You are here: Home / Archives for follow up

Your Biggest Role Sometimes Is To Encourage

April 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment

As a student ministry small group leader, sometimes your biggest job is to be an encourager. We all need a little encouragement from time to time but your teen years are a time when you need a little more validation in your life. It’s a time when little problems can seem huge and a time when students are still trying to figure out who they are.

I had a student in my group who ran for ASB Vice-President at his high school and unfortunately he lost the election. This was a huge loss to him. I wanted to remind him that it’s better to have tried and failed than it is to fail to try. I was proud that he put himself out there and tried! Also, losing an election for ASB does not mean he is any less the great guy that he is. Maybe God has a bigger plan for him and he needs to not be tied down to ASB Vice-President. I’ve found that most of the time when God won’t give us what we want it’s because He has a bigger better plan for us. We just don’t know it yet.

Here’s some tips to help encourage students:

  • Be real. Be honest. Sometimes you need to tell someone something they might not want to hear.
  • Let that student know they are loved. Not just now in their disappointment but all the time.
  • I try to find some scripture that has to do with their situation. I don’t want to overwhelm them with scripture but I want to use this as a time to remind them to turn to their Bibles in good times and when life does not go their way.
  • Everyone needs to feel wanted and needed. This is a good time to remind them that God wants them and loves them, no matter what, unconditionally.
  • Realize there is power in presence. Sometimes just being there is encouraging.
  • Follow up. Don’t just make this a one-time thing. Wait a few days and follow-up with a text or phone call.

How would you feel encouraged? What would you like someone to do for you when you need encouragement? Well, whatever that is to you, do it for someone else.

Filed Under: Encouragement, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , ,

Helping Students Reach Their Goals

December 4, 2012 by Leave a Comment

This past weekend our High School Ministry at Saddleback Church held our annual Winter Camp. I had five guys from my small group attend. I wasn’t able to be there but from what my co-leader has told me, all of them had a spiritual weekend and have pledged to make some changes in their lives. My co-leader, Michael and I discussed some things we need to do to help them stay on target to reach the goals that they set for themselves:

1.  I just blogged about this last week, but accountability partners are going to be a huge part of this. Everyone needs someone to help you though tough times and tempting times. This one is huge, we are going to plug this really hard this year with our group.

2. Help students to make their goals measurable and attainable. You can’t just set a goal of “I want to be closer to God”. How are you going to do that? What steps are you going to take? When a goal is measurable, it’s manageable and attainable.

3. Weekly follow-up. We need to make sure that we’re checking in with them outside of small group time. This way we make sure that we connect with them at least twice a week.

4. Make ourselves intentionally available to them. Text them, call them; meet them at weekly church service. We really need them to know we’re here for them.

5. Encourage students to talk to their parents about the commitments they have made. Parents can’t help students reach their goals if they don’t know about them.

6. We want our guys that went to camp to share with the rest of the small group. Small groups are where we talk about spiritual connections and growing closer in our walk with God. It’s another resource to help you reach your goal and it’s inspiration for those who didn’t go to camp to make some changes in their lives as well.

Question: How do you help your students reach their goals?

Filed Under: Spriritual Life, Uncategorized, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , ,

Intentionally being intentional

August 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

One area I want to do different with my new small group this year is to be more intentional with them. I’ve already rearranged my work schedule a little bit and set some reminders in my calendar to accomplish this. Not that  I wasn’t open and available to my students in the past, but this year I want to bring it to the next level.

Yesterday Steven posted some ideas he has for his new small group. I knew he formulated this list last week but I hadn’t read his ideas until they showed up in his blog . It made me start thinking about some things. I asked myself what was one area I really want to do different. Being more intentional was the first thing that came to mind. Here’s what I want to do:

  •  I often have a limited number of free hours in my week. I want to make sure I use them to my full advantage. Scheduling some time each week to contact students and setting reminders on my phone will help me from getting to the end of the week and running out of time for some intentional contacts.
  • I don’t want students to feel like they are a disruption in my schedule, I want to be available to them.
  • Let’s face it some problems need time to talk through, I don’t want a student to feel like he has five minutes to talk to me about something and then I’m off to the next guy. One thing that will really help this year is having a co-leader.
  • I want to make sure I have at least one really good contact with each of the guys in my small group each week. Either in person or by text, I want them to know I’m thinking and praying about them.
  • I want to set aside some time each week before small group to meet with a student one-on-one , or two-on-one since I have a co-leader this year.
  • I want to be sure I follow-up on prayer requests each week with each student. Either myself or my co-leader will check in with them, see how things are going and offer a lot of encouragement.

Each one of these are small things but they add up. I’d love to hear ways you spend intentional time with students, you can comment here.

Filed Under: Small Groups, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , ,

Do you take the time to follow-up on a student’s committments?

August 8, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Are you taking the time to follow-up with students? Sometimes we get wrapped up in the moment when students make important decisions to follow Christ and truly desire a deeper relationship with God. I love being with students during those times. But it’s also important to follow-up with students and help them keep their commitments.

Two weeks ago, on the last day of high school summer camp, our high school Pastor asked students to stand up if they had made a decision at camp to accept Christ, or to commit to a deeper relationship with God or if there was a habit or behavior they wanted to change when they got back from camp. We had 750 students at camp and about 150 of them stood up during this time, publically proclaiming the decisions they had made. It was an awesome moment and not gonna lie, I had tears in my eyes seeing some of my own students stand up.

Today I sent a message out on a Facebook page that is dedicated to students who went to camp. This is what I said:

I know a lot of you made commitments at camp two weeks ago. A lot of you stood up on the last day and publically proclaimed your desire for change. How are you doing?

 If you need help or prayer or just someone to talk with, I know I speak for all of the leaders when I tell you that we didn’t just make a commitment to be there for you the week of camp. We are still here for you! We would love to help you if need something.

I want to make sure students know they have a support system that leaders at camp don’t just care about them the week of camp, we still care about them!  This is a simple step but it’s one that encourages students and lets them know you’re there for them.

 

Filed Under: Encouragement, Summer Camp, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , ,

Reminders don’t work if you don’t follow through

July 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I’m a big fan of using the “reminder” function on my iPhone, but when the reminder goes off and I’m busy right at that moment and I don’t reset the reminder for a later time, or I don’t follow-up on the reminder and take some action, then nothing happens. It dawned on me this morning as I was thinking about the “reminder” function that prayer is a lot like that. We can pray and pray and pray but often times God wants us to take some action as well to follow-up.

You can’t just pray, “God make me financially comfortable and successful” and then just sit back and wait for it to happen. You have to pray that prayer and then go out and apply yourself and your talents. When you start earning a living you need to tithe, once you trust God with your finances he will bless you even more. You can’t out give God.

You can’t just pray, “God help me to lose weight and look and feel better.” You have to start watching what you eat and exercising as well. Then your prayer changes to God give me the strength to continue along with my weight loss plan. But if you just pray and sit back in front of the TV eating a family size back of potato chips probably nothing is going to happen.

Our message to students needs to be that often prayer without action means nothing. God will help us, God WANTS to help us, but God also wants to grow us and wants us to learn to do the right thing along the way. Look for everyday things that happen in life and turn it into a lesson that students can understand and gain something, that’s my prayer this morning…this blog is my follow through.

Got an everyday issue that you can turn into a lesson for students? We’d love to hear about it and share it with others.

Filed Under: Spriritual Life, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , ,

Follow up and follow through

March 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Matt: Sometimes one of my faults is not following up on things. I really need to write things down, keep things in my Outlook calendar to remind me to do something or to re-visit something I’ve started but not finished. Sometimes I get so busy with a new project that I forget to go back and make sure the old project I was working on is complete or if it needs some further attention. I need to do this with with my high school small group as well. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in presenting a new lesson or new scripture or a new life application that I forget to go back and see how my guys are doing with things we’ve already talked about.

I don’t forget about one of my guys who has been going through a tough time or dealing with a specific issue, I’m great at follow up with that, but sometimes I forget about the general topics we talk about. For instance a few weeks ago my guys asked if we could do a lesson on girls and dating and sex and what the Bible says about these things. We had a great lesson that night and I know I made them really think about how a relationship would look like and how to make sure that they put God in the center of all of their relationships. This past week I got a text from one of my guys asking some very specific questions about what the Bible says about an issue. That should have been my reminder that I need to follow up with all of them and see how they are doing with that topic. I need to build a reminder into each small group time to begin and ask questions about past topics and make sure everyone is still on task with prior topics.

Steven: This is one of the posts I’m writing based on a challenging realization I’ve had, not necessarily a success. My co-leader and I have realized recently that we’re great about having good small group discussions and challenging our guys to do something, but we almost never come back to check up on them. If we issue a challenge the week before, there’s no incentive for to follow through because we don’t check to see how they did.

Last week that changed. We realized we needed to do some follow-up based on a small group discussion we’d had with the guys 2 weeks earlier on “identity.” We challenged the guys that week to live consistent lives, not ones that changed depending on where they were or who they were trying to impress. To follow up with them last week, here’s what we did:

  • We decided we didn’t want to do any of the talking. That night was all about the guys, so we did our best to get them talking and dialoging with each other. A few times we had to ask a basic question to keep it going, but for the most part they had the bulk of the conversation.
  • We encouraged them to reflect on their time thinking about the topic. One of the directions we tried to lead them in was how they have been successful (or unsuccessful) in living consistent lives.
  • We offered follow-up to the follow-up. Once the boys reflected and talked about the topic a little bit, we would offer them a follow-up challenge to keep them on the right track or help them be more successful in it.

It’s easy for students to hide behind the flow of ever-changing small group lessons without reflecting and following up on previous weeks. Maybe this week will be a good opportunity to check up on your students and allow them to talk back.

Question: How do you ensure follow-up happens in your group? Post your thoughts here.

Filed Under: Small Groups, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Taking the temperature of your small group

February 27, 2012 by 2 Comments

Matt: I think it’s important from time to time to take the temperature and pulse of your student ministry small group. You need to take some time before a group meeting and ask yourself if there are students in your group that maybe need more attention than others or a student who has a special need that the rest in the group do not have. Ask yourself who is participating each week and who is just sitting back while others do the talking. Ask them how their quiet time is going. Ask questions that can’t be answered with a yes or no. If you get a one word answer be sure and ask follow-up questions. Make sure you’re checking in with parents to see if they have any issues that are of a concern to them that you don’t know about.

Text or call your students during the week. If your students are like mine, texting is the way to go. Let them know you’re there for them, and if they reach out to you, by all means reach back! When I have a student going through a tough time I make sure that I contact him in some way every single day. If I don’t hear back from him, I keep at it until I do. One more thing that is important in checking the health of your small group…who is showing up every week and who is just hit and miss. If you have a student that is missing a lot of meetings, get to the bottom of it. I have one student who misses every other week because his eagle scout meeting is also on the same night as our small group night. The week I don’t see him I make sure and contact him and let him know what we are talking about that week so when he comes back the following week he is not lost or feels left out.

Steven: It’s one thing to have great discussions with your group, teach great lessons and form great relationships. Those things are really the heart of any great group, but they’re useless if they’re not tailored to fit your group. You can write and teach the best lesson in the world, but if your group doesn’t connect with it or aren’t in a place where they need to hear it, they’ll get nothing from it.

That’s where evaluating the spiritual direction of your group comes in.

Until you know where your group is spiritually and what they need help in, there will be no growth. Ultimately our goal as youth workers is to grow students closer to God and equip them to do so on their own. When we are able to evaluate which areas they’re weakest in, it gives us a huge advantage in meeting that goal.

One of the things I’ve used to evaluate the health of my small groups is a simple “where are you?” form. I’ll hand one out to each of my guys during a small group meeting and give them some time to fill it out. (Side note: Give them time to do it there in front of you, rather than take it home and bring it back next week. That way you’re ensured to get responses back!) It will ask basic questions like:

  • How would you describe your relationship with God? Have you been baptized?
  • What are some areas you’ve been struggling in?
  • How can we as leaders help you better?
  • What are some discussions you think we need to have as a group?

Once I get those back, I’m able to compare them and see a trend in where the group is. Sometimes they’re all over the board and we need to cater to individuals’ needs on a one-on-one basis, but other times there are definite trends that can be addressed in a group setting to draw our students closer to God and each other.

Filed Under: Small Groups, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Don’t assume your students know Jesus

January 30, 2012 by 2 Comments

Steven: One of the things I’ve found to be difficult in junior high ministry is effectively judging where a student is in their relationship with God. With older, more mature people it’s less of a challenge, but for some reason junior high students are less accessible in this area. I’ve seen this in 2 ways:

  1. When you ask them where they’re at with God and if they have a relationship with him, they’ll feed you an answer they think you want to hear.
  2. They don’t really know how to answer the question.

I ran into this situation on Friday night. Our junior high ministry took 3 bus loads of students to CIY’s Believe conference for our winter retreat. At the end of the first night, the speaker gave leaders an opportunity to take a few minutes with each student and talk about their relationship with God and where they land with the whole “Jesus thing.” The first guy I talked to was one of my small group students that I assumed was a Christian based on conversations we’d had in the past. When it came down to it, he couldn’t remember a time when he had given his life to the Lord, and I ended up helping him pray to accept Christ into his heart that night (praise God!).

The second guy I talked to (also in my small group) was in a similar camp. We talked about a few issues he has going on at home, and it led into a talk about his relationship with God and how he thinks it’s going. He said he didn’t really know if he was a Christian or not. Unfortunately we ran out of time to finish the conversation because the band started playing too loud for us to talk, but I told him we would finish the conversation at our group on Tuesday.

I learned that night that we can’t assume anything of our students. I made the mistake of assuming, and all it took was a direct conversation to find out what was really going on in these students’ lives.

Matt: Steven makes some real good points here so I won’t repeat them in my words. I do think this is one area where you need to be careful when you’re dealing with a student who is really not sure how they feel about God in their life and if they are ready to accept Jesus as their savior. I think this is an area where it’s just as easy to say the wrong thing as it it to say the right thing. I would also tell students this is something I can’t tell them what decision to make. I can tell them the decision I would like them to make but what ever decision they come up with has to come from their heart, not mine.

Students do need to realize that they can’t get to heaven on their parents’ faith, this has to be their decision.  I can tell them how I feel and I can tell them what they have to do to be saved and show them how simple it is to be saved, but I can’t make the final decision for them. If you find yourself in this situation when talking with a student, start praying. Let the Holy Spirit give you the right words to say, the right scripture to quote and the right ideas to keep the conversation going.

If a student is still not sure where they stand with God, don’t force the issue. Let them have time to think about it, but don’t forget to keep checking with them and let them know how important this decision is. If you have high school seniors in your group and you are not sure where they stand with God, keep at them, don’t let them graduate without having a serious one-on-one discussion with them about accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. It might be the most important conversation you have with them.

Filed Under: Counseling, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Ministry after the lesson

September 19, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Matt: Sometimes we have a plan for our students, and at the time it seems like its going to be a great night and a great lesson, but it just doesn’t go over as good as we thought it would. Sometimes I think I “over plan” a lesson. I get frustrated that my students don’t seem to get as much out of a lesson or a small group time as I put into it. That’s when it will hit me that those were my plans and maybe not the plan that God had for that night. I’ve learned that my job sometimes is just to plant the idea with students and then they have to take it from there. I’ve gotten good at letting the Holy Spirit take charge over things I know I can’t change or fix with a student, but I sometimes lack the patience.

This past week I had a good small group time with my students. We had a great discussion time after the lesson, and I felt good about the night. Later that night I got a text and then a phone call from one of my students who was going through a tough time and had a lot on his mind. He didn’t feel comfortable talking about the issue with the entire group yet and he just wanted my advice. We ended up having a phone call that lasted almost a hour. Afterwards it dawned on me that I probably did more ministry work that night with that one student than I did with all of them earlier that night.

That’s how student ministry goes sometimes – sometimes God will use you in a way you never expected or planned. You have to be open to Him using you in a way you never expected. That’s often when the real ministry work happens.

Steven: Two weeks ago, I experienced the frustration that Matt talked about above. The group time wasn’t exactly what I had planned – the boys weren’t focused, there were disruptions and distractions galore, and not much got done. By the end of our discussion time, I was pretty frustrated that the guys wasted a night of what could have been a potentially great night.

Then something cool happened. After the discussion was over, I could tell one my guys was hanging back a little. He’s the type that as soon as group is over, he’s sprinting out the door to get to his mom’s car, but not this time. I asked him what was going on and he said he wanted to talk about something from the discussion tonight. In my mind I was thinking, “Holy cow, you actually GOT something from tonight?” Keep in mind, too, that this is one my guys that is very private and not very talkative. He’s also the type that comes from a Christian family and seems to have it all together (we all know that person doesn’t really exist in real life). He told me some stuff he was struggling with, and it was a great moment.

I learned (or re-learned) two things that night.

  1. Just because things don’t go your way, doesn’t mean they didn’t go God’s way. I thought the night was a total waste, but it ended up being something that was extremely helpful for one of my guys.
  2. You never know how a particular message will affect your students. I wouldn’t have expected to have the talk I did with my student that night. I didn’t think the issue we talked about was something he struggled with, but I had my eyes re-opened.

Question: Does your small group time go the way YOU want it, or do you allow it to go the way GOD wants it?

Filed Under: Small Groups, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , , , ,

What to do when you have a low turnout

June 30, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Like I’ve mentioned here before, my small group guys have decided that they want to continue meeting over the summer this year. My co-leader and I knew going into the summer that attendance would be lower because of vacations, busy schedules, and the like. This week, however, was lower than we expected. Out of 13 guys, only 5 of them showed up. It was a little surprising, but we were just glad to have the 5 that were there.

When you plan a lesson or discussion based on having more guys there, low turnout can be a big letdown. Some people might freak out and not know what to do, so here’s what we did:

1. Keep going like it’s a normal-sized group. Even though we only had 5 guys, we were still able to talk about the lesson we had planned and made the best of it. Sure, it’s not getting to as many guys because they didn’t show up, but at least the 5 that did show up are getting fed.

2. Make sure to follow up. After the group was over, I made sure to send a little texting love out to the 8 guys that didn’t show up. I knew some of them were on vacation or weren’t feeling well, but I wanted to make sure they knew they were missed.

3. Take advantage of the smaller group. This week we talked about stealing after we learned one of our guys had issues with it. Because he was one of the guys that showed up to group, we were able to personalize it to him a little bit more than we would if all 13 guys showed up.

Don’t be discouraged by low turnout, especially if your group or event is happening over the summer. Low attendance should be expected. Even when there’s not as many students, we should still take advantage of them showing up and make the most of it.

Filed Under: Small Groups, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , ,