Whether you are a new or a veteran youth fellowship advisor, you might benefit from considering a fresh perspective on ministry with teenagers ages 11 through 18.
Pray for the youth and their leaders
Several years ago when the church I served needed youth fellowship advisors, I asked renowned youth ministry expert and Columbia Theological Seminary associate professor Rodger Nishioka, “How do you recruit youth advisors?” I expected him to give a complex formula for training and nurturing advisors. Instead, he answered simply, “You pray for them.”
Involve youth in planning
It is easy to overlook including the youth themselves from the earliest planning stages. Enlist their candor to tell you what activities the previous year were terrific and which were disasters. Invite some active youth, as well as several who attend only infrequently; ask the inactive teenagers what would encourage them to come more often.
Incorporate youth into the life of the congregation
Sometimes the best youth events are not strictly youth events at all. Young people are eager to serve Christ through local mission outreach. Plan a service project workday to assist your immediate community, or even your congregation. Youth can excel at leading congregational events such as a lively music program for Vacation Bible School or an energetic Advent workshop for younger children and their parents. Youth want to be needed by their congregation and by their world, not simply sent to the youth room to eat pizza. Encourage youth to serve on church committees alongside adults.
Emphasize servanthood
Youth today have many competing extracurricular activities vying for their attention. Only the church can provide servanthood opportunities in Christ’s name. Plan mission trips both locally and beyond so that by the time a young person graduates from high school, he or she will have had the opportunity to serve in different settings on behalf of the church. Raking a homebound church member’s yard or painting the porch of a low-income elderly person can bring your youth closer to each other, their church, and their God than going bowling can.
Often congregations encourage youth to bring along an unchurched friend to a beach weekend, but what a missed opportunity it is when we do not also encourage youth to invite a friend for a mission trip. Parents who never darken a church door are nevertheless often hungry for their children to serve others and to see a different culture. A church youth mission trip could be life changing as teenagers experience the Christian life in a new way.
Incorporate fun
Despite the comments two paragraphs earlier, bowling and other purely fun outings have their place, too. As you plan the weekly youth calendar, strive for a balance of one-third Bible study, one-third service projects, and one-third simply fellowship activities. Ideally activities are a mix of all three. One of my own favorite youth fellowship memories growing up in the Idlewild Church in Memphis, is laughing while cleaning gutters at Monroe-Harding Children’s Home on a Nashville fall weekend mission trip.
Be open to new meeting times
Again, ask your youth and their parents for input: would a weekday before-school prayer breakfast fit their hectic schedules better than a Wednesday evening or Sunday night program? Strive to incorporate all the local school calendars, not merely the predominant school calendar.
Use technology
Reaching middle-school and high-school students and their families by e-mail can enable a youth advisor to communicate quickly with a large group of youth who may attend many different schools. The youth can also assist with the congregation’s technology, by helping with the Web page and with the live broadcast of the worship services.
Think sensitively about the youth as individuals
Teenagers who are not yet driving or who do not have a car may be unable to attend every week if their parents are divorced. Be flexible about “required” events, such as a fund-raiser for the upcoming mission trip or a mandatory rehearsal for next Sunday’s youth service. Remember that we are in the grace business. Reach out particularly to those youth in single-parent homes who might need a scholarship given quietly to enable them to participate in a weekend camp or ski trip.
Help draw out the soft-spoken, shy teenagers
Easily the louder or more gregarious youth can dominate the youth fellowship. Seek out also the more reserved and reticent young people who attend your church. Provide a warm, nurturing setting where they also can share their ideas in a Bible study discussion or over a meal.
Attend events important to your youth
In my first year here, I went to every local school cafeteria for lunch with the students from the church at that particular school. Being in attendance when your youth have a ballet or piano recital, a school play, an athletic event, or an awards ceremony enables you to see what matters to them. You also see a new side of your youth not readily apparent at church. Of course you also will want to be present at the sad occasions, as well, such as the funeral for the grandparent of one of your youth. They may not remember that lesson on the Lord’s Prayer you spent hours preparing, but they will remember you showed up at the milestone events in their life. As my father says, 90 percent of success is showing up.
Don’t be afraid to deviate from the plan
Every veteran youth advisor can remember a time when a planned program fell apart. If your teenagers’ eyes glaze over as you announce plans for a Lenten series, be flexible enough to shift to another idea. God can and does use even our failures to reach young people, which is comforting when you are certain a lesson was a complete flop.
Invite the youth as a group to your home
This suggestion applies whether you live in an apartment or a palatial house. Yes, everyone may have to sit on the floor. Trust me–no one will mind. Your being a host to the entire youth fellowship for a meal helps the young people to know you as a real person and to think about the biblical hospitality they can also show to others.
Evaluate often alongside youth and other advisors
Talk with the youth and their parents for input on how the program is working. After each fellowship meeting, ask the other advisors what worked and what didn’t. Taking a few moments for evaluation can correct the course quickly if needed.
Talk unashamedly about considering the ministry
When you recognize gifts for parish ministry or the mission field among your youth, seize opportunities to talk individually with those youth about becoming Christian educators, ministers of Word and Sacrament, or missionaries. One of the most joyful moments in my ministry has been the enrollment in seminary this fall of a young woman whom I first encouraged to consider a call to become a minister a decade ago when she was 13. She and I have had many conversations about her becoming a minister. We believe in the inner call of God confirmed by the outer call of the church.
Pray for the youth
We end where we began — with a central focus on prayer in youth ministry. Keep a list of all the teenagers if you cannot keep all their names in your head. Pray for them daily and specifically. Pray with the youth every time you are together. Ask them to lead or to offer sentence prayers or to pray silently, but let your gatherings be characterized by prayer.
Nelle McCorkle Bordeaux is the Christian educator at Wilmington Island Church, Savannah, Ga. She is a graduate of Davidson College and Union-P.S.C.E
