People have been asking more and more about how to make youth group meetings more effective, so I thought I’d bring up something that has been on my mind for a while now.

Have you ever asked the question, why do my students come to youth group?

There are two answers, and they’re not always the same: The answer students give you and what really happens. (Psychologists would use big words to describe this phenomenon, like the conscious and unconscious.)

To figure out what really attracts students to meetings, you have to watch them. What’s the first thing they do when they come in? What do they spend the most of their time doing? What do they seem to enjoy the most, and the least? Here are the five biggeset motivations that I’ve seen:

Friends
This one is obvious. The number one motivator bringing students to youth group is their friends. This is true across the board, so it’s important to provide them with opportunities to hang out before and after meetings.

Games and the high-energy excitement
A lot of youth groups use games in various ways, from sparingly to all-the-time. This can attract and keep a lot of young students engaged (6th, 7th and 8th grade primarily). The older they get, however, games have less and less pull–and can even push away juniors and seniors that don’t want to associate with “kid stuff.” Be careful to not rely on games too much!

The youth pastor and other adult leaders
Strong personal relationships with students really keeps them coming back. Younger students idolize the youth pastor, and with older students, you have the opportunity to build “adult-to-adult” relationships that can solidify their involvement at youth group–and be a vehicle to really solidify their faith through personal discipleship. Look for opportunities to build these relationships with your students.

The opposite sex
Students still come to youth group to flirt. Sometimes its inappropriate, but more mature students have also developed very classy flirting techniques to impress the opposite sex without crossing any lines of indecency. Sometimes this can be healthy and fun, but it can also lead to heartbreak and hurtful disputes, so keep a close eye on the birds and the bees.

Spiritual solid food (1 Cor. 3:1-3)
Sometimes it seems like nobody is there to learn about the Lord, but a select few in every youth group–your raving fans and spiritual giants–come to youth group sincerely hungry for truth and discipleship. Let them down playing too many games, and you will loose your greatest chance to develop student leaders. Jesus’ taught the multitudes, but He also pulled His disciples aside to show them deeper truths (see Matthew 13). We must be careful to give our dedicated and mature students opportunities to go deeper–and that starts by leading them there with our own lives.

Motivations are different for every group, but this all begs the question: What do students not like about your youth group meetings? Or, even better: “What do students just tolerate at youth group so that they can get back to what they are really there for?” More to come on that this Friday…

What do you think about these five motivations? Did I leave any out?

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