Here are seven things I pray would be present in our students when they leave our ministry. We pray these things, and we aim to achieve them through what we do in our ministry. I hope these things will help you as you navigate your own list.
Many teenagers—and adults too—want to accept the grace of God without the life transformation that is supposed to come with it, thinking they can have the one without the other. They can’t.
We all have a finite number of seconds, minutes, hours, and days that the Lord grants us. They are a stewardship from him–a gift we are to spend wisely. Each of us has an appointed date with death. We do not know when that will be. Until then, God wants us to use our days for his glory.
In many ways, we are all reliant on digital technology. Most, if not all, of us carry a smartphone around with us each day. If we watch television shows or movies, they stream through one of the myriads of online streaming platforms. How many of you have connected with a student today through digital technology, such as text, social media, or a gaming platform? Covid caused many churches that had never considered the utility of using digital tools to engage in discipleship using these digital tools.
As a volunteer, I hated going over the volunteer handbook at training every year. So often, it felt like we were being given the same information because there were new people who didn’t know it or new information that we had to process how to apply. Thankfully we were usually fed at these trainings, so it was mildly more bearable, but something is daunting about the handbook. Then I started working on our student ministry team and found a new, deeper dread of the handbook. Now, I get to be one of the people responsible for this document that is supposed to be the core of what it means to be one of our volunteers.
The Suffering Servant. The Servant for All. A servant leader. These are just a few of the titles of Christ that reflect his heart, and what he came to do. His role as a servant, subverted the expectations that his contemporaries had for a Messiah and showed his followers how he expected them to bring his kingdom here on earth. Service is a paramount act for a believer. Serving others shows that we are truly Christ’s disciples. Serving others without judgement, without fear, and without concern for our own needs is what set the early Christians apart from those around them.
Summertime means different things to different people. There are some who stay home and some who seem like they travel all summer long. For those in student ministry it means camps, mission trip, or a combination of both. I think regular mission trips are vital to the long-term health of any student ministry. I’ve been able to see God do some amazing things in our student ministry over the years that were a direct result of a summer mission trip. If you are on the fence, I want to share a few reasons why you should prioritize taking your students on a summer mission trip.
We sat on the steps of our lodging in Guatemala cutting fresh pieces of mango to devour in between playing games of soccer on the nearby field. My friends and I had just experienced a week of ministering in orphanages and helping a local church serve their neighborhood in Guatemala City. I was a senior in high school on my first overseas mission trip, and I had the thought, “This might be as close to heaven as I’ll ever get on earth.”
Ministry to parents is vital to healthy, fruitful student ministry. I regret how long it took me to embrace that truth in my ministry, not because I did not affirm it but because of how awkward and intimidating ministry to parents seemed. For years I felt ill-equipped and insufficient to encourage and equip parents as someone younger effectively and had yet to parent teenagers myself.
I became a youth pastor at eighteen-years-old—something I would not recommend. Needless to say, I had no idea what I was doing. If it seemed like fun, we did it. If it seemed like something I would enjoy, we did it.
I read every book I could find on youth ministry and looked for anyone further down the road to help me figure out what I would do. In truth, while deep down I knew I didn’t know what I was doing, I was filled with my now youthful arrogance and would never have admitted it.
