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A few years ago, I was encouraging youth to bring their Bibles to Bible study. (Novel idea, I know.) I made a big deal about it, even gave kids candy when they had a Bible with them. It worked . . . sort of. Within a few weeks, most of the kids had a Bible with them for Bible study. Some of them would go find a pew Bible and bring it into class. A couple of guys came up with a more creative solution. They just left their Bibles in a cabinet in the classroom. When I asked how they were studying the Bible at home if their Bibles were always at church, they just gave me a blank stare.

In the research for my dissertation, youth leaders all over the world agreed on 7 essential objectives for youth ministry. It should probably not be any surprise that this was an essentials:

Essential 3: Guide youth to spend time with Jesus in prayer and Bible study as a way of developing their relationship with him.

Teenagers today are about as religious as American teenagers have been for as long as we have been measuring such things. The disappointing thing is few of them know the truths of the Bible, can identify the stories of Scripture, or spend any time perusing (let alone studying) the Word of God. That’s a pretty big disconnect. So, how do we instill the essential disciplines of prayer and Scripture in their lives?

1. Help them understand the purpose. Few of us really get excited about new routines to add to our lives. Teenagers feel full-up with studying. While prayer and Bible study are disciplines, they are not the cold, dead routines teenagers may imagine. How many of them would let a love letter (er . . . romantic Facebook message) from a boyfriend/girlfriend sit around for weeks before they read it? When they see the goal of prayer and Bible study as being the deepening of their love relationship with Christ, they are on the right track.

2. Acknowledge that prayer and Bible study take effort and time. It’s okay for teenagers to begin doing Bible study by looking at a few verses a day or spending about 10 or 15 minutes. However, don’t short-sell the importance of time alone with the Lord. Help them to understand that spending time with God needs to be a priority in their lives.

3. Give them a plan. Often teenagers look at the Bible and get overwhelmed. Where do you start if you really want to hear from God? Give them tools to use in both praying and studying. Help them to find a time and place to spend with Jesus. Answer their questions, but also help them to learn to find the answers for themselves.

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.

In youth ministry, building relationships with students is really important. I don’t know anyone who would disagree with that. And building relationships with students is especially important for youth leaders in small churches. So, if you love kids and enjoy spending time with them, you are in good shape, right? I’m not sure.

I think the relationship Jesus had with his disciples is a good model for us. When Jesus initiated a relationship with Simon and his brother Andrew, he didn’t say, “Hey, guys, let’s go hang out at Starbucks and maybe later we can play some flag football.” He said, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” I don’t mean to imply that Jesus never had fun with the disciples. I suspect that he did. But when it came time to write about Jesus in the gospels, the disciples wrote about the intentional ways Jesus showed them the power of God. They wrote about his challenges to them and his rebukes.

The relationships we are trying to build with our students need to be discipling relationships.

• We need to call students to love God deeply.
• We need to equip students to advance God’s kingdom in their world.
• We need to help teenagers to discover who they are in Christ, people created in his image and gifted for service.
• We need to develop a relationship strong enough to rebuke students when fail to follow Christ and restore them to him when they wander away.

Of course, to have a discipling relationship assumes that we are following Christ ourselves. If my relationship with God is stale, I can’t hope to lead my students to a passionate pursuit of Christ.

I think the question we need to ask ourselves is not, do the students in my youth group like me? Rather, do my students feel challenged and inspired to a deeper walk with Christ when they spend time with me?

Most of us in small churches (big churches, too) deal with losing students as they get older. Sixth or seventh graders come into our youth ministries with lots of excitement. A few years later, high school sophomores begin to disappear. We plan activities and can’t seem to motivate our older students to get involved. They opt out of going to camp and are working part-time jobs on Sunday morning.

Why does it happen? Several reasons. Students lives are busy. They have more activities to choose from than ever before in their lives. Students are more mobile. Once they get a drivers license, they are no longer dependent on parents to drive them around. Students feel the need for money. Maybe for dates; maybe for college. Part-time jobs may make them choose between working on Friday night and missing the football game and working on Sunday morning and missing church. Students want to see themselves as independent adults and youth groups often make them feel like kids. Students may have a “been there, done that” feeling, since a 16 year old has been able to participate in everything the youth group offers since he was 12.

No easy answers to this problem exist, but let me suggest a couple of things that I think are helpful. First, create opportunities for older students to have greater status in the youth ministry because of their age and experience. For example, ask them to be team leaders for your mission projects; allow them to lead part of the Bible study on Sunday. Ask them to organize a game for your fun times.

Second, give them experiences in ministry that excite their imagination. When I was at a big church in Nashville, we took graduating seniors on an international mission trip every summer. Little churches can’t do that? Actually, it may be easier for us. Two years ago, I took our one graduating senior on a mission trip to Ukraine. It was an amazing trip for both of us and changed his perspective on God’s movement in the world. The church helped with the cost.

Third, help students find their place in the church . . . even if it isn’t in the youth ministry. Last year, we graduated a student who seldom came to youth ministry events. However, she had invested more than a year in helping with preschoolers. It is a ministry she loved and kept her growing and learning in her own faith. One of our juniors, Adam, plays the base in our praise band. He is plugged into the youth ministry, but his real love is hanging with the four or five musicians that lead worship on Sunday morning. God has used his love for music to help him grow in Christ.

As parents allow older students to begin to make their own choices about church, some will opt out. It is a great disappointment. However, our call as youth leaders is not a call to get kids to our activities. It is a call to invest in the spiritual lives of students. Don’t let the fact that students don’t show up at your fun night mean that you quit investing in them. Pray for them. Encourage them. Confront them with humility and love. Speak words of truth into their lives. Your relationship may be what God uses to draw them to himself.

If youth ministry is really “ministry,” should we bother with time to plan activities that are “just for fun”? Yes . . . and no.

Fun activities are essential in youth ministry . . . but they need to be the RIGHT fun activities. There are several reasons why we do fun activities, but one of the most important reasons is that they do a great job of building community among students. What builds community? Well, a lot of things, but here are a few:

1. Communities of teenagers have shared experiences. The students in my group love to tell the story of almost being killed by a tornado that swept across Florida while we were on an “amazing race” last summer. It really wasn’t as life-threatening as they make out, but the winds did get scary enough for us to take shelter in a truck stop. The story is important because it is an experience they share.

2. Communities have shared stories. One youth group I worked with used to go to this retreat center that had a cemetery beside it. Once while we were walking through the cemetery, one of the middle schoolers asked me why one of the headstones had a carved dog on top. Honestly, I had no idea, but I made up a story about how the guy buried there had a faithful dog that tried to save him from a fire. The dog failed, and was so damaged that friends decided he should remain with his master. “What you see here is not a replica of the dog, but the actual dog encased in concrete,” I concluded. While the students decided I had a worse sense of humor than they had realized, the story became a defining myth of our ministry. Every time we went back to the retreat center, they insisted we go to the tombstone and I tell the story again.

3. Communities have inside jokes. Some time ago, I started calling all the students in our youth ministry “Charlie.” We even did a T-shirt once that said our church was a place where we call you by your name–”and your name is Charlie.” When I call one of the kids Charlie and a guest tries to figure out why, they explain, “It’s just a thing with our group. Go with it.”

So, what fun activities are NOT the right kind? The kind that don’t build community. Take students to an amusement park and let them run off to ride roller-coasters with their friends from school. Meet together to eat supper. Then, meet to go home. Was it fun? Yes. Did it build community? Not likely. I’m not saying don’t do amusement parks; I’m saying make sure any activity you do gives kids an opportunity to connect with each other.