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?