Do you want to start or transform a youth group in your church? Let’s face it, it can be intimidating, especially if you are not experienced working with kids. With a total of 11 years of experience working with students in education and now in youth group, my husband and I have some advice to share with you to make it happen. Let’s take a look at five steps to get started with.
Step 1: Develop a Template for Youth Group Nights
One of the main things we’ve learned by working in education is that kids thrive when they know what to expect. At first glance that may seem boring but it’s true. Many of your kids will be coming from life situations where they don’t have an expectation of their day, and therefore levels of anxiousness. Making each night of Youth Group follow a general template of types of activities will make them more comfortable.
It is important to note that this is a general template, not the same activity each night. You want to stick with activity types. This allows you to have wiggle room and keep things exciting within that expectation. To explain this further, let’s look at the template that we follow for our own Youth Group.
Each Youth Group night goes from 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm. We start out with a meal. Following the meal we do a fun learning activity. Visit this site for some game ideas. Next, we have a discussion of what the purpose of the game was and relate it to a biblical topic. For example, we had a night on the theme of focus and played this game. Next, we do a short book study where we read a passage of the book and have the kids answer questions about the text. Right now we are reading “God Wrote a Book” by James MacDonald. Finally we close with a prayer circle where we have each kid say a short prayer (it can be as simple as “Thank you God for this day.”).
Step 2: Have Expectations but Give Grace
Behavior and respect. How do you have fun and have good behavior? It is a tricky balance but an important one. We do not have rules in our group. Instead we have expectations. It sounds so small but just changing a word can make a huge difference.
Just as important, we have the kids help us create the expectations. When they are are part of the process it gives them ownership and therefore, more by in. A sample list of expectations that we go by are:
If you are here you are here, no staring at your cell phone.
What happens if you have a kid that continues to not meet the expectations? This is where you need to be stern but give grace. You don’t have
Step 3: Youth Group = Food, Food, and more Food
Having food available is important to a successful youth group for several reasons. First, it provides a warm meal for kids in the group who may not regularly get one at home. Second when you sit all together at a table to eat, it creates a strong sense of belonging.
This is also part of the ministry that can really be shared with others in the church. If yours is anything like ours, there are a lot of people who are not only good cooks but are always excited to cook for kids. It makes them feel connected to the time they had kids.
Step 4: Build a Relationship that is Fun but Gives You Respect
Sometimes trying to connect to youth can result in them not showing as much respect to you as you’re used to. It’s as if connecting with them makes them see you as more of an equal. This creates an excuse in their mind to not treat you the way they should.
It’s so tempting to put being fun first when engaging youth. You want them to like you. This is important. However, what is more important is for them to respect you. If they don’t, they will learn how to walk all over you.
Unfortunately, I can’t give one size fits all advice. It’s going to come down to your personality. What I can say is pretend you are an aunt or uncle babysitting. You get to have fun with them but you are also able to correct them when needed. You get to talk to their parent if they are consistently misbehaving. You also get to act as a listening ear for when they want to bring up a topic that they aren’t quite ready to share with their parent. Just make to protect yourself and don’t cross any lines.
