A few months ago I mentioned I was looking to focus my blog more. My aim now is to avoid articles on my own self motivation, and instead discuss my youth worker experiences, and hopefully share my knowledge within the online community, a trade if you will, since I'm aware that there is much I need to learn.
In this vein, you will see over the coming weeks highlights of youth ministry, interesting experiences that have happened, and also bringing to the table difficult questions that are raised. I will also outline how our church runs the youth, and the overall aim.
For now I will leave you with this:
Recently I ran a feedback session for the youth at the end of term. The aim was simple, I would ask questions, they would answer, and someone would write down. One of the question was on the worship of the church and how they felt about it, and what they thought would engage them more. Many of them gave responses, often quite negative.
Blessings,
Rich
I write this post in two minds. I have just returned from helping at the 11-14’s venue of Spring Harvest, aka, Distinctive. It was a fantastic time, watching 450 young people worshipping God passionately declaring their love for him through song and prayer. It brought me on more then one occasion to a place of tears. It was awe inspiring, yet something was wrong with this picture.
The thing that was wrong was simple: for many of these young people, this was their spiritual top up for the year. It was a one-time thing. For some of them they’ll go home, be on a high for a week, then have a set back, and suddenly they’ve forgotten that high. They’ve forgotten that moment of excitement. That moment where they looked to the Father, lost in His glory, His wonder, His awesome nature. Where they stand united as one, denomination not mattering, just acknowledging the presence of a King.
For us as youth workers, the question is this: How do we keep our young people away from an event mentality to a realisation of God in everyday living.
Much of this, I believe, comes down to how we run our youth ministries. To finding the balance between having a laugh and being crazy to drawing into a place of intimacy with God. Phil Dooley of Hillsong United (The Hillsong joint aged youth group) say in the early days the mission was simple, Youth had to be fun! On the other end of the scale though, they still had regular talks every week, and gave the youth guys a chance to play one or two worship songs to lead the response. And they grew, and praise became a major focus of their youth.
What we need to be careful of in this is that we don’t go overboard with the fun and dumb down God for the youth. They need to be routed in solid Bible teaching, to know what they believe, where they stand on issues, and in this they need to be given the chance to come to their own conclusion on things, and not just be told “this is what we believe” but to accept that truth for themselves.
Young people also need to experience God outside of the event. Many of them struggle with worshipping in front of their parents, or even their peers in church, feeling that they are the odd one out. We need to encourage this uniqueness and willingness when it surfaces. Church for some of these young people is boring, so again, we need as youth workers to engage them on the Sunday morning.
When I was in Texas a few years ago, I helped out at a Kids/youth camp. We had meetings every night lasting often up to 4 hours. These weren’t filled with games, and fun activities as such, it was just praise and worship, followed by a 45 minute talk, and the young people listened. They engaged, they responded, they wanted more! I saw 7 year olds, worshipping God, hands in the air loving their God.
There are churches in Columbia, where kids are the ones leading it. We need to make sure we’re not dumbing it down and realise there is something deeper for them, even those on the fringes.
Much of this is making sure ourselves and our youth teams are in a place of worship as well, yet being able to engage the young people during the worship times, encourage them to reach for the blessings of God, and understand that he is as much there as in Spring Harvest/Soul Survivor/Newday etc.
At the same time, as a youth team we need to exit this mentality of the Event. Ourselves, we need to be in a place where everyday is walking with Jesus. Where we can be hanging with a group of friends, and go from having fun together, to praying for healing, to prophesying for each other, to taking a bigger step into his kingdom.
This has to be the first place we start, ourselves. What our are expectations of events, are we waiting for them to change and challenge our young people? Or are we believe God to do that in them whatever? Even on our residentials with just our own youth, we can all come back thinking “that was great, when’s the next one”, and maybe even with events the same can happen. What we need is a mentality of God is with us everyday.
The thing that was wrong was simple: for many of these young people, this was their spiritual top up for the year. It was a one-time thing. For some of them they’ll go home, be on a high for a week, then have a set back, and suddenly they’ve forgotten that high. They’ve forgotten that moment of excitement. That moment where they looked to the Father, lost in His glory, His wonder, His awesome nature. Where they stand united as one, denomination not mattering, just acknowledging the presence of a King.
For us as youth workers, the question is this: How do we keep our young people away from an event mentality to a realisation of God in everyday living.
Much of this, I believe, comes down to how we run our youth ministries. To finding the balance between having a laugh and being crazy to drawing into a place of intimacy with God. Phil Dooley of Hillsong United (The Hillsong joint aged youth group) say in the early days the mission was simple, Youth had to be fun! On the other end of the scale though, they still had regular talks every week, and gave the youth guys a chance to play one or two worship songs to lead the response. And they grew, and praise became a major focus of their youth.
What we need to be careful of in this is that we don’t go overboard with the fun and dumb down God for the youth. They need to be routed in solid Bible teaching, to know what they believe, where they stand on issues, and in this they need to be given the chance to come to their own conclusion on things, and not just be told “this is what we believe” but to accept that truth for themselves.
Young people also need to experience God outside of the event. Many of them struggle with worshipping in front of their parents, or even their peers in church, feeling that they are the odd one out. We need to encourage this uniqueness and willingness when it surfaces. Church for some of these young people is boring, so again, we need as youth workers to engage them on the Sunday morning.
When I was in Texas a few years ago, I helped out at a Kids/youth camp. We had meetings every night lasting often up to 4 hours. These weren’t filled with games, and fun activities as such, it was just praise and worship, followed by a 45 minute talk, and the young people listened. They engaged, they responded, they wanted more! I saw 7 year olds, worshipping God, hands in the air loving their God.
There are churches in Columbia, where kids are the ones leading it. We need to make sure we’re not dumbing it down and realise there is something deeper for them, even those on the fringes.
Much of this is making sure ourselves and our youth teams are in a place of worship as well, yet being able to engage the young people during the worship times, encourage them to reach for the blessings of God, and understand that he is as much there as in Spring Harvest/Soul Survivor/Newday etc.
At the same time, as a youth team we need to exit this mentality of the Event. Ourselves, we need to be in a place where everyday is walking with Jesus. Where we can be hanging with a group of friends, and go from having fun together, to praying for healing, to prophesying for each other, to taking a bigger step into his kingdom.
This has to be the first place we start, ourselves. What our are expectations of events, are we waiting for them to change and challenge our young people? Or are we believe God to do that in them whatever? Even on our residentials with just our own youth, we can all come back thinking “that was great, when’s the next one”, and maybe even with events the same can happen. What we need is a mentality of God is with us everyday.
