Why They DON’T Come to Youth Group (Youth Group Meetings, Part 2)
Earlier this week we talked about why students come to youth group meetings. It’s time for the hard stuff: Why they DON’T come.
The younger kids
Some older students, especially the less mature, are really turned off by the younger kids at youth group–the 6th, 7th and 8th graders. Have you noticed that it’s harder to keep juniors and seniors involved? This might be a part of the problem. Consider special programs or even seperate meetings for your juniors and seniors, since their needs are very different than the young students and they are as anxious as ever to move up in life.
The games
This again applies mostly to the older students. They see many of the common youth group games as childish. They can be fun sometimes, but it can also make them feel like babysitters and that they’ve “grown out” of youth group. Another great reason to meet with juniors and seniors seperately.
The sermon
This one applies to all age groups. Let’s dive into the average student’s daily life: They wake up, go to school, and tolerate boring class after boring class so that they can hang out with friends inbetween. Most of them have the incredible talent of looking awake enough to not catch the teacher’s attention while completely zoning out anything that’s said.
Some youth pastors fall into the trap of following the same pattern: Give students games or hangout time with friends to bait them into coming, then force them to sit through a “me talk you listen” lesson that they’re already good at zoning out. Do you ever ask students, “What did you learn at last week’s meeting? How were you able to apply it this week?” These can be some very revealing questions.
You can use giveaways, magic tricks, even pyrotechnics to try to get students to pay attention to a sermon, but we need to make fundamental changes if we are going to reach this 3-second-attention-span generation.
First, a sermon cannot be one-way, I-talk-you-listen. Students need to be involved in the discussion throug questions, discussions, and even teaching small portions of the lesson.
Second, we must realize that a sermon is only one half of the discipleship process. The other half is one-on-one relatinoships between leaders and students, and we need to work hard to build these–otherwise they simply will not happen.
There are a lot of other things that can push students away from your youth group–like relevancy, bad rumors, scheduling, extra-curricular activities, and much more. What are the most common for your group? Respond in the comments below.
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another thing i found that is great in keeping older kids interested is involving them in leading…
we have a separate middle school and high school program, but by senior year a lot of our high schoolers begin to loose interest in the group.
we have started to let them be leaders for middle school and it has worked great! they feel a sense of ownership over the group and a sense of commitment.
it works great on both ways. they really get involved and grow, and they really add a lot that the middle schoolers love.
i like what you said about making the talks more interactive! after a day stuck at school another lecture is just what they need…
thanks Geoff! Good thoughts. I’ve tried that before too and it’s worked well. The problem I ran into was juniors and seniors that weren’t very mature but assumed they “earned” leadership positions because of their age. Have you run into that?
yeah i have…i guess it doesn’t always work…
one thing i did that helped a little is that i have all the high school counselors come to a few “training sessions” before it starts. i really stress how serious their commitment is and what i expect of them….
i think for most of them when they sort of saw the goal of the group and that they could be an important part of that they got more into it…
for some they still were not ready…i don’t really have any thoughts on that…
Training sessions are a great start, but I am a firm believer in carefully screening all leaders. Some seniors are simply terrible leaders, while some freshman are incredible.
We’ve dealt with a lot of these things by gearing our services toward the upperclassmen. I got some great advice about marketing student ministry once that crosses over into different aspects of actually doing the ministry.
Someone told me to aim for the older guys. The younger guys will follow the older guys, and the girls will go where the boys are. It’s so true.
Because we’re focused on the older guys, we don’t structure hang-out time (’cause organized games are so uncool), and we minister at their level. We create an atmosphere that they know is for them, and we just “let” the younger student come too. It seems to help them feel less like babysitters, and more like tolerant elders. :)