As a small youth group leader, you probably teach all the youth in your church in one class. It’s not ideal, but it is the reality for many of us in small churches.

THE PROBLEM

That was a challenge we faced at my church when we started Sunday morning Bible study. We had several seventh grade boys who were full of life . . . maybe a little too much life. The few high school students in the group spent a lot of my Bible study rolling their eyes at the immaturity of the younger kids. We had a hard time keeping our high schoolers involved. There were not enough of them to start a separate class; besides, we didn’t have teachers for another class. So, we needed to find ways to keep them plugged in. Can you relate?

USE OLDER STUDENTS TO LEAD

One of the big advantages of a small youth group is the ability to create more of a sense of family, so that was how we addressed the problem. A 16-year-old and a 12-year-old might need to be in the same Bible study class at church, but they needed to be treated very different. I met with our high schoolers one at a time and told them I wanted them to take more of a leadership role in the class. I wanted them to begin helping younger students. Most responded to the challenge.

The biggest assignment I gave the high schoolers was to lead part of the Bible study on a rotating basis. We use Student Life’s online Bible study curriculum which has a simple teaching process: Connect, Explore, Transform. I asked the high schooler for the week to choose one of the lesson options for one of the three steps. I would lead the other two steps. Our high schoolers were quite good at doing the opening activities in Connect. Students also did pretty well with the life application in Transform, too. Most of them struggled to lead the Bible exploration in Explore, so I did that part of the lesson most weeks.

ONLY FOR OLDER STUDENTS

Several younger students asked to teach. I was excited they wanted to take part, but I would have killed the unique place I had carved out in Bible study for high schoolers if I had allowed them to teach. I told them they would have a chance when they got a little older.

How do you keep older kids involved in the group? I’m convinced one key is saving some experiences in youth ministry for older students. If they can do everything the ministry has to offer as 7th graders, why stay involved as 11th graders? Sharing the teaching with high schoolers was a good application of that principle for our group.

Paul Kelly