The following is a magazine article I wrote a fews years ago, but never published. I decided to make it available on the blog for anyone who may find it useful. It is intended for Student Pastors, but can serve as a resource for anyone who deals with young people on a regular basis. I would love to know what your thoughts are after reading it.
What’s In a Name?
As I look back over the past eighteen years, I can see how student ministry has gone through numerous transformations in order to get to its current status. Many churches now understand the importance of having a student ministry in order to appeal to the middle school and high school age group, but do the leaders within these ministries understand what it takes to create a student ministry that does more than bring students within the four walls of a church throughout their school years? As a minister to students I have had to become a student of ministry in order to better understand what works and what doesn’t when developing and adjusting a ministry to meet the needs of the young people who are participating in the ministry, as well as the students we are trying to reach.
Studies have shown that the high tech bells and whistles that many ministries incorporate in order to attract students are not as important to the students as they are to the leaders. That is not to say that we shouldn’t use modern technology as tools within our ministries. Rather, we should understand where technology fits into the overall scheme of things as it relates to the ministry as a whole. It has also been discovered that the lessons, be they through messages delivered by a speaker in front of the group, or active learning experiences incorporating the individual’s participation are not what young people really remember from their student ministry experience. What matters the most to the majority of the young people who give us the privilege of sharing a portion of their lives are the relationships they build within the confines of our student ministries.
This is not a surprise to many of us. We teach our students to be friendly to visitors. We present lessons on the dangers of cliques within our groups. We even use activities that are designed to get them to interact with others with whom group that they might not normally interact. All of these things are important, but they do not take the place of the importance of the youth workers, be they volunteers or paid staff, building personal relationships with the individuals that compose the group. As simple as this may sound, I firmly believe that relationship building is the most important part of building a strong student ministry. It is a must if we are to have a lasting impact on those whom God entrusts to our ministries.
In order to make this a priority within our ministries, we must concentrate on three areas. The first area is so simple that it may seem unnecessary to mention it, but in actuality it is overlooked by many leaders. You must learn the names of the young people in your group and the names of those who visit your ministry. Now you may be saying, “Duh, of course it’s important to know their names,” but as the group grows this becomes more of a challenge. (Getting older doesn’t seem to make it easier either.) There is something special and meaningful about someone knowing your name. This fact has been emphasized to me many times throughout my ministry, but one incident drove home the importance in a very real way to me this past summer. I had only been at my current church for a few months and I felt like it was time to make some changes within the ministry to make it more effective. Changes needed to be made to give the students more ownership of the group, so I assembled a study group made up of various students whom I felt could bring their own unique perspective to the changes we needed to make. As we were talking about the positives and negatives of our current ministry structure one of the girls spoke up. She wasn’t even a member of our church, but she had been attending regularly with a friend of hers. This girl looked me straight in the eye and said, “The reason I like coming here is because you have always called me by my name every time you have talked with me.” I asked her why that was so important and she said she knew that she was important because I knew who she was. It was a few weeks later when I had the privilege of baptizing her. When we learn someone’s name we make a connection with them that tells them that they are a person of value.
When a new person comes to our group, I make it a point to go to them before or immediately after our meeting and introduce myself and learn their name. I then try to have at least a short conversation with them in which I use their name a few times. This helps me put the name and the face together. It also provides me with a chance to find out a little about them so I can begin to look for ways to build the relationship. I will be the first to tell you that this is not always easy. It seems like we have a few visitors at almost every event we have, but the rewards for taking just a few minutes to interact with these students so that I can learn their names have been too numerous to mention.
Secondly, we have to take things to the next level by going from just knowing their name to building a comfortable, appropriate relationship with them. As we build these relationships we are able to see what level or depth of relationship a student needs in order to feel like a person of value as opposed to the type of relationship which may be needed by a different student. At one time in my ministry I was in between churches and was not on staff at a church for the first time in my adult life. During that interim period my wife and I joined a local church that had a very large student ministry. While we were members there I worked with a discipleship group that was made up entirely of ninth-grade boys. I knew I wouldn’t be there long, but I made it a point to get to know these guys as best I could so that I would be able to provide them with the teaching they needed. After about six months of working with them, God opened up the door for me to enter into my current ministry position and I had to leave. A week or two before leaving the group I was talking with one of the guys and he said, “I want to thank you for taking time to work with us. Over these past few months I have been able to talk to you one-on-one more than I have ever been able to talk to our youth pastor over the past three years.” Now don’t get me wrong. Their Youth Pastor is a great guy. I personally think that he is one of the best around, but this young man felt like he had fallen through the cracks when it came to getting personal attention. Building these relationships is hard and it requires an effort that many are not willing to put into ministry. It means being willing to go the extra mile in getting to know the students in your group and letting them get to know you better as well. This allows them to see you as more than just the leader, but as a person who has likes and dislikes, struggles, and victories. These relationship make us more human to the people to whom we are trying to minister.
As groups grow the ability to provide personal attention gets more and more difficult, so it is important to surround yourself with volunteers who can build these relationships. One person can only minister to a certain number of people effectively. If you are a student minister of a growing group do not forget to train your volunteers to building relationships while you model the process for them.
Finally, be accessible. Here again, this sounds simple, but it is often overlooked. As student ministers we sometimes get caught up in working on our lesson for our big meeting or making sure all of the details are taken care of for our upcoming trip, but if students don’t feel like they can come up and talk to us, then they will not care about how well oiled of a ministry machine we might run. Being accessible means being willing to be inconvenienced. It means being willing to talk on the phone when we may not feel like it. It means going to sporting events and school functions just to be there for them. It means opening up your office door and allowing kids to come and “hang out” when we would rather be working on a Bible study. I really believe that one of the reasons that I am the student minister that I am today is because of the time my student minister spent with me when I was in high school. (Thanks Lanny!) He allowed me to come in and talk. At times it was about something that I really needed to discuss, and other times it was about nothing in particular, but he always listened. When I was with him I had his undivided attention. This meant a lot to me and I didn’t need a father figure. My dad was and is my hero, but many of the students we minister to today may not think they have any other adult that they can talk to. In some cases they may be right, but that is beside the point. Our students need to feel like they are important enough for us to give them some of our time.
Now why are these three factors so important? I consider them to be tools that allow us to develop personal relationships with young people that help them better understand the need for a personal relationship with God. My goal in student ministry is to have a ministry to students, not just for students. We are not here to entertain them. We are here to tell them about a God who loves them more than they can possibly understand, and, as the old saying goes, “Our actions speak much louder than our words.” Through our personal relationship with them we are able to help them develop their personal relationship with God. It also helps them develop better relationships with the other students in the group and with those whom they are trying to reach with the message of Christ. What it boils right down to is making every young person we deal with feel loved and appreciated for who they are. The impact of a relationship that accomplishes this will be remembered long after the lesson is over and the most impressive event has come to an end.
