Find Out Why They DON’T Make It To Youth Group
Earlier we talked about why students come to youth group meetings. It’s time for the hard stuff: Why they DON’T come.
The younger kids
Some older young people, especially the less mature, are really turned off by the younger kids at youth group–the 6th, 7th and 8th graders. Have you noticed that it’s harder to keep juniors and seniors involved? This might be a part of the problem. Consider special programs or even seperate meetings for your juniors and seniors, since their needs are very different than the young students and they are as anxious as ever to move up in life.
The games
This again applies mostly to the older students. They see many of the common youth group games as childish. They can be fun sometimes, but it can also make them feel like babysitters and that they’ve “grown out” of youth group. Another great reason to meet with juniors and seniors seperately.
The sermon
This one applies to all age groups. Let’s dive into the average young person’s daily life: They wake up, go to school, and tolerate boring class after boring class so that they can hang out with friends inbetween. Most of them have the incredible talent of looking awake enough to not catch the teacher’s attention while completely zoning out anything that’s said.
Some student pastors fall into the trap of following the same pattern: Give students games or hangout time with friends to bait them into coming, then force them to sit through a “me talk you listen” lesson that they’re already good at zoning out. Do you ever ask students, “What did you learn at last week’s meeting? How were you able to apply it this week?” These can be some very revealing questions.
You can use giveaways, magic tricks, even pyrotechnics to try to get students to pay attention to a sermon, but we need to make fundamental changes if we are going to reach this 3-second-attention-span generation.
First, a sermon cannot be one-way, I-talk-you-listen. Students need to be involved in the discussion throug questions, discussions, and even teaching small portions of the lesson. (Here you can find more help with other youth ministry resources.)
Second, we must realize that a sermon is only one half of the discipleship process. The other half is one-on-one relatinoships between leaders and students, and we need to work hard to build these–otherwise they simply will not happen.
There are a lot of other things that can push students away from your youth group–like relevancy, bad rumors, scheduling, extra-curricular activities, and much more. Read about more helpful hints and youth ministry resources. What are the most common for your group? Think about it.
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