Monthly youth leaders column

Youth ministry works in cycles. Most youth leaders reckon the autumn term is a key one and the September start is an important moment in the year.

The summer term can be dominated by external pressures (like exams) but, after the youth group seems to have been spread all over the place, they all return expecting a programme. What are the things that need to be in place at that point so that you’re not playing catch-up for the whole of that crucial term? Hopefully, time well spent in August makes the term easier to survive.

The plan

How much is known about next term by both the leaders you work with and young people you serve? A simple, published term plan including all the events you hope to do gives everyone the sense that somebody knows what the aim is for the next few weeks. If that hasn’t been done can you get your leaders together and look at some possibilities. If you have a teaching programme (and I hope you have) who is doing what each week. Some youth leaders have the view that last-minute = spontaneous and that means God is more likely to bless. Others are so rigid that a major world catastrophe would not get a mention. Events like those recently witnessed in London, need our attention so that our young people have some guidance on how to handle such issues. But a teaching plan and a rota should give you both structure and flexibility. If you do a one-week special you have a plan to come back to.

Meetings

Christians are good at these but, in youth ministry, there is a tendency to have unstructured chaos at our meetings. First things first — get your dates in the diary for the coming term. Many volunteer youth workers have busy lives and squeeze youth ministry into one corner of their many activities. I once worked with a youth leader whose business took him all over the world and he would simply ask me for a term’s dates so he could schedule his world trips around the youth leaders meetings. How about that for commitment?

But he couldn’t cancel a meeting in Hong Kong at one day’s notice. Treat all your team as if they have busy schedules. Keep to your dates, issue agendas and vary the style of your meetings. You need to plan, you need to do pastoral care, you need to pray and you need to look at long term strategy. Your team needs time to be together and support one another in the work you’re doing but they need to know, in advance, when that’s going to happen. You cannot bemoan the fact that your volunteers never come to meetings if you haven’t told them when they happen and haven’t told them if it’s going to be good use of their valuable time. If you have told them, then the expectation should be that they will be there unless they are faced with a crisis.

A fresh look

I’m not a great believer in spin and image but I do think that each term or year start needs something fresh about it. Maybe it’s a commitment to try to talk with one person about the gospel in the coming term. Perhaps it’s a commitment to always say positive things about group members and never to use the mobile phone in anger. It is commitment to something positive in ministry which every member of the group will try to do. Some groups start the term with a verse which sets out their hopes for the coming year. Perhaps the group needs a fresh vision for what we are about as a group. With God’s help we want to

* learn from the Bible
* love each other more deeply
* make Jesus known in our school/ area
* be loyal to our church/youth group

and those aims are constantly referred to in our group meetings. As Bill Hybels has said: ‘Vision leaks’.

Maybe there are other things to put in place in time for your fresh start. A quiet day (if you can find one) where you review all the things you did last year and see what needs to be done to make the coming year more fruitful for the kingdom. But as they say — if you aim at nothing you’ll probably hit it.

New starts...

The plan

Meetings

A fresh look

Dave Fenton

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