What if you rallied your teens to The Great Commission, and the truth that Jesus doesn’t want them to just huddle up indoors, but He wants to use them to reach their friends?

For years, I strategized how to get more and more teens onsite with big events and incentives.

But it wasn’t until years later after lots of frustration and low retention rates that I discovered some keys to getting students to not just show up on a youth night, but to stick.

It’s not enough to just graduate students with faith intact. Our job has to be to set students up for a life of vibrant and thriving faith.

So how do we do this, and how do we not lose our teens when they enter Emerging Adulthood?

How we communicate God’s Word is so important to whether a teen understands it and sees it as applying to them right here and right now, or whether they see it as an outdated religion that has no bearing on their life.

It’s what you want every message to have isn’t it?

Movement.

To get teens to take what we talk about on a youth night beyond the four walls of the church and walk with it.

According to Acts 1:8, being filled with God’s Spirit is about so much more than an experience in a room, or a checkbox on a list. It’s about Power for Purpose. More specifically, power to accomplish God’s purpose.

When we organize missions trips, we give teens an opportunity to see what it feels like to put your hands to the plow. It takes them beyond the teaching component, beyond the four walls of a church and into the world, where people need Jesus.

Rallying your students to serve others is such a great way to show them what it means to live out your faith beyond the four walls of a church. Not only that, but it’s a great way to call Gen Z to be a part of the solution that they are craving to be in the world.

We so desperately need to build a youth ministry that goes beyond ourselves. We are called to make disciples who make disciples. It can’t end with us, or with them. The day of spoon-feeding is over, now it’s time to rally your students and develop them to lead in your youth ministry. It’s time to develop Student Leaders.

I believe your greatest potential for qualitative and quantitative growth in your youth ministry, won’t be found in your next best sermon series, or your next biggest event, or in the charisma you feel you bring or don’t bring as a leader. 

I believe a huge part of it will be found in how you are engaging the Next Generation. Are you calling them into the game to help move the puck down the ice? Or are they watching, disengaged in the stands?

We’ve all been there right? Those meetings we’ve been called into, but we have no idea why we are there. It feels so pointless.

Here are six keys I’ve found helpful in leading effective youth leader’s meetings…

It used to be so easy.

You wanted to get the word out?
Throw it in the newspaper. That’s where everyone was.

Fast forward to today. We find ourselves in the thick of the digital revolution…

Teenagers can sometimes seem like they are disinterested in church and are not wanting to get involved. If we learn to meet them where they are at and engage them, we will have an unstoppable group behind us, helping us grow and reach more people…