Gospel.com Blog

Is your church youth-friendly?

Most church members would probably answer “yes”—a typical church has some sort of youth ministry program and probably a few mission trips or other events for students to participate in. But beyond the presence of those programs, does your congregation do a good job of welcoming young people and students into the full body of the church?

An article at Legacy Youth Ministry Resources by Steve Miller looks at a recent study that asked 10,000 students to rate the ten factors that most influence their commitment to church. The results are worth considering and not always what you’d expect—high-tech entertaining worship and music rank much lower on the list than compelling teaching and good old-fashioned quality relationships with the pastor and other church leaders.

Next up is an essay at StudentSoul.org about helping students get to church—there’s a lot your church can do to help students physically get to church, and once they’re there, to help them get connected to what your ministry is all about.

Take a look through these articles and ask yourself how your church would rate against these criteria. And if you want to do a bit more reading on the topic, see Youth Ministry Exchange’s review of Choosing Church: What Makes a Difference to Teens, a book that delves much more deeply into the question of “what attracts young people to a church?”

There’s a new article by Kelli Woodard at Youth Ministry Exchange about a disturbing, confusing, and surprisingly common phenomenon among young people: self-mulitation, or “cutting.” It can be hard for a parent, youth minister, or other adult to understand why a teenager would hurt themselves; and if medical resources about self-mutiliation are scarce, resources exploring the spiritual side of cutting are even more so. But cutting is a serious issue and a symptom of very real emotional problems that must be addressed.

Woodard’s article is a good primer on the cutting phenomenon, and offers practical guidelines to help you respond appropriately if the issue ever crops up in your family or youth ministry.

The youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow—so the saying goes, and it’s as true for the church as it is for society in general. What that means for the church today is that it’s not enough to train and disciple adult believers—if we’re hoping and praying for a revival with an impact that extends beyond the Boomer and Gen X generations, Christians must work to inspire young people with the spirit of revival.

Several ministries in the Gospel.com community are focused on fanning the flames of revival not just in today’s church leaders, but in tomorrow’s:

• Youth for Christ aims to connect young people with mission trips and service opportunities that will deepen their faith. Their mission trips send young people everywhere from Botswana to Uruguay, and their Prayer Triplets program plugs students into a worldwide network of prayer. In their words, these small prayer groups “may seem insignificant, but even one life spent in prayer may start a revival that will sweep the world.”
• Youth Specialties is all about helping youth leaders inspire their youth. In particular, their Generation Change (”Calling students to change their world”) conferences, held all across the U.S., train church leaders and volunteers to inspire young people to carry the Gospel into the world.
• In an article at the Youth Specialties site, Ted Stump describes a type of student ministry that might just be the prelude to widespread youth revival: student-led cell groups.
• Youth revival programs are not without their challenges. Elsewhere on the YS site, Tom Bergler cautions against (among other things) youth revival programs that focus too much on entertainment and not enough on real spiritual change. Current Thoughts and Trends sums up an account of a high school revival that might or might not bear lasting spiritual fruit.

Take some time to browse through more articles and resources here about youth revival!

In an effort to get some feedback on an upcoming book he’s written, ysmarko of Youth Specialties has been publishing some passages on his blog and asking for feedback. If you’re currently involved in youth ministry in any way you might want to jump on over to his blog and read through his thoughts.

The first of the series.

The most recent post: part 10.

Find links to all the posts here.

This is a great story via Marko of the gospel.com community member Youth Specialities:

I’ve shared before how god worked in and through the middle school ministry at my church to change a community in africa. our kids set out to raise $3000 to build one house for a family of orphans. their goofy little variety show brought in $25,000 the first year. the money went to put in two clean-water wells. the next year, the church responded again with almost $35,000, and a health clinic was funded.

i shared this story at the national youth workers convention a couple times. and recently, i received this way-encouraging email from a middle school pastor, who agreed to let me post it here:

MarkO -

I’ve been meaning to send you a note for a while to say thanks. I’m a Jr. High minister and we were at the St. Louis Believe Conference last year. I had already heard your story about the impact the Jr. Highers at your church made in Africa and shared it with some of my students on Friday night, only to have you tell them all on Saturday. From that story, God sparked our own students to act.

Our story turned out much like yours. We got together and set an ambitious goal of $6,000 to build two wells in Africa (people, including our H.S. guy, later came to me and told me they thought there was no way we’d ever get close). We made “Just Add Water” our summer project and challenged our kids and their families to use their summers for something greater than themselves. Long story short, by the end of the summer we hit over $9,000. In the mean time, our church began a relationship with a ministry in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya and we were able to provide water (plus showers and toilets, which there are almost none of in the entire community of 100,000) for three schools in the slums of Nairobi.

…

Read the rest of the amazing story at ysmarko’s blog.

We’ve mentioned Youth Ministry Exchange a lot here on the Gospel.com blog—they’re an excellent online ministry with lots of great content. To help you get to know them a bit better, we’ve put together a short video tour of the YMX website. Take a look:

If you’re not familiar with YMX, you’re missing out on a lot of great resources, for youth ministry and beyond. Take a few minutes to explore their site!

When I was in high school I distinctly remember singing “This is the Song that Never Ends” for nigh on 30 minutes straight in the church van. After about minute fifteen our youth pastor stopped laughing at our stupidity and became suddenly very interested in the road.

I have no idea why he put up with any of our antics.

Although upon reflection, he was the one that probably started the singing…

Anyway, Youth Ministry Exchange recently ran a contest for youth workers soliciting their worst road trip story. The winner is just painful to read:

We’ll start with the fact that the last 20 miles of the trip took 2.5 hrs, driving over steep, curvy mountain roads in a whiteout. It snowed three feet in those two hrs. I was driving a loaded van, pulling a 10 ft. trailer, leading a caravan of several other vehicles. We couldn’t pull off of the road, and cars were going into ditches all around us. So, after 12 hrs of driving, we finally get to the lodge. We wake up the following morning to 18 degree temps and strong cross-winds. As we are walking to get the kids their skis, we start down a set of steps. One of our chaperones promptly falls on an icy step and breaks her ankle. Badly. I wrap my coat around her, and take off looking for ski patrol. We hook her up to a sled, and get her the infirmary. I then have to dig our van out of the snow (more than an hour), and go off the road twice driving to the infirmary…

Read the rest, it gets far far worse.

There are two new audio sermons online at the Soulation audio library:

• God Is Your Hero by Dale Fincher, which takes a fresh look at the David vs. Goliath story and CS Lewis’ Narnia tales, and talks about what it means to have God as your hero.
• How the World Is In Us by Dale and his wife Jonalyn, which explains why human beings are “spiritual amphibians”—we live in two different worlds, the physical world and the spiritual world. Sound strange? Listen as Dale and Jonalyn talk about the need to understand both aspects of our existence.

If you haven’t listened to one of Dale or Jonalyn’s messages, it’s well worth giving one a try—they have a unique and humorous way of taking seemingly abstract concepts and showing what they mean for your everyday life.

Yesterday we talked about several good youth ministry leadership resources. Here are three more good essays to add to that list, courtesy of Youth Specialties:

• Are you a “side-door leader”? You don’t need to be a member of the church staff to be an effective leader in your congregation. Kent Clayton talks about the importance of “unofficial” leadership:

  Side-door leaders are people who have influence in ministry settings without (necessarily) having an official role as leader; real leaders are those who wield power, regardless of position. Leadership is changing—in the postmodern milieu, people value following those worth being followed over pursuing those with the right titles. Structures and systems no longer hold the validity they once did. Sometimes, the real authority lies with the parents, the long-term youth volunteers, and even the students who shape the culture of a ministry’s leadership. Paid staff and youth coordinators aren’t necessarily part of that mix. In the real world, leaders are recognized, not appointed. Side-door leaders know how to weave influence without storming the main gates of a board, committee, session, or staff hierarchy.

• Youth leaders, have you given up on the prospect of getting your middle-school students to be spiritual leaders for their peers? Cliff Olson writes about the difficult but not impossible tasks of cultivating middle-school leaders.
• Does your ministry have a single leader directing all of its operations? The last several decades have shown that by organizing your youth or church ministry into gift-based leadership teams, rather than following the traditional hierarchical model of leadership, you can expand your reach.

Take a read through and see if any of these ideas are applicable to your ministry!

How do you share the love of God with young kids? The Jest Kidding ministry uses every means at their disposal—the internet, storytelling, conferences, magic and juggling workshops, and more to communicate the Gospel message to boys and girls… and to “kids” of all ages! In today’s interview, we talk to Sheldon Rhodes, the Director of Jest Kidding, about what makes this unique ministry tick:

The Jest Kidding website has lots of resources for kids’ ministry—it’s a place for kids to learn about Jesus, and for parents to help their kids online, at church and at home. Whether you’re a kid or just a “kid at heart,” take a look!