Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Youth Meetings
Youth Meetings are considered to be the backbone of youth ministry. The meetings tend to be on a Sunday evening or Wednesday evening service, which gives you about an hour to engage with the teens. Typically youth meetings have a message and some sort of activity to go along with it to engage the teens in some way. It is extremely helpful for the game to relate to the message in someway. The problem is with such little time can you cover what needs to be covered in the time allowed and how much do you try to cover. Growing up our youth group met on Wednesday nights and this was the night we had a game to go along with our message and Travis would try and do a theme for the month. He was able to make it where we would want to come back the following week and continue on with the topic. He would give us questions to think about like "Who was someone that you haven't forgiven and why?" when we were talking about forgiveness and tell us the next week we would talk about why we need forgive. In the book this is under give them a reason to return, so what creative ways did your youth pastor use to give you reason to return and what new ways can you think of to keep teens wanting to come back every week? Besides food!
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My youth group was one that drastically grew while I was attending it. I remember going in 7th and 8th grade and there being 25-30 people,which is good with the size of our congregation. By the time I was a senior though, we consistently had over a 100 and sometimes over 130. My youth pastor would use relevant topics. He talked about sex every year and it was good to hear, just like the His Stories service last night, we see that sex is a topic we as college students want to talk about and youth group students have the same desire to learn about sex and they need to learn about it in a way that is formed in the Christian community. My youth pastor did not do anything spectacular to woo the teens back for the next week, but the Spirit was working in our youth group and people kept coming. We had a lot of fun at youth group and had nice facilities and hang out time designated for 45 minutes before and then time after. I think the atmosphere, one that was comfortable and the students could have fun, but when we started the lesson it was known to be serious, that atmosphere attracted people and God was using our youth group to reach a lot of students.
ReplyDeleteI loved youth group! We had such a great time. We went on several retreats throughout the year. Our youth pastor and his wife were so welcoming, too. They loved hacing us over. We would hang out and play games half an hour before church would start then we would have a time for worship and the lesson. His lessons were always really good. Once a month another leader would teach the lesson, it was a good way to hear others speak. I think that our youth group was pretty close which made it easy to go.
ReplyDeleteAt one time in my youth group, I can remember 100 or so students attending our church on Wednesday nights. Our youth pastor incorporated many things into the night that kept people coming back- we had a time of fun and games, music/worship, and finally a time to sit down and talk about topics that were relevant to our lives. Team competitions and themed nights brought a lot of people into our youth group. Our youth pastor was a friend to everyone that walked into our church, and I think that created a fun-loving atmosphere that everyone wanted to be apart of. The atmosphere that was set up helped us to build community, learn about Jesus, and have fun all at the same time, which I think had a huge impact on everyone that attended.
ReplyDeleteWow! Well, I was a part of two youth groups. Before the church I grew up in closed we had a small group of maybe 10 to 15 people. (It eventually ended with about 8 people). In our group we would always have a devotional and discussion, someone would bring a snack, and we would play games. We had two youth leaders. Jon Crothers and Nancy Shaffer. They talked about subjects that were interesting to the students and we looked up verses to prove the difference between right and wrong. Nancy got into many deep discussions with us. She was always the person to go to when you had a question on faith.
ReplyDeleteAfter the youth metting we would practice with the worship band. The worship band is what kept the kids going to the youth meetings every Sunday night.
Also, we would go on retreats, go camping, go to Cedar Point, and we went to Alive Fest- A Christian music Festival. Sadly, this church died a few years later.
The church I attend now, Marion Grace Brethren, meets on Wednesday evenings. They would always do some type of mission work each month-- like going to Nursing Homes. They also make sure that teens and college students are getting involved in the church services. There is also the importance of each student having an accountability partner. And each summer they go to a youth conference called Momentum. This church seems more interested in trying to help the students be more in tune to the Holy Spirit.
Each church had ways of getting students to come to youth group. I think that if a youth leader were to put the ideas of these two youth groups together that it would definitely keep teens coming. There would be something for everyone that way. There would be the fun events (with a devotion) and there would also be the spiritual events that will help each student grow in their faith.
Our student meetings that I was part of in high school was the epitome of "The Purpose Driven Youth Group." We grew from a small group of 10-15 to over 90-100 in a church of 250. The growth of the group could be in conjunction with our new youth pastor but we drew from the community much better than the previous pastor because he related better to the students. He made it fun, his talks were something that everyone could listen to and learn from... as time went on I began helping with the tech stuff which included running sound, jockeying the videos and anything to help out in whatever capacity he needed. I learned servant leadership by way of my time in youth group.
ReplyDeleteI did not go to youth group 8th grade through my sophomore year of high school. The summer before my Junior year of high school we had a youth pastor come to my school and eat lunch with us.
ReplyDeleteWe started talking and later that day I got a text and he wanted to get coffee some time. This was the beginning of a great friendship and mentorship.
I started going to his youth group which had about 30-45 students when I went there. The thing that kept me coming back was honestly... my youth pastor. He was my friend and mentor.
I stated bringing all of my friends toward the end of my Junior year and by my Senior year the youth group was at about 300-400. Then it became a time where we would go be with all of our friends and worship God in community.
It became the highlight of our week. It all started with a youth pastor just being my friends with some buddies and me and then it grew to an incredible youth group where I saw many lives changed! (Myself included)
Youth group for me was a time for just the teens to do there own thing. It was a time when we were able to get together as a group, have our own message and singing time. Youth group gave us a chance to hear a message that was geared to us and was not taken over our heads. We were able to stay awake and pay attention because the atmosphere was used to engage us. Youth group was fun and gave us the opportunity to grow in our relationship with God in ways that the adult services didn't.
ReplyDeleteYouth group was a vital part in my life. Part of it was the people there and the other reason was the youth pastor was a really good friend. Because I didn't go to school in the same town that I went to church in, it was easy for me to have motivation to go... see my friends. But I also think the reason that we grew so much in high school, was because our youth pastor was "real." He cared about us, made contact with us on a weekly basis besides when we went to church. He came and ate at school with us and talked about relevant topics that we needed to hear. Even though we had serious conversations, we played games, sang songs and just hung out. It was a "safe" place that we could be at. also, we didn't try to fit this into an hour. Sometimes it would last 2 hours on a Wednesday night and we would meet earlier than the adults would so that we could use the sanctuary for some of our night. Another thing that kept bringing people back was that we were involved in the community and we did things that we learned about. It gave us a sense of ownership and we got involved and we had a purpose.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was involved in youth group while in high school we didn't have a youth pastor, we had Bill. Bill was a parent member of the church and had kids that were in the youth group. When i first got to this youth group, i was bombarded with people who wanted to get to know me, Bill knew that my sisters and i were new and made us stand up and say our names. After the service everyone wanted to know who we were and where we came from. it was nice to feel wanted. Ever since then i went as often as i could. Bill next left us with questions or anything like that. Our youth group consisted of i guess what James would call them, a core group. Every now and then others came and stayed. But even today when im with those people from youth group the memories come back. So i guess what kept me going was the relationships that were built while i was in youth group.
ReplyDelete