Each week we’ll be writing about different ways that we, as leaders, can effectively be examples to our students, and we’ll discuss different topics to talk over with our students. These topics range from relationships to being active in a small group. All of these topics are nuggets every leader can apply to his or her life. It’s our hope that you’ll check back to see what next week’s topic is, and that you can apply what we’ve learned in your own life as a fellow volunteer youth worker.

“Then we your people, the sheep of your pasture, will thank you forever and ever, praising your greatness from generation to generation.” Psalm 79:13

Ordinary people doing extraordinary things in Student Ministry makes a huge difference in a student’s life

MATT: We’ve talked before about how being a student ministry leader often times means you need to take a few extra steps to show students just exactly what it means to show God’s love, and that we show our love for Jesus by helping others. Last week I saw the best example of that being put into practice. A junior high small group leader I know had one of the kids in his small group have a prayer request. That request was to be able to find a ride to church service on Sunday morning because he had no other way to get to church. This leader told the student that he would be able to swing by and pick him up and take him to church at the 11:15 service and then bring him home afterwards. Sounds easy, but this youth leader also attends our 9:00 service himself to make sure that he is getting fed weekly with the Holy Spirit. He then leaves church, leaves his good parking spot, drives to the student’s home to get him and then drives back to the 11:15 service, has to find a new parking spot (at a mega-church finding a good parking spot can be like finding the winning lotto ticket). This is a lot of extra work on his part, but the pay off is that this student now is able to come to a weekend church service, and is seeing first hand how to serve others, put others first behind your own needs, and that this student leader has a huge heart for students.

Students are ALWAYS watching us and our actions. Sometimes we are the only model of Christian love and service that these kids have. Make sure you are using every opportunity to show your students that you care about them, and that you want to be an example of Christ’s love in their life.

I know he’ll be mad that I tell you this, but the student leader I’m talking about is Steven. The part I left out is that Steven is also a college student with a full class load this semester. So in between going to church himself and leaving to pick up this student and bring him to church he tries to fit in a half hour of reading time for school. He knows that his time is limited, however he uses this small period of time to demonstrate service and love and a caring attitude to one of the students that God has placed in his care.

STEVEN: “Extraordinary things” can be an intimidating term. When I think of the word extraordinary, I tend to think of someone like Superman, Spiderman, or Batman (even though he doesn’t have super powers), but there’s so much more to being extraordinary than people tend to think. Actually, I should say there’s so much less to being extraordinary than people think. I would definitely classify myself as an ordinary guy, but in youth ministry it doesn’t take a lot to be extraordinary. Some of the simplest things above just showing up for your 2-hour obligation every week can take you from ordinary to extraordinary.

One of the things I’ve tried to emphasize this year is making sure I spend intentional 1-on-1 time with all of my junior highers. It doesn’t seem like much, but just taking one of my guys out to dinner every week and having some good conversation is something small to me, but HUGE to the student. For some of them, that may be the only alone time they get with a caring, mature adult (as if I could call myself mature) all week. For others, I know that they may feel more comfortable talking about different things going on in their life on a 1-on-1 basis rather than sharing with 12 other guys in the group first. They know that my co-leader and I are people they trust, and they don’t have as much apprehension sharing difficult things with us.

Also, just taking time to recognize them individually is a huge deal. Every week I send out a group text to everyone; one usually right after we meet on Tuesday night, and one at the beginning of the weekend to encourage them and let them know I’m thinking about them. I usually make them very generic in the way I address the student to give the impression that it’s not a group text, but every once in a while I take the extra 4 minutes and personalize a text to each one of the guys with their name. It doesn’t take much time or effort, but each one of my guys then knows I was thinking about him individually.

(I just read what Matt wrote about me picking up one of my small group students and I have a correction to make. Matt made it sound like a lot of extra work on my part, but in reality, it’s just a few extra minutes to me, but a huge blessing for my student. In the end, the payoff is more than worth the small time commitment. And now I realize this entire post is about me. Thanks a lot, Matt.)

What do you do to take your ministry from ordinary to extraordinary?

matt@volunteeryouthministry.com

steven@volunteeryouthministry.com

• Spiritual warfare and student ministry
• How do I reach the one problem kid in my group?

matt@volunteeryouthministry.com

steven@volunteeryouthministry.com

• Paid youth workers can submit piece to the monthly column called My3.
• Volunteer youth workers can always submit tips, illustrations and learnings from your experiences as a youth worker.

Please submit materials by clicking here. The concept behind this blog is for volunteer youth workers to share ideas with each other. I hope you’ll consider adding your insights to the community!

I’ve come across a few situations in life where I’ve had to deeply offend somebody I care about with truth. Even though the truth is shared in love and with a pure heart, the decision to be offended is on the part of the receiver.

In youth ministry (and life in general) offending people has to happen at times for them to move forward. A sign that you’ve done it in love is if when they’re done licking their wounds, they come back to your side for more ministry.

Tonight I had to have such a conversation with a student I’ve been trying to minister to for months. I gave him a few specific and redemptive action steps he could take to make things right. His response so far has been to delete his Facebook profile and isolate himself (licking his wounds).

That’s a natural part of the process of dealing with being confronted. When that happens to you as a youth leader, don’t be surprised, hurt, offended or take it personally. Consider it a defense mechanism or like a caterpillar forming a cocoon. When the truth sinks in and the initial pain has subsided, there’ll be an opportunity to reconnect and move forward… ideally.

Sometimes they choose to run instead. However, don’t let that risk stop you from doing the hard work of ministry – speaking difficult truth lovingly into the lives of students. That’s what good leaders do… at the risk of their student(s) turning on them.

Caution: Clear this with your youth staff before using this lesson helper

(Click to enlarge)

I printed copies of the forms to hand out to my small group guys that night. Before handing them out, I explained to them that I had taken an AIDS test that day and had to fill this out.

Boys will be boys. They laughed pretty hard at the questions. I think it was more out of discomfort than it was finding the questions funny. Either way, there was about 5 minutes of hard laughter.

When they finished reading, I told them about having to go to the county clinic a few years earlier to get my immunizations for a mission trip. At the clinic was a muscular man about 30 years old crying hard after getting his test results. This is the form he had to fill out before taking his test.

The room was suddenly and solemnly quiet. The boys were face-to-face with the reality and gravity of what they held in their hands.

I ended the illustration with these words:
- People who choose to live by their own way instead of God’s way have to worry about stuff like this
- People who fall victim to their own decisions need the compassion you’re feeling for that man I mentioned
- The church needs to live right and treat people right

Each week we’ll be writing about different ways that we, as leaders, can effectively be examples to our students, and we’ll discuss different topics to talk over with our students. These topics range from relationships to being active in a small group. All of these topics are nuggets every leader can apply to his or her life. It’s our hope that you’ll check back to see what next week’s topic is, and that you can apply what we’ve learned in your own life as a fellow volunteer youth worker.

“I will confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you, from generation to generation. This is the everlasting covenant: I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you.” Genesis 17:7

Today’s blog topic is Relationships vs. programming

It seems like today more than ever, we need to find a way to attract “seekers” into our student ministries. Whether it’s to weekend services, midweek services, or small groups, the fact is students need Jesus. There are so many ways to try to attract students into your youth group, and one approach is the theatrical glitz and glam. Although that’s one way to grab people’s attention, is it the best way? We need to try to get away from the Hollywood spotlights and get back to the roots of youth ministry. The glitz and glam, lights, and smoke are going to last for a night, but the relationships are going to last from generation to generation.

Matt: I love to see our High School Ministry church services filled on the weekends, I love seeing new faces that have come to check out this whole “God thing,” and friends of students who are part of our core group of regular attenders. We need to find a way to grab their attention and make sure they enjoy the service and want to come back for more. To do that we often start the service out with games and ways for students to win a prize, or just to come down and have fun on stage. But at the same time, I also see our core group who are longing to hear more of God’s word and spend more time in Worship. There needs to be a mix of both, we need to attract the seekers without boring the believers. Easy to say that, but how do we do it?

I think we need to make sure today’s students understand that God is not in bright lights, fog machines and booming bass speakers. God shows up no matter where we meet. Do all those things attract seekers? Absolutely they do, but then we need to make sure the seekers become believers, and we do that through relationships. One of the things I do when I’m volunteering at one of our four high school services on the weekend is look for students who are sitting alone. I’ll go up and talk to them, if it’s their first time here I want them to know they just made a friend. I’ll introduce them to some of our “core” students that I know so they can start to feeling like this could be their church home, and they have friends here, and other kids they can talk with.

Use the glitz and glamor to attract new students to your services, but immediately follow up with a relational aspect to your services. After all our goal is for these students to form a relationship with God.

Steven: On a similar note, I often find myself trying to build up the glitz and glam of my small group. There are some things my co-leader and I do to make small group more “attractive” to the guys in our group, but in reality it doesn’t really add much to the party. What we’ve found recently is that we just need to get back to the roots.

When students come to a youth group led by a church, they are expecting to hear about Jesus. We don’t have to try to hide our agenda of spreading Jesus just because we’re afraid of putting off students that don’t know him yet. When my students show up on Tuesday night, I know some of them don’t know Jesus. Obviously it’s my mission to make sure they get to know Him by the end of the year, and it’s comforting for me as a leader to know that they are expecting to hear about God and His word. Youth group is already seeker-geared. We don’t have the extra worry of making sure our lessons or discussions are “light” enough for seekers; they’re already expecting to hear it! If they were put off by Jesus talk, they wouldn’t be there in the first place.

Something my co-leader and I have been doing lately is instead of doing a quick game or fun activity in the beginning of our small group, we just ask our guys how their weeks went. That’s it. It might seem weird to just talk, especially with a group of 7th grade guys, but they actually enjoy talking about what has happened since we saw them the week before. We don’t have to plan anything huge and extravagant to get our guys to enjoy being at small group. God will take care of their attitude, we don’t have to do it for them.

Upcoming topics:

• Okay, I did what you said, it didn’t work…now what?
• It’s okay to take a break!
• Spiritual Warfare and student ministry

matt@volunteeryouthministry.com

steven@volunteeryouthministry.com

• Paid youth workers can submit piece to the monthly column called My3.
• Volunteer youth workers can always submit tips, illustrations and learnings from your experiences as a youth worker.

Please submit materials by clicking here. The concept behind this blog is for volunteer youth workers to share ideas with each other. I hope you’ll consider adding your insights to the community!

I shot this video of a sweet performance using treadmills in our high school service this weekend.

Today one of our students went to the hospital with a collapsed lung. I was so proud of students in our ministry for pouring out love to him on Facebook and by visiting him in the hospital.

Through this feel-good experience, their hearts are softened and primed for the challenge, “Do you think there are other students in that hospital who could use a visitor?”

I’m not suggesting being manipulative and making them serve through guilt. I would actually say that’s ministry malpractice.

However, as my pastor says, when the fruit’s ripe, you don’t have to yank it off the tree. When students’ hearts are awakened to a need and have a personal experience with the issue, they’re more likely to get involved with the solution.