5 Things You Should Know About Youth Ministry at Life.Church

Youth ministry is more than dance-offs, silly games, and bonfires.

Switch, Life.Church’s Wednesday night youth ministry for 6th-12th grade students, is packed with great content and relationships to help our younger attenders develop a strong foundation on Jesus.

Students in our youth ministry aren’t the church of tomorrow. They’re the church of today.

If you aren’t familiar with youth ministry at Life.Church, here are five things you should know.

1. 1. 1. We don’t do it alone. Our youth pastors have big roles, but they don’t do them alone. We rely heavily on volunteers to serve as small group leaders and fill a variety of other roles. This focus of building up more leaders not only frees up our youth pastors to lead the ministry at a higher level, but we’ve found that building up volunteer leaders helps the students feel more loved and cared for.
      2. We build relationships. Relationships are vital to a thriving youth ministry, and small groups are where those relationships flourish. Small group leaders take time to get to know their students and even connect with them outside of church by attending sporting events and showing an interest in their families and activities.
         Through these relationships, our small group leaders focus on the three Ms: model, meddle, and motivate.
         Model: show them how to live like Jesus
         Meddle: ask questions to learn, listen, and care
         Motivate: encourage them to be greater and do more
      3. We lead students to lead. We know our student ministry is effective if our students are leading themselves and others. Do they read their Bible on their own? Invite people to church? Do they serve in the church during the weekend? If students are leading themselves and others, they’re growing in their faith with Jesus.
      4. We want students to have FOMO. Have you ever went to an event or watch a TV show because you knew others would be talking about it and you didn’t want to miss out? That’s FOMO—the Fear Of Missing Out, and it’s very real. In this semester of Switch, there’s a lot of variety in this season’s messages—in length, in topics, and in style—and it’s all designed to keep kids guessing, interested, and coming back. Youth pastors will have more opportunities to teach live this semester, too. We’re ratcheting up the relevance, quality, and relational elements of the messages because we want young people to want to see each new week.
          
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      5. We don’t shy away from hard topics. In our curriculum we cover some heavy topics—divorce, gangs, drugs, alcohol, cutting, and suicide—because that’s real life for students. Students will be encouraged to open up quickly in their small groups, and groups can be as vulnerable and transparent as the leader takes them from day one.

Tip: When tackling tough topics, make parents aware of the topic beforehand so they can be aware and follow up how they see fit.

Facebook Live: Grow Your Youth Ministry

We recently held a Facebook Live Event featuring youth pastor Matt VanderTol. Matt shared his philosophy for creating intentional relationships in student ministry that help to grow his campus, and answered your questions about youth ministry at Life.Church.