Engaging Former Students

Every so often I’ll be in Starbucks and come across former students.  Most times they’ll walk over and ask me a question.  I encourage them to sit and most times they will share with me their story.  I can see they needed a familiar voice outside of their parents.  Most times it isn’t shocking, what they are seeking is affirmation.  It’s good to know that they can still trust me after years of not seeing me.

Courtesy of OiMax/Creative Commons License

One of the fears you will have as a youth minister is wondering what will happen to your teens after they leave your high school ministry.  They are like surrogate children or younger siblings that you’ve been responsible for shepherding and now they are in the wild.   Some will walk right into healthy situations where they are affirmed in their faith.  Others will face uphill battles that will cause them to struggle greatly.  

You will encounter former students in expected and unexpected ways.  These will be moments when God wants you to walk back into their lives and, you need to know what do with these moments.  It’s in these encounters where former students are looking to you to get them back to God.  To be ready to engage a them, make sure you:

• Set Up The Opportunity: While you can never truly prepare for these moments, you need to be open to them.  Let teens who are graduating from high school know that you are there for them even after they leave home.  They are now on there own and will not have mom or dad driving them to you.  It’s now up to them, offer them your support.

• Celebrate Them: Not every student coming back to you is going to have a problem to share.  Most of them want to know that you still remember them.  When you see them celebrate their presence.  To do that might be meeting up for coffee to catch up, invite them back to a night of youth ministry or just offer up a prayer.  Even if they have a new church home, your job is to make sure their former one has never forgotten them.

• Take Away The Judgement: Look to them with love because they could be coming to talk about more than classes.  Do not break the trust by reacting with judgement.  Instead pray with them, hear them out and listen to their stories.  Your former students are going to experience life in an entirely new way.

• Resource Their Needs: A lot of times former students are coming to you because they need guidance.  Don’t just give them advice or insight, point them to tangible resources.  Maybe it’s helping them find a campus minister or sharing with them a book.  Make sure they are equipped and pointed in the right direction.

Your job doesn’t end after their graduation, it changes.  I’m not saying you have to start a college ministry, just know where to point the teens as they hit that age.  Empower your volunteers to do the same and stay in touch as their teens get older.  If you create a loving and authentic experience for them in high school they’ll always see you as their youth minister.

How do you interact with  former students?