Communication
What To Do When Teenagers Stop Showing Up
No one had shown up to their small group. I could tell morale for these leaders were at an all time low. No one likes to feel like a failure….
What’s The Point Ministry
Christopher Wesley
Oct 20, 2010
One of my biggest fears in ministry is not realizing I have a meeting coming up and being totally unprepared. I know that no one likes to go to a meeting where there is no agenda. I know many of us have sat in a meeting where we are like, “What’s the point?” Worse than a meeting is a conference or a seminar or a class where we’ve paid money to be there and the speaker just speaks but nothing really comes out of their mouth except jibber jabber.
Believe it or not what we teach our students needs a system and structure. Just spouting out facts and truth sometimes isn’t enough or the opposite…too much. Systems and structures are what drive our country, our city, our communities and our lives, but for some reason a lot of us as youth workers abandon this principle when it comes to ministry. We think I’m just going to lay out the facts, all of them and the more I get out there the better. But before we start teaching, writing and planning to give the whole Bible in one message we need to ask
3 Simple Questions:
- What We Want Them To Know – If they are to walk away from that one night of ministry or the entire series what is the one principle that you would like them to know? Sometimes I think we plan events, messages or reflections with the right intentions; however, there is no point, it leads no where. Or we have too many points and we try to fill their heads with a laundry list of knowledge. To have multiple points is exhausting and you take the risk of overloading them to the point where they won’t remember anything.
- What We Want Them To Do – Kids, teens and adults, you can’t expect to teach them a theory and then know how to apply it to their lives. Each week we like to set out a challenge that will drive what we want them to know home. By also asking them to do something we are hoping it will build on one of the habits we feel an irresistible, authentic and consistent (our vision) disciple of Christ would own. You not only need to give them knowledge but application.
- How We Are Going To Help Them Do It – This is a new step to our message series process, because we’ve realized that sometimes our challenges are a little difficult to process on your own, so we started asking this question. How do we answer it? Through small groups because accountability is key. We also answer it through giveaways, because they can serve as reminders. It can also be answered through off campus communication via text reminders, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Basically we are going to help them accomplish the challenge that will drive home the point through community.
Now I’m not saying just go up to your students and say to them, “This is what I want you to know and do and this is how we are going to help you accomplish that.” You can but to be affective we need to build them in through repetition, the use of story and discussion. So before your students ask, “What’s the point?” figure it out and how you want to share that with them.