It has been a little over a year since I started my first ministry position as a youth pastor.  Not gonna lie, as I started out I felt like the most unprepared youth minister on the planet!  If you know me, then you know that I’m not necessarily the most energetic outgoing person alive (although I can have my moments), a characteristic that can be nice to have as a youth pastor.  I was really terrible and terrified of speaking in public (I think I almost failed my high school speech class).  So how on earth was I guy like me going to get up there and preach to a group of youth every Wednesday night??  And finally, I’m not necessarily the most savvy individual when it comes to social media.  I mean I literally only have 13 pictures on my Instagram account, 147 tweets on Twitter (which I feel like most people have that many in a single day), and I’m pretty terrible at posting things on Facebook (me and my wife recently had our first child, a little girl, and I have not posted a single picture since a day after she was born).  And if you aren’t social media proficient in youth ministry these days then you might as well forget about it!  So I’m thinking, that’s three strikes and I’m out!!

But thankfully, that is not how God operates!  God is pretty good at choosing men and women who feel they are unprepared and unqualified, to do extraordinary things!  I mean look at the Bible…  God chooses Moses, a man who runs away when things get tough and who feels he’s terrible at public speaking (I can relate), to go and lead the people of Israel out from the grasp of Pharaoh.  He chooses David, who can’t even put on a suit of armor, to be the greatest king of Israel.  And what about those disciples of Jesus?  Talk about your plain ordinary, uneducated, average Joe!  What do they do??  They are merely chosen to be the foundation of the Christian church, and turn the known world upside down!  No biggie…  And why does God work this way?  Because when others see the ordinary people that God uses to do these incredible tasks, they come to one conclusion and one conclusion only… GOD DID IT!  Because there is no other explanation!  Thus, all the glory goes back to the Lord, and that’s what it’s all about!

So with all that said, here are 3 things that the Lord has taught me either through his word or through the counsel of others, that have tremendously helped me in my first year in youth ministry.

1.  GOSPEL, GOSPEL, GOSPEL

I received this advice from my brother-in-law who at the time was also a youth pastor.  He said that for the first year, everything you teach and preach to them needs to be the gospel!  Now this might sound simple for some of you, but I feel that in many youth groups this is severely overlooked.  It can be easy to get on those hot button topics (I call them the 3 D’s: dating, drugs and drinking), but the problem is that your youth are never going to be able to properly deal with those topics if they haven’t already understood the gospel and what it’s about.  Otherwise, you turn the Christ centered, God glorifying Christian faith into a legalistic, washed up, unbiblical religion.  For the first month in my youth ministry I preached on “What is the Gospel?” using Greg Gilbert’s book, What is the Gospel? as an outline for communicating essential aspects of the gospel to the youth.  That’s just one example, but the point is that your youth should be so saturated with the gospel that it just begins to spew out of them in their daily lives.  I tell my youth that I want them to be about two things: gospel knowing and gospel living; that is, understanding the gospel message and the effect it has in our lives, and then living out that message and sharing it with our family and friends. Then once you have laid this foundation, you and your youth will begin to realize that every topic you discuss should always be filtered back through the lens of the gospel.  And thus in actuality, the gospel message will be something that you never stop preaching!  When you teach about dating, drugs and drinking, you will do so by addressing them through the gospel!

K.I.S.S.

Keep It Simple Stupid, is a well known acronym that bears a lot of truth when it comes to youth ministry.  So often I here of youth ministers who do these outlandish stunts and plan these extravagant services for their youth groups.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a stick in the mud.  I do believe that their is a place for such things, but if these things are what define your ministry then that’s a problem.  For one, the new youth pastor who thinks that he has to do all these things in order to have a successful youth ministry gets depressed and burnt out because he just doesn’t have the time or the resources to do it.  But also, and arguably more important, if these stunts and extravagant services define your ministry, then what are your youth really learning?  So I would implore you to utilize the K.I.S.S. method, and keep it simple!  Preach the text of scriptures, focus on discipleship, and allow God to bring about biblical church growth within your youth ministry… And have a little fun as you do it!

Employ the Power of the Small Group

I have come to realize that small groups are an essential aspect that every youth minister should use.  I use them both on Wednesday nights and at Summer camp.  What I have learned is that for many youth it is difficult for them to sit there and listen to me blabber on for 20 to 30 minutes.  Within 5 to 10 minutes of me getting up there to preach I begin to see youth whispering to each other, starting to glance down at their phone, which their trying to hide, and what not.  So what I began to do, is teach/preach for about 15 minutes and then I divided the group into groups of about 5 or 6, and I had discussion question that each group would discuss amongst each other.  At the end, we would all discuss it together and I would have the opportunity to answer the questions myself, thus giving the ability to sneak in a little extra teaching time.  Now my hope, is that these youth will grow in their faith, and in their maturity so that they will be able to sit and listen to the word being preached for a longer amount of time, but until then this is a great way of getting them engaged with what you are teaching.

There are so many other things that I could say, but I know that no one wants to spend more than 5 to 10 minutes reading a blog, so I will stop there.  But know that as daunting a task as your first year in youth ministry may be, God is in control, and He can use you in unbelievable ways to make an impact on the lives of the next generation!

Sola Deo Gloria