Saturday, November 20, 2010

Doing youth ministry different

There is a certain model in the united states on what youth ministry should look like. Now let me be clear that I am in no way saying that I have a handle on the subject, these are just some thoughts.
In any church youth group, this is what you would find a typical youth service to look like.
1. Meet and greet
2. Prayer
3. Worship
4. Announcements
5. A video or a game
6. The message
7. Alter call

Now I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with that model, it works well with most youth groups, and it's safe. What I am saying is, youth are not really connecting. At a youth group I know of they start off with worship, all good right, wrong. One big problem, 99 percent of the kids do not have a personal, and I do stress the word personal relationship with Christ. Well, you might ask, how do you know that? By the way they behave during worship. There is no connection on what they are doing, they stand there and look at each other, or turn around, laugh, make faces at each other and talk the whole time. They do not understand what worship is really all about, not to mention what the meeting is all about.
The next thing they do is the message. Then they are constantly told how they should be behaving as a Christian, that would be fine if they were Christians, but that's not the case. So what do we do in a situation like that.
Some thoughts:
Instead of worship maybe break them into small groups, or just explain what we are doing and go into the message. Giventhem time to process what they heard at a time of prayer, and give opportunity for them to accept Christ. Some good sermon illustrations could help, and props and visuals will go along way. With the help of the Lord, we can take them from the outside in, instaed we are trying to get them to act like something they have no point of reference of, a Christian.
I'm just saying.
Dee

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