opportunities to have fun together. Creating an opportunity for real fellowship to develop is important for teenagers. Surround your teenagers with love and laughter. Don’t schedule too many of fun events. Give yourself and the other leaders time to plan something great and get teenagers excited about it. If students don’t know about the events or they are picking which ones they will attend, you are probably planning too much.

Third, give students opportunities to be on mission together. Plan at least several events a year that allow students to serve God and make Christ known together. Students need experience in living out their faith. Some have said that the reason so many students abandon their faith as they get older is because we haven’t given them a faith that is significant enough to build their life on. Part of that means investing in the lives of other people in significant ways.

Finally, build relationships with students. It may be better to show up at a basketball game than to plan more youth activities. Students need spiritually rich relationships with significant adults as well as with peers. The most important job you have is showing them on the living canvas of your life what it means to walk with Christ.

“D. L. Moody was not an educated man or a trained theologian. Yet the nineteenth-century evangelist started his ministry by gathering children from the streets of Chicago and teaching the Bible to them. Children were delighted to be a part of Mr. Moody’s class because they felt loved by the bearded shoe salesman who was their teacher. The more Moody taught the Bible, the more children and adults responded. In time this group grew to become the Moody Church, which now stands at Clark and North Avenue in Chicago.”

–Mark H. Senter, When God Shows Up: A History of Protestant Youth Ministry in America

Often small church youth leaders believe they have to be exceptionally creative, well-educated, and always available to be effective at reaching and discipling teenagers. Senter’s point in the quote above was that the most profound movements in youth ministry throughout history have been simple. Moody loved children and taught them the Bible. That’s a pretty good recipe for beginning a youth ministry.

In the Old Testament, the prophet was one who spoke to the people on behalf of God. His words were not his own. He proclaimed God’s love to the people and God’s displeasure and wrath. The priest, on the other hand, stood before God on behalf of the people. The sacrifices offered in the temple were presented for the forgiveness of sins and as a longing for the blessings of God. In his book, Youth Pastor, Houston Heflin discussed the tension for youth leaders in their role of advocacy. Are we primarily men and women who stand before people to proclaim the truth of God? Or are we primarily those who stand before God calling Him on behalf of the students for whom we minister?

Both positions are New Testament roles of leadership. And perhaps the truth is that the youth leader is supposed to be both, but that can be a challenge.

You are acting as a priest when you listen to the broken hearts of teenagers with nothing in your hands to fix their problems . . . nothing except to carry them before the Father. The longing for teenagers to “be real” with us is really the heart of the priest. It is not that we need teenagers to confess their sins and their brokenness . . . it is that teenagers will experience God when they carry these burdens before him. And often teenagers (or adults) need someone with skin on to hear the confessions of their hearts. The priest fails when he thinks he is the source of wisdom or compassion or forgiveness. His job is to stand before God who is the source on behalf of the broken teenager. Peter calls us a “a royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9). Great picture!

The prophet, on the other hand, speaks into the lives of teenagers truths from God. American culture tells them that their identity is about the clothes that they wear, their hairstyle, the stuff they own. God says that their identity if found in discovering who they are in Christ. The culture tells them that sexual experimentation is normal and healthy. God says that the sex act is so holy that it is only to be shared within the context of a covenant relationship. Teenagers need adults who are willing to speak the truth of God to them.

Most of us will lean one direction or the other. We are quick to share truth or quick to love. Paul of Tarsus called us to a special balance: “speaking the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15). You are both a priest and a prophet.

When a group of youth leaders from small churches start talking, conversation often turns to “if only.” If only we had more volunteers. If only we had a bigger budget. If only we had a gym at the church. If only we had enough teenagers to do a mission trip. If only people were more committed. If only we could be more like the mega-church down the street.

Leading a youth group with a handful of teenagers definitely has some limitations. You cannot compete with a big church in budget. Chances are, your teenagers don’t come to your church because of the triple-floor family life center complete with bowling alley, skating rink, and youth auditorium with a smoke machine. If you try to build a youth ministry on what you DON’T have, I think you are going to frustrate your church, frustrate your teenagers, and frustrate yourself.

Small churches will never compete with large churches in the programs they offer. It is true that some people are going to pass by your little church in order to put their teenagers in the big youth ministry with the smoke machine down the street. However, it might surprise you that  you have something the big church with the smoke machine may find it difficult to compete with. For youth leaders in small churches, relational ministry is not an ideal to strive for; it is the only way you exist.

If you have six teenagers in your youth group, congratulations! You can know every one of them! You can show up at their ball games, their concerts, even their practices from time to time. When you double the size of your group, that will become harder. Multiply your number by 100 and you won’t even know the names of your teenagers. Not only do you know the kids, but you probably know their parents. You can become an influence on the teenager and on his or her family just by being present in their lives. It can be overwhelming in a small church, but try being that relational with 600 kids while you are trying to figure out who fixes smoke machines.

At my church, we have more than our share of senior adults. Not many of them are up for our youth group water balloon fight, but right now one of our senior adult ladies is enlisting a senior to pray for each of our students . . .  DAILY. They will pray for the teenagers . . . AND they will connect with them at worship services, church picnics, and potluck dinners. They will have the opportunity to invest in teenagers’ lives in a number of ways that begins with prayer.

Relational ministry is not just relationships. It is also ministry. Ministry toward teenagers . . . like the prayers of our senior adults or the love our youth leaders show teenagers and parents. AND ministry from teenagers . . . like the sophomore girl who helps once a month with the pre-schoolers or the 8th grader who is being mentored to run our feeble sound system on Sundays.

Teenagers in a small church are a part of an extended family, a family that loves them and encourages them. They are able to participate in the ministry rather than being confined to the youth building. They are known and they are valued.

Don’t lament all the things you don’t have as a small youth group leader. Leverage the things you do have. And, if you really need a smoke machine for your Friday night event, maybe the large church down the street will let you borrow theirs.

“Follow me.” That was Jesus simple call to the tax collector, Matthew (Matt. 9:9). And Matthew immediately got up and followed Jesus. In youth ministry, we are in the disciple-making business. And no greater model of disciple-making exists–especially for those of us in the small church–than the model of Jesus. So, here are some thoughts on the lessons from Jesus’ call to Matthew.

1. Jesus did not choose disciples because they would have great influence on the people he was preaching to. Matthew would have been despised by most Jews who knew him. He was a collaborator with the Romans at best and a thief at worst. Jesus’ relationship with Matthew almost immediately got him into a conflict with the local religious leaders. Still, Jesus chose Matthew.Investing in students who are well-liked is easy. Discipling some students may earn you the disapproval of the church leaders and parents of other students. Our job is not to find the kids who will make our ministries look good. It is to find those Jesus is calling to a life of devotion to him.
2. Jesus didn’t call Matthew to study his curriculum or join his organization. He called him to “follow.” Curriculum is a useful tool in discipleship and affiliating with Christian organizations is usually a positive thing. But we can’t lose sight of the real call to discipleship. Kids don’t become disciples because they show up at church events. (Notice how many drop out after a few years.) Discipleship is still about the call to Matthew, a call to follow Jesus.
3. Jesus immediately involved himself in the social circles of his new disciple. In verse 9, Matthew follows Christ. In verse 10, Jesus is eating with his friends. I think that must be significant. Youth ministry does mean assimilation . . . helping teenagers to find a place in your group. But it also means investment of you and others in the ministry in loving and caring for those a new teenagers loves: family and friends.

by Roger Glidewell

As a young youth pastor I was not too eager to take my youth group to camp. Why? Because as a youth I had been to youth camp. Sadly, my first camp experience was more about short-sheeting the counselor’s bed, sneaking out at night, and dozing through dry sermons than it was about spiritual growth. I came home from that camp little better off spiritually than when I left home. Why would I want my youth group to be involved in that? Then a fellow youth minister invited our church to join them one summer for a multi-church youth camp.

Wow, was I ever in for a surprise; my youth encountered Christ that week in a way that I had never experienced before. Now, decades and thousands of campers later, I am a firm believer in the value of those moments with God that happen in special ways at camp. In fact, Global Youth Ministry utilizes youth camps in the U.S. and around the world as a vital link in reaching youth and raising young leaders for local churches. We have learned that when camps are “pre-prayered” well, the result will be a more focused, God-honoring youth group.

If you are seeking a meaningful camp program for your youth, here are some questions to ask about the camp that will help you determine if the investment in time, money, and energy will be productive for your youth over the long term.

WHAT PRINCIPLES GUIDE THE CAMP?

Be sure the camp is biblically centered. Your youth can get activities and entertainment anywhere, but they are unlikely to get God’s Word anywhere else but at church activities. People joke about how bad “camp food” is, but sometimes a camp’s spiritual fare is even worse. Don’t settle for a camp where the messages consist of a video clip and a verse! Many Christian youth already suffer from “spiritual malnutrition.” Be sure your camp is “beefed up” with an appetizing diet of spiritual food where the messages, drama, music, recreation, and everything else point to the truth of God’s Word. Don’t settle for topical Bible studies if you can find a camp where an expository teaching approach is offered.

WHO ARE THE PEOPLE WHO LEAD THE CAMP?

Be sure the camp leaders are not only godly guides but that they are accessible to your youth, as well. Don’t settle for camp speakers or musicians that breeze in, blow up and then buzz out, never spending time with your youth except from a stage. Look for a camp where godly leaders will pour into your kids up close and personal. The influence these leaders have on your kids will be in proportion to the time they are willing to spend with them.

Don’t be afraid to let other believers be role models for your youth. I know how it is; you spoke on a biblical truth the week before camp but when the camp speaker or the camp staff says the exact same thing, your kids act like they never heard it before. It isn’t a bad thing that God lets one plant and another water or cultivate.

WILL THE PROGRAM LAST BEYOND CAMP?

You need to use that extremely strategic week of the calendar year to motivate every camper to keep growing the rest of the year. So, be careful to find out whether the camp program has something for every camper:

For Unsaved and spiritually unmotivated Youth: Will there be opportunities for them to encounter Christ? An interesting question to ask in behalf of spiritually marginal youth whom you want to get to camp is this: “Will this camp appeal to 10th and 11th grade guys?” Why should you ask this question? Well, Connie Francis didn’t sing the song “Where the Boys Are” for nothing! If the older guys are involved during camp, chances increase that other campers will be involved as well.

For Younger Believers: Will these youth be challenged to grow spiritually in meaningful ways? Salvation should not be the “end all” of youth camps. More than half the youth who attend camps are already believers. These young believers needs must be addressed, too. They need to have opportunities to learn how to grow spiritually through small groups.

For Older Teen Believers: Will these “veteran campers” have the opportunity to practice and learn leadership? They need to be given opportunities to be “co-leaders” with older camp leaders, to assume greater responsibility. To treat them the same as you treat first-time campers is to risk having to deal with bad attitudes from many of the older campers.

For Adult sponsors: Will any ministry speak directly to needs of adult believers? The adult leaders are the ones who will continue to challenge the youth back at home. By all means, you want them to be exposed to spiritual growth in their personal walk with Christ while at camp. No adult sponsor is just “the bus driver.” That adult has devoted a week of his/her life to a spiritual endeavor. The adults may come home physically tired, but you better hope they also come back spiritually rejuvenated.

IS THERE A PURPOSE THAT IS ABOUT WAY MORE THAN JUST CAMP?

The point of camp—and of life—is to bring honor and glory to Jesus. When you start promoting camp, your youth will want to know whether the camp facility has an Olympic size pool, horseback riding, alpine tower with zip line, you know—fun stuff. And it may be that those things will persuade your youth (and their friends) to attend camp. But when they return home, do you really want them to only remember the “blob” or would you rather they come home talking about Jesus? If the T-shirt is their most lasting “take-away” from camp, it wasn’t worth it. Don’t waste your valuable time providing “fun” for fun’s sake; make fun events work for you to help you lead your youth to Jesus. If the spiritual impression made at camp doesn’t even last the bus ride home, you have just wasted one of the most important weeks of your calendar year. That one week at camp should translate into impetus for spiritual growth into the next several months, even years.

So how do you find a camp where the elements mentioned above for a meaningful camp are in place? First, seek the Lord in prayer. I’m not kidding; who cares more about the youth in your group than He does? Second, talk to the camp leadership; ask the hard questions that will help you determine what they think is important at camp. Third, ask fellow youth leaders who have attended the camp previously for their impressions. Finally, be willing to experiment with camps . . . until you find one that meets the criterion above. Then, settle in and be prepared to stay with that camp program for the long haul. You will be able to develop camp “traditions” and camp memories that will define your youth group for years to come!

Happy Camp Hunting.

Roger Glidewell is the Founder and Executive Director of Global Youth Ministry, an organization dedicated to developing leaders to reach and disciple teenagers around the world. For more information about Roger or Global Youth Ministry visit www.globalyouthministry.org.

Imagine your church was suddenly transported to Bangladesh during one of your worship services. You closed the door, sang a few songs, listened to an inspiring message, and opened the church doors to discover you were in a village on the other side of the world. One of your deacons would probably pull the door closed and hope Scotty would beam you back to your own neighborhood. But, when you opened the door again, you would still be in this completely different land with a completely different culture. The women’s group might decide to organize a pot-luck in the fellowship hall. After all, no one would be going home to the cafeteria today. Where would they go to buy food? What would they find to buy? And how would they pay for it?

Of course, someone who was a little more spiritually minded than the rest of you would eventually suggest that if you have been placed in this new place with these people, God must intend for you to share Jesus with them. But, how would you talk to them? I don’t really know what language they speak in Bangladesh, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t English. How would you share with them in a way they could understand?

The situation might not be as far-fetched as all that. I mean, I doubt any of our church buildings are going to grow wings and start flying around the world. But, in a sense, this has already happened to us. While most of us weren’t looking, we were transported into a culture that is very different from the one we grew up in. Our communities are more multi-cultural, less churched, more skeptical, and less connected than they have ever been before. We may use the same words as those who live outside our church buildings, we don’t really speak the same language. We don’t look at the world in the same way as those around us. And we have had to learn to adapt just to fit into this new culture. And while this is true for us as adults, it is even more true for those of us who are seeking to reach teenagers for Christ.

Walt Mueller has said that there are two things we need to understand about youth culture: “1) Its rate of change is speeding up, not slowing down–and if we hesitate, stand still, don’t stay on top of the rapid changes, we’ll be left in the dust; 2) Not only are there more voices taking up space in youth culture all the time, but they’re also getting louder, more attractive, and more convincing.” According to Mueller, when we do youth ministry today we are involved in a missionary expedition. Our churches have been dropped into an alien culture and are seeking to reach people speaking a language we often don’t speak living in a culture we seldom fully understand.

So, what do we do? One option would be to give up. We can teach the kids whose parents bring them into our youth group, who have learned to live in our culture and be satisfied that we get to make a difference in their lives. Or, we can engage them within their culture. How do you do that? I believe it requires three disciplines: Listen. Watch. Understand.

Listen. When I was in the Philippines, my biggest problem was that I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I was teaching a group of Philippine youth leaders how to teach youth, but I wasn’t even sure what it was like to sit in a Philippine Bible class for teenagers. So, I raised principles and asked, How would that work in your culture? And I listened. Ask students what influences drive the decisions that are made by teenagers today. Ask them how teenagers respond to our pre-packaged approaches to evangelism. Ask teenagers what their friends spend time talking about, thinking about, doing. And listen.

Watch. What TV shows are your students watching? What movies are they going to? At camp last year, the preacher asked students who were the biggest heroes they saw at the movies. The girls in the group yelled out, Edward . . . the vampire from Twilight. But, not really the Edward from the movies. The one from the books. What? Teenagers don’t read. We all know that. Apparently we don’t know the things we know. And have you read the book that most of the girls in your youth group are reading?

Understand. Understanding their culture is not the same as endorsing it. However, we should be very careful about ridiculing the culture our teenagers live in. The culture has marked them deeply. They may have to reject parts of their culture to truly follow Christ, but the journey begins when we truly understand the influences that drive their view of the world.

We have opened our church doors and we are in the middle of a different culture. I suppose God must have wanted us to reach this culture with his love and his forgiveness or he wouldn’t have dropped us in this culture. So, let’s get to work. Let’s figure out how we can speak eternal truth into this culture so that youth can be reconciled to God.

God is doing something amazing around the world. He is stirring up men and women who love him and love teenagers to do the hard work of building disciples in youth ministry. Like the United States, most youth ministries around the world are small ministries made up of a youth leader (seldom paid very much if anything at all) and a small group of young people. In a recent study, 102 youth leaders from 27 different countries on six different continents agreed that there are seven things that are essential to youth ministry.

Over the next few weeks, I will share the essential youth ministry objectives identified in the study. These objectives are not in the order in which they were rated, but are presented in the order they make the most sense to me. The youth leaders included in the study were all evangelical Christians.

Essential One: Lead youth to repent and turn to faith in Christ for their salvation.

In small youth groups, we know the kids. We know their parents–even those who don’t have parents in the church. In many cases, we know their grandparents, their aunts and uncles, and their cousins. Many of our kids have siblings who are also in the youth group. Because of our familiarity with our students, we may assume they have a personal relationship with Christ. The Bible is clear. For students to experience salvation, they must turn from their sins and embrace Christ in faith. Our Bible study needs to include a call to a personal faith in Christ. It is just not enough for young people to show up at church every week. It is not enough for them to have a vague positive regard of God. They need to come face to face with the sin that has caused them to be separated from Christ, repent of their sin, and find forgiveness and grace through the full payment of Christ on the cross in the arms of their loving Father. That has to affect the way we teach. It probably needs to affect the fun activities we provide.

Challenging the students who come to our youth ministries to come to faith is not enough. We live among a generation of teenagers who will spend eternity separated from God in hell unless they come to experience the grace of God by faith. I was deeply affected by a prayer I heard Richard Ross (Youth Ministry Professor at Southwestern Seminary) offer up a few years ago. He prayed, “God, we deeply desire for you to bring sweeping revival across our land and to see teenagers by the thousands come to know your grace and your salvation. As we wait for you to bring revival, we commit ourselves to slipping teenagers one by one out of the hands of the enemy and into your kingdom as you give us the wisdom and the ability.”

Amen.

In his recent book, Youth Ministry 3.0, Mark Oestreicher calls for a dramatic shift in youth ministry. He says youth leaders have emphasized events and activities–our youth ministry program–in a hope to reach youth for Christ. However, that just doesn’t seem to be working any more (if it really ever did). Marko suggests we need to adjust our approach to youth ministry to be more personal. He suggests we may need to do less activity so that we can invest more in relational ministry with students.

I couldn’t agree more. And, for the small church, this emphasis is not just a good adjustment to our culture. It is really at the core of what a small church is . . . family.

In most youth ministry conference over the last ten years or so, conference leaders have asked youth leaders to invest more and more energy in planning and implementing lots of programs. Believe me, I have led many of those well-intentioned conferences. However, I have come to believe that your students need less planned activity . . . and more of you.

Being a youth leader is not really about planning activities. Being a youth leader is about discipling youth. I don’t mean to imply that there is something wrong with developing a youth ministry program. Youth need opportunities to dig into Scripture. They need opportunities to invest in the lives of other people . . . to have ministry demonstrated and to practice it. They need opportunities to build relationships with each other. However, if your investment in your youth ministry program means you don’t have time to spend time with students–to see how their Algebra test went or find out how they are working through a problem they shared with you or invite them to talk about their new commitment to prayer–you are planning too much.

Perhaps the most important skill a youth leader can learn is how to be present with teenagers. Jesus was an amazing teacher. He did great things. But, I somehow believe the greatest impact he had on the lives of his disciples was his presence.