Youth ministry is a big job. It’s hard to know where to start, and it can be even harder to keep up with the pace of life as a young adult. So we’ve created a list of ten ideas for ways to engage your youth group that are quick, easy, and fun!
There are also details on 4 Tips to Effectively Promote Your Youth Ministry, ideas to start a YOUTH MINISTRY PROGRAM IN YOUR PARISH, 7 Steps for How to Plan a Church Youth Program and lots more in this post from Churchgists.
1) Play games during the service.
2) Make it an open mic night.
3) Have a snack time with food from different cultures.
4) Create a scavenger hunt through the service (e.g., find something in red).
5) Have a special guest come in and talk about their faith experience growing up.
6) Sing songs together as a group (like “Kumbaya”)!
7) Give everyone an emoji sticker and have them put it on themselves somewhere visible during the service (if they want). Then at the end of the service ask them what their sticker means to them personally; write down these answers for later discussion time.
8) Give out free pencils or pens or other little gifts during the service; help them find ways to use them in their daily lives so they don’t feel like you were just trying to get rid of stuff instead of investing in people like Jesus did when he gave us
ideas to start a YOUTH MINISTRY PROGRAM IN YOUR PARISH
1 Ask the youth! Young people want their church to be a great place. If asked properly, they are full of ideas.
2 Have a Youth Sunday. If the youth are not already an on going part of the parish’s liturgical cycle, find ways to get them involved. Have them manage the candle sales, the offering baskets, and coffee hour. Gather a group of interested young singers and have them sing something as a group in the services. Have a young person write and give a sermon with the help of the parish priest. For more particulars, see the “Planning a ‘Youth Sunday'” article in the Youth Ministry section of the OCA Resource Handbook.
3 Plan a retreat/gathering. They are a great opportunity for young people to become more informed and articulate about their faith. They can even have fun doing it! Every retreat needs opportunities for the participants to just “hang” with each other.
4 Start an AROY, AOYC, or Junior “O” chapter. The American Romanian Orthodox Youth, Albanian Orthodox Youth Council, and Jr Fellowship of Orthodox Christians in America are nationwide Church affiliated youth organizations. Many parishes are forming new chapters. Becoming a chapter is a great way to meet other Orthodox youth in the area and around the country. Once a chapter, you are connected to hundreds of other youth across North America. It is also a great way to become involved in local and national service projects.
5 Have a fellowship event. Get everyone together and go skiing, roller skating, or bowling. Take a group to a football game, or other sports event. Let them know that you can be a Christian and still have fun. As with everything we do, just begin and end with prayer.
6 Youth Auction. Offer services to parish members at a small fee for a Saturday and donate all proceeds to charity (IOCC, Project Mexico, etc.).
7 Plan a visit to a nursing home. Make cards for residents with photographs of the people that made them with a personal note about themselves.
8 Visit the home bound. Bring a meal, and most importantly your love! The time you spend with them will bring them — and you — a great deal of joy.
9 Help out at a local soup kitchen once a month. You might also want to explore the possibility of helping at a homeless shelter.
10 Start a tutoring program for local people who can’t afford to pay. Use the Church as a meeting place.
11 Find out if the church needs anything — an icon, chalice, church school materials, new front door etc. Have a fund raiser, and donate the needed money.
12 Visit some parishioners in the hospital and pray for them. Make and deliver card and gifts.
13 Have a lock-in fast to raise parish awareness about world hunger. End with a short Service of Thanksgiving for all God has given us, and a prayer for the needy.
14 Start or help out a local food pantry. Look into your area’s agencies that deliver meals to homebound individuals, such as Meals on Wheels. Offer your services.
15 Make audio tapes of an Orthodox book for people who have trouble reading. Ask your parish priest for help in making appropriate selections.
16 Make a video or cassette tape of Saturday Vespers and Sunday Liturgy for someone who is homebound or away at college.
17 Ask your priest if a group can bake and bring the Church bread for a Divine Liturgy. Organize a group to do the baking together.
18 Plan a meal [spaghetti dinner etc.] for the parish, or maybe a group in the parish, such as the parish council, the elderly, priest’s family, etc..
19 Offer to greet the visitors at Church for a certain number of Sundays. Invite the visitors to attend coffee hour after services.
20 Find adults who want to share their faith and lives with young people. Get together with them and examine what Orthodox Youth Ministry is, and get them involved. The OCA Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministries has an Introduction to Youth Ministry guide that is an excellent resource.
21 Start a Scouting program in your parish. Many parishes, like Saint Seraphim’s Cathedral in Dallas, TX, are forming scouting groups. SCOBA’s Eastern Orthodox Committee on Scouting is available to help interested communities with religious award and scholarship programs. They can be reached at 862 Guy Lombardo Avenue, Freeport, NY 11520; 516/ 868-4050,
22 Ask the youth! None of us like things being planned for us. Get everyone together and include them in your planning. Some of the most effective youth ministry occurs when youth minister to each other.
7 Steps for How to Plan a Church Youth Program
1. Collect
During this brainstorming stage, people randomly banter and toss around ideas. Write all of these on a whiteboard. Remember: There are no bad ideas. Some of the best ideas each week come from students who gather every Tuesday in my office to throw around thoughts. At first, don’t worry if an idea is possible or not. And don’t worry about the size of the idea. Seth Godin says, “Big ideas are little ideas that no one killed too soon.” If we were really on the ball, we’d be doing this brainstorming step several weeks in advance.
2. Compile
This is where we turn the ideas for a youth service into an order of worship called a program sheet. Then that provides a general framework from which to work for the week. It also captures the proposed idea of the service’s emotional arc or tone.
3. Assign
Use the program sheet as a guide to assign tasks and projects to various volunteers and students. For example, decide who is making the bumper video, who is creating announcement slides, and so on. You can also begin asking people to help on stage, figure out who will make announcements and run the games, etc.
4. Manage
To survive the youth service “tornado” each week, you must follow up on the projects that have been assigned. Talk to the students or volunteers who own each of the tasks. Help them fight through roadblocks or adjust the idea so it can be accomplished by the service time. You might have to cut certain bits at this point. But that’s better than being surprised or disappointed a few hours before the youth service starts.
5. Execute
This is the step of actually holding a youth service. We conduct four student services every weekend, so execution actually takes two days. Making sure each service improves and is as good as or better than the last is always a challenge. Execution with excellence is tough, especially when you’ve already seen or given the message, songs, and games three times.
6. Debrief
After the first youth service, we gather the main players together and talk through what happened. We make tons of adjustments and tweaks to the next service. Sometimes these are small; sometimes we almost start over with the entire order. We also hold a weekly debrief that focuses on big-picture thoughts and major changes. Plus, just as importantly, we add to a list of things we’ll never do again.
7. Archive
At the end of a series, archive everything. MP3s of the talk, outlines, handouts, videos—everything ends up on the team network drive to be stored permanently. We post a ton of elements online as well.
Then it’s time to start planning your next youth service. After all, it’ll be here in just a few days!
What’s the best advice you recommend for how to plan a church youth program? We’d love to hear your tips in the comments section.
How To Engage the Youth In Your Church
1. Be Sincere
All church or youth leaders are capable of providing the one thing youth long for the most—sincerity.
Teenagers want to interact with adults who are genuine and honest. They’re not looking for an act or for someone who tries too hard to relate to them.
Though you want to meet teens where they are, it’s easy to miss the mark and become disingenuous. While it might be tempting to focus on developing a sound knowledge of Snapchat, Instagram, or TikTok to earn the right to talk to teens–it’s unnecessary.
Younger members will be more comfortable if you act like someone your age, rather than trying to pass as a 16-year-old.
2. Involve Younger Members
Church leaders can fall into a trap where they see their role as merely doing ministry to young people rather than doing ministry with young people. This limited view does the church a disservice as it limits the agency of young people.
Young people–especially older teens–see that their place in the church is to make it feel trendy. Your strategy becomes reduced to attracting people to programing rather than connecting them to a larger narrative or involvement. (You’re also missing out on the passion and creativity that youth bring to the table.)
Asking teenagers to contribute based on their skills and interests can help them feel involved. Use a church notification system to reach out to them. Don’t just put out a general call for volunteers–ask teens to help out in areas that you know match their interests. Good things happen when you do this. Plus, they feel more like a part of the church.
3. Create an Inviting Culture
The Pew Research Center conducted a nationally representative survey of 4,729 people to determine why people attend religious services. Two of the most common answers cited for not attending religious services was “I haven’t found a church I like” and “I don’t feel welcomed.”
Honing in on the latter reason, it’s always a good idea to adapt to the environment of your church’s services or youth group to appeal to an unknowledgeable audience. For example, is the language that you use, new-person friendly? Do you use Christian language and not explain it?
It’s easy to talk and not even realize that you can make new youth members feel uncomfortable.
You might speak at length about worship, prayer, communion, and baptism and assume everyone knows what is happening.
Think through a young member who has no church background…all of those things are new to them. Let’s be honest: do you explain to them so they understand?
Some churches do what they a “call to worship” every single week. Someone from the church family will explain what the next 15 minutes are about–always assuming that there is a new person in the room at every service.
The idea is to let people know why they’re singing, the words they’re reading, and why worship is essential. Make this a part of your service: new people will understand, and your service will feel way more inviting.
4. Communicate the Way Young Members Want You to Communicate
Another Gallup poll found that church membership is down 20% in the last 20 years. Despite this trend, we’ve seen churches that use text messaging to communicate with their members experience tremendous growth.
This positive growth in membership might be partly explained by the fact that young members want to communicate by text.
5. Update Your Programming
While this makes for an attention-grabbing headline, the underlying research shows that people aren’t bored in eight seconds–they simply want to be engaged in eight seconds.
One way that youth workers are handling this is by focusing on small groups. They help teens bond with each other by removing participation barriers that can exist in larger group settings.
There’s no one silver bullet when it comes to engaging youth in your church. If anything, the world keeps changing. But by focusing on creating an involved, inviting culture that communicates the way your audience wants you to, you can make leaps and bounds in engaging your younger members.
4 Tips to Effectively Promote Your Youth Ministry
1. Pare down the buzzwords
Teenagers have a Spider-Sense when it comes to authenticity; they can spot lingo being deployed as a method of “reaching out” a mile away.
Though you want to meet teens where they are, it’s easy to miss the mark and come off as disingenuous, especially if you’re using internet buzzwords and memes. Make sure that the references you make and the memes you share to convey your messages are ones you’re actually familiar with (and like). Your teens will be more comfortable if you act like someone from your own generation, rather than trying to pass as 17.
2. Leverage social media
If your church uses church management software with social networking functionality (such as The City), or your youth group has its own social media groups, try asking young people to submit individual feedback about their experience in the church (positive or otherwise). With their permission, share quotes from kids on your platform, sampling some of the more interesting, funny, or thought-provoking responses.
Many kids who stop attending youth group may think that their lack of interest in the group is totally unique, and sharing feedback can dispel that fear and demonstrate your willingness to learn from the group and adapt.
3. Get actual kids on this
A lot of teens want to be taken seriously and given responsibility. Asking teenagers to contribute based on their unique skills and interests (think graphic design, photography, or social media posting, to name a few) can help them feel wanted and needed. Don’t just put out a general call for volunteers; personally ask teens to help out in areas that you know match their interests.
This will take some coordination on your part, but it can expand your typical core base of volunteers and keep the voice of your youth ministry actually youthful.
4. Use their platforms, tactfully
There are a lot of guides that can help you figure out where to start with social media. Don’t try to do everything or come across like a teen using these platforms; use your youth ministry’s social media accounts to cover basics such as reminders about service times and previewing upcoming events.
Sharing a single snap to your Snapchat story or posting a few photos from last year’s youth retreat on Instagram is sufficient. Social media is one of the least obtrusive ways to insert your program into the daily lives of your teens.
Creative Youth Service Ideas
During Regular Meeting Times
| Movie Night | Music Night | Faith Discussions |
|---|---|---|
| Baking Night | Campfire Night | Babysitting Night |
| Birthday Celebrations | Favorite Snack Night | Favorite Cereal Night |
| Holiday Celebrations | Game Night | Bring a Friend Night |