Your church is growing and people are showing up. Not only do they come, but they bring their kids, and those kids love it. They enjoy the worship, the preaching, the community. But then you receive an email asking why your church doesn’t have a student ministry. Soon you hear about people leaving because another church in town has more opportunities for youth.
Does this sound familiar? If not, congrats on crushing the student-ministry game. But if that’s not you, don’t be surprised when this scenario starts to play out. Many growing churches struggle here.
The hardest part of starting a student ministry is just that: finding the place to start. Most pastors haven’t led student ministry, and some may have never participated in it, having come to faith later in life. Even those who have led student ministry in the past face a drastically changed cultural climate.
The hardest part of starting a student ministry is just that: finding the place to start.
What does it take to build a student ministry? Here are six principles to start the student ministry ball rolling.
1. Do something.
The worst thing you can do is nothing at all. Don’t wait until you have youth ministry figured out. Find some volunteers and give them a room and a time. Encourage them to start meeting. Student discipleship doesn’t need to be fancy. To begin, students and families simply need to know you see them and care enough to make time for them.
2. Think through your philosophy.
Now that you’re doing student ministry, take some time to work on the ministry. Gather a leadership team and work together to craft a philosophy for student and family ministry. Here are some questions you’ll want to ask: What is the role of the family? What is the role of the church? And how are they connected?
Many churches focus solely on practical matters and find themselves in a bind later because they’ve created a ministry structure that runs counter to their convictions.
Many churches find themselves in a bind because they’ve created a ministry structure that runs counter to their convictions.
I’d recommend that members of the leadership team read a few books—for example, Perspectives on Family Ministry, Sustainable Youth Ministry, 7 Family Ministry Essentials, and Gospel-Centered Youth Ministry—then work together to produce a one-page ministry philosophy.
3. Know your context and people.
As with your church more broadly, you need to ask demographic questions about your church’s next generation. Where are they coming from? To what socioeconomic class do they belong? What is their home life like? What is their education level? What is their level of exposure to Christianity or familiarity with church?
It’s essential to “know the condition of your flocks” (Prov. 27:23). If, for instance, you begin to use a curriculum that assumes a more churched context but most of your families are new believers, they may not understand much of the language.
If you serve a multiethnic context, but the curriculum—in language as well as photos and illustrations—assumes a majority-culture audience, you run the risk of alienating your flock. If your ministry philosophy focuses on equipping parents to disciple their children, but the majority of your students come from non-Christian homes, those students won’t be discipled.
4. Build a team of volunteers.
A lead pastor can’t lead his church’s student ministry on his own. Even a strong leadership team needs a core of volunteers who understand their vision and can implement it. Find parents, teachers, and young adults who genuinely care about helping students follow Jesus. Find coachable people you can trust. Trust is essential; without it, you’ll micromanage. But once you’ve found trustworthy people, empower them to lead creatively and engage missionally (2 Tim. 2:2). In other words, give them the keys to the ministry.
5. Start small.
Don’t try to launch a big, attractional student ministry. That’s not what students need. They need discipleship. Churches who launch big often set the bar too high and create something that’s unsustainable.
Instead, launch a ministry that can grow slowly, organically, and authentically. Don’t try to do a program designed for 100 students when you have 25. Start small and let the ministry grow as your church grows.
Launch a ministry that can grow slowly, organically, and authentically. Start small and let the ministry grow as your church grows.
Be patient with this, even if families with older students leave for a more attractive model. The students coming up through the ranks of your children’s ministry will benefit from a discipleship model built on patience and endurance.
6. Communicate passionately.
The lead pastor and senior leadership must passionately cast a vision for student ministry. Certainly, this is the job of your student ministry staff and volunteers as well, but your church’s people will know that the church cares about students when they hear about it from the pulpit. As a pastor, your people need to hear your heart for seeing students follow Jesus.
As the senior leader of your church, your job is to spark a flame for student ministry and pour gasoline on it regularly. If you’re planting a church, consider doing this work before you launch, not after.
Create a vision, agree on a philosophy, develop a plan, communicate passionately, and do something. This will require an investment, but the return is a generation of teenagers passionately following Jesus. And that’s worth it.
Involved in Women’s Ministry? Add This to Your Discipleship Tool Kit.
We need one another. Yet we don’t always know how to develop deep relationships to help us grow in the Christian life. Younger believers benefit from the guidance and wisdom of more mature saints as their faith deepens. But too often, potential mentors lack clarity and training on how to engage in discipling those they can influence.
Whether you’re longing to find a spiritual mentor or hoping to serve as a guide for someone else, we have a FREE resource to encourage and equip you. In Growing Together: Taking Mentoring Beyond Small Talk and Prayer Requests, Melissa Kruger, TGC’s vice president of discipleship programming, offers encouraging lessons to guide conversations that promote spiritual growth in both the mentee and mentor.
