The youth group rebuild
One year ago we were stepping into the unknown. In many ways we are beginning to rebuild into the unknown. Here are five ways you can create a solid base as you begin to re-establish your youth group.
Start with the leadership core
Whether your leadership core is two or ten, pull together as adult leaders for a time to reconnect, reflect and renew your hearts for youth ministry. This can be done on someone’s deck with coffee or during a hike. Consider creative ways to meet and incorporate these steps.
Reconnecting face-to-face is different than our past year with Zoom. Even with masks, in-person time allows you to speak and share in a fresh way. Spend some unstructured time in fellowship.
Reflect over the last year, including your personal life, spiritual life and work life. Discuss the challenges and the good that has been discovered in the storm. Share five things you are grateful for. Pray together.
Renew your commitment to youth ministry. This is the time to remember why God has placed you with students. Recognize the need to sort through what activities and ways of ministering will stay and what can go. Refocus your personal and youth ministry on Jesus.
Connect or develop a student leadership group
Pray, then reach out to the students God is calling to strengthen/rebuild your youth ministry. If your youth group is small, it may be one student or it may be a half dozen. Discern who God is calling out to step up. Remember what God taught the prophet Samuel when He was looking for the next king: don’t look on the outside, but allow God to guide you to the heart.
Follow the same flow listed for the leadership core.
Reflect on the needs of the student(s) and how you can spiritually invest in them through discipleship. Learn the best ways to encourage them as individuals. Keep it simple and focused on Jesus.
Guide the core group to self-feed spiritually. Assist them in finding their individual flow, including things like their translation of Scripture, devotional pattern and accountability.
Challenge them to in turn invest in another teen to practice the discipleship process.
Rethink how your group will function
Now is the time to let go and rediscover your vision at the same time. Students are in a variety of states. You’ll find some who are running back to church at full steam, others who may not be ready to return, and everything in between. You may be tempted to return to the same patterns from February 2020. Stop. Pray. Discern. Dream. Reset and move forward focused on Jesus.
Walk through the ministry plans with your students and discern what must continue, what items need to be tweaked and what can be let go.
Keep ministry simple. While opportunities are opening up, life is still unsteady.
Examine the balance of Bible study, worship, service and fun.
Consider small groups
Emphasizing small groups can help bridge gaps that have developed over the last year. New youth leaders are incorporated with greater ease when they can get to know and invest in a small group.
Small groups are practical while social distancing guidelines are in place.
Small groups will help you assess where your student truly are in their spiritual journeys.
Small groups will help re-establish trust and ease some levels of anxiety.
Look outward
Now is a great time for reaching out to students in your community. As your teens’ friends reboot their lives, now is a great time to bring them into group. Some have had a challenging year and are seeking answers, community and everything faith has to offer.
Teach your students how to build transitional relationships with their friends.
Design entry experiences to welcome new students to the church.
Follow up with those who visit to understand how to best incorporate them into your youth group and congregation.
What felt like a punch in the gut to the church and your youth group may be the best thing to happen in a long time. Consider this prayer of challenge and hope from the apostle Paul to the Ephesians.
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
Allyson Clark serves as Next Generation Co-Director of Youth Ministries at the Baptist Convention of New England.