Why Youth Group Meetings?
I’m taking an informal survey to help with some youth ministry resources my team is developing.
Do you have a youth group meeting every week? Why?
(The “why” is the important part.)
What’s your reasoning behind holding a youth group meeting every week? Does your church expect it? Is it part of your plan to take over the world? Do your students just love the games? Is it the most effective tool you’ve found in reaching students? Is it just because everybody else is doing it? Or are there other reasons?
Post your response in the comments section.
Please take a minute to respond. I’d really appreciate your thoughts. :-)
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Posted in Youth Ministry Research
Hello Nate,
I’ve been watching your blog the last few weeks and I’ve found it very insightful and a lot of what you’re writing applies to my youth group setting in a small town of about 20,000 in Norway.
In about an hour I’m meeting with the leadership of my church together with one of my fellow youth leaders, and I’m wanting to suggest to them that we only do youth meetings every second weekend. In that way the few people doing everything won’t tire and the mass of youth not doing anything won’t tire. And it might even reverse the direction our youth ministry have taken of attraction, and instead turn towards “incarnation” (to steal a good point from Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch). By reducing the number of meetings, we’ll have to depend on the older youth and parents taking more responsibility with discipling the youths. That will either come naturally, or it won’t come. I would dare to say that either way, it’s better than just routinely running youth meetings every weekend. Not sure if I totally agree with myself, but hey.
We have youth every week. Part is that is the norm. But more importantly it because our Youth need to come back and be recharged! As a Nation we have let all kinds of stuff make it way into the public school system that shouldn’t have been let in. On top of that they take out anything Biblical. This Generation needs to have a place to come back to after getting beat up by the world! A place were they can be fed and sent back out. Can you image if we had no one out there sharing Jesus Love?
We need to reach this Generation!
Gregg
We have a Sunday Morning Service and we do some variation on the small group format on Wednesday nights. Here are some reasons.
1) Our students’ parents are here during those times, so most of our students are, too.
2) There is definitely an expectation in our church that those times are when ministry happens.
3) Some of our students come for small groups because they genuiely enjoy the relationships.
4) I like the weekly format because it keeps our ministry regular in their very unregular lives. For some of our students, we are just about the only constant in their lives.
5) This format gives our volunteers (who all work full-time jobs) two opportunities each week to build relationships, mentor, teach, pastor, etc.
There are other reasons, but these are the main ones.
We meet every week because it’s as often as we can reasonably get everyone together. We need to get together to worship, learn, and recharge.