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Small Group Parent Meeting

February 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Ever since my friend Dennis mentioned doing this, I have been tossing it around in my head. He met with the parents of his small group guys to talk about what his small group was going to look like. Since I have 7th grade guys this year (which is their first year in my group), I thought it would be a great time to have a connect time with the parents. We had 4 goals for the meeting:

  • Keep it short. Parents don’t have a ton of free time, so we wanted to keep it under an hour.
  • Make it relevant. We wanted to talk about where we had been as a group in the past 4 months, where the guys are now and where we’re headed with the rest of the school year. We also wanted to give them a heads-up about some important topics coming up.
  • Don’t be a parent. Both my co-leader and myself are only 21 years old, and neither of us have kids of our own. The last thing we wanted to do was teach parents how to parent, because we have no experience at it. Let them parent their kids.
  • Don’t be a talking head. We wanted to encourage interaction and dialogue between us, the parents and each other. We didn’t want to fill the whole hour with just our words.
  • Be a resource. This was the big one. We wanted to let parents know that we are a resource and a partner with them as we lead their kids.

Overall, it went fantastic! We had a little more than half of our parents show up, some of which we hardly knew before the meeting night. There was great dialogue between parents, there was a lot of great information shared, but the biggest win for us was a comment one of the moms said. She told us that even though we see them every week at the curb as they pick up their student, they didn’t really know us very well. After having this meeting, they got a chance to talk to us and hear our hearts, which gave a greater sense of security for parents as they drop their kids off with us every week. Mission accomplished!

Filed Under: Parent ministry Tagged With: , , , ,

Students Accepting Christ

December 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Matt: For me, some of the most exciting moments in Student Ministry have been talking to students about accepting Christ in their life and deciding they want to be saved. I’ve only experienced this twice but both times I had goose bumps. I had the opportunity last week to spend some time advising a former student of mine, who came into my last small group during the last three weeks. I didn’t really have a lot of time with him in small group but he remembered a lot of what I said those three weeks and when he needed someone to talk to last week I made some time t meet up with him. I think the main reason he is going through a rough time is because he is not living his life in a Godly way. We talked and prayed and I’m meeting up with him again this week. After we met it dawned on me that I don’t know if he is saved or not, we never got to that point.

It’s a conversation I’ll have with him this coming week. There are some things that you want to specially ask a student, this has to be their faith, not their parents decision or something they are doing because you want them to.

Steven: This is something that has definitely weighed on my heart big time in recent weeks. Having 7th graders, especially ones I hadn’t met before October, has really put me on the offensive for discovering where each guy is on a spiritual spectrum. Some of them are very secure in their faith, and it shows. Others are hearing the Gospel for the first time in my small group, and there are a bunch in between.

But the biggest issue we face as 7th grade leaders is helping our students understand a faith of their own. Many have “been Christians since they were little,” but a lot of those students can’t really explain what that means. This is really scary–students thinking they have genuine faith but are really living under the faith umbrella of their parents. My co-leader and I have been on the lookout for these students and have been intentionally bringing up the conversation to see which of the guys fall into this category. When it does happen, some of them aren’t ready to embrace a faith of their own, but at least then they know it’s a decision they need to make.

Our biggest job as youth workers is to portray the Gospel. Everything else is secondary, and we need to be conscious of this every week.

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Godly Discipline

December 7, 2012 by 2 Comments

We’ve blogged before on the topic of discipline, and I can easily say it’s not my favorite thing to talk about. No one WANTS to discipline students in our youth ministries, but it is one of those necessary discomforts.

This week I had an opportunity to exercise discipline with one of my students. We had an event over the weekend that brought a lot of the guys together as a group. It went very well the entire time, until the very end when we found out this student had done something he knew he shouldn’t have done. The end of the event was spent cleaning up a mess that shouldn’t have been made in the first place.

We knew this was something we couldn’t let slip by, so we had to act quickly before the moment passed. My co-leader and I spoke to this student in the moment, but only briefly. When he left, we could tell he was visibly upset, and he would later show regret by texting me to apologize. The next day I sent an email to his parents to explain what had happened and to tell them we wanted to have a conversation with him before our small group on Tuesday.

When Tuesday came, we knew that he already felt bad and apologized for what happened, so we didn’t want to belabor the point. Instead, we really pushed the idea of respect and how he needs to make choices based on what God wants for him.

We cannot make disciples without discipline. It needs to be something we don’t shy away from, but that we don’t misuse. Taken with care, discipline can be something that grows our students closer to Christ.

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

What We Can Learn from the 2012 Presidential Election

November 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Honestly, I’m not sure what we can learn yet. This post is not going to be political, but I do think the election has some effect on not just us, our country and our government, but our students as well.

Last night I had small group with my 7th grade guys. As soon as I walked up to the house with my “I voted” sticker on, the political comments started flying! It was so funny to hear the comments from these guys who clearly have no idea about politics or why one candidate is better than another, but they had no shame in saying who they’d vote for.

I guess if we take anything away from that exchange, it’s this: students (especially JHers) are extremely connected to their parents’ views and beliefs. Because of that, we need to be really in tune with parents of the students in our ministries. We need to realize that we’re only one small voice in a sea of adults who are around our students. Between parents, teachers, coaches and others, it’s so important that we stay in contact with parents to keep on the same page as them and best serve their kids.

I don’t know what the next 4 years will look like, but one thing is clear. Our students notice things. Maybe not from CNN or Fox News, but from the people closest to them. Let’s do our best to be a light in an age when darkness is so abundant.

Filed Under: Culture Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Following up with Follow-Up

November 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Steven: I’ll be the first to admit that follow up is not one of the things I’m best at. Even knowing how important it is, it is not something that comes naturally to me. This year I’ve put an effort into setting up ways to make sure I’m better at follow up. Here are some of the ways:

  • Focus groups. My co-leader and I have split up our group of 12 into 2 groups. We haven’t said anything to them, but it’s just a way for us to focus on 6 guys each instead of 12. With those 6, we are texting them several times a week and following up on prayer requests and challenges that we’ve given them earlier in the week.
  • Parent emails. My co-leader and I have been really consistent with parent emails, but we’re adding an extra piece into our emails now. We make sure to mention what’s coming up and what the action step is for the upcoming week. This gives parents an opportunity to be “follow-up agents” at home. We can’t be there all the time, but parents see their kids all the time and can work on our behalf.
  • Two-on-ones. We’ve always taken a student out to dinner every week before small group, but we’re being more intentional about the conversation at those dinners. Instead of just shooting the breeze and letting the conversation come up organically, we’re being strategic in what we talk about. We’re challenging students individually, casting vision for what we see in them and giving them the ability to ask questions or get clarification on things.

Matt: I try and start each week with a review of the previous week. That also gives me a good indication of who really understood the lesson from the previous week and if I need to do some follow up. One of the things I have talked with my student group about is having a quiet time every day. This is something I follow up on each week as well as texting them during the week to see how their quiet times are going. I think it’s something that is so important that it’s worth doing almost a weekly follow up.

I also try and pull students aside each week and follow up on their prayer requests from previous weeks. I’m trying to get them to open up if a problem or situation got worse and also get them to do a praise report when things have changed for the better. If I know a student is struggling with a particular problem I like to text them throughout the week. This does a couple of things: first it lets them know I care about them and want to help them succeed, but it also helps them to keep working on a problem and not just give up.

We’re about to begin having our students give their testimonies, each week a couple of guys will talk about themselves and their lives and what’s going on. This is an excellent opportunity to see where your students need prayer and guidance and also lets you as a leader know the areas in their lives that need some follow up.

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

Students need to own their faith

August 6, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Matt: When I was about 13 years old I realized that I had “super Christians” for parents. I wasn’t worried  about this whole God thing or heaven because I was certain that their good works were enough to get them and my whole family into Heaven. I remember one day asking my mom if I could skip church the next day to go to a Detroit Tiger’s baseball game. She sat me down and told me that I was at the age where I could make my own decisions about going to church and that if I wanted to go to a baseball game that was my choice, but that I should pray about it that night. I did, and well, you guessed it I passed on the baseball game and went to church.

It was that week that my mom made it clear to me that I had to start making some decisions about Christ and that my decisions, not hers or my dad’s, would determine my relationship with God. I can still remember that week was a life changing week for me in my walk with God. But what about students you may have in your group that don’t have parents that are believers? Or parents that have never had that conversation with their sons or daughters? This is a lesson that needs to be taught to students. Small group is the perfect place.

Find out from your students:

1. Where they are in their walk with God. Are they all in, or just along for the ride?

2. Make them realize that God wants the decision to be up to each one of us to follow and love him, not because someone told us we should or that because my parents are “Super Christians” does not mean that I’m going to Heaven without accepting Jesus.

3. Teach students that growing in Christ never ends, we need to keep being fed and keep learning and loving God, every day.

4. Be the best example you can be for students in how you live your life. They are watching us all the time and they know if you talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.

Steven: As someone that works mostly with junior high students, the idea of students finding ownership of their faith is a huge deal. Starting in 7th grade, our students start to feel the pull of maturity and they begin to question everything they’ve previously taken for granted. They start pushing the boundaries of right and wrong to see what they can get away with, and they start experimenting with their thoughts and beliefs.

Because this is such a crucial age for students to decide for themselves what they’re going to do with this “God thing,” we have a huge responsibility to take advantage of this questioning time. We can either leave them alone to their own questioning, or we can step in and try to help them understand what faith looks like apart from their parents. I don’t know about you, but it makes a whole lot more sense to me to help them understand rather than letting them drift along.

We need to recognize that students have growing to do, and we can either be a part of that process or not. We can encourage them to seek God in their lives, to live in a way that is set apart from the world, or we can stand by while they sort it out for themselves through a lot of trial and error. We can also be an example to them of what a Christian life looks like, and that can speak volumes in the way of helping them understand their own personal faith.

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

Student Ministry Baptism

May 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment

“And it was down with the old man, up with the new
Raised to walk in the way of light and truth
I didn’t see no angels, just a few saints on the shore
But I felt like a new-born baby, cradled up in the arms of the Lord”

- Kenny Chesney/Randy Travis “Baptism”

This Saturday I’m going to have the awesome privilege with our High School Pastor of baptizing two of the guys in my high school small group. At Saddleback Church we usually have the small group leader get in the water and help do the dunking. If there are other students from the small group there we’ll have them get in the water also. It’s an amazing experience and one of my favorite things about being a small group leader.

There is an interesting story to both of the guys who are getting baptized this week. Both of them were raised as Catholics and have parents who still follow Catholic doctrine. They were “sprinkled” as babies so their parents felt there were already set in the baptism department. At Saddleback Church we believe in full immersion baptism. We also believe that it’s a public demonstration of your faith, a decision you make when you are able to understand what it means to be baptized and to make the decision on your own to accept Jesus in your life.  One of my guys was not sure his parents were going to be okay with him getting baptized and it’s something that we have talked and prayed about for a couple of months now.

I know how much he wanted to get baptized but I also know it’s important that he honor his mother and father, the Bible tells us to do that too. This student is 18 now and technically an adult, but I also knew it was important to him to have his parents’ approval and he also wants them to be there and be a part of the experience with him. He would bring it up during prayer request time in our group and all of the guys in my group have been praying for him.

Two weeks ago he text me to let me know he had talked with his parents and they gave their approval for him to be baptized and they also wanted to be at his baptism. With these two baptisms, all of the guys in my small group have been baptized. Next year I’ll have all freshmen so making sure that all of them are baptized before they leave my small group will be a big priority for me.

Question: Do you talk about baptism in your small groups? Have you had a one-on-one discussion with students in your group about getting baptized?

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

Don’t ignore the sensitive topics

April 30, 2012 by 1 Comment

Steven: There are a few times in my group when my co-leader and I have realized we need to bring up something that’s a little more sensitive. It’s one of those discussions that you don’t really want to have at first, but you know it has to happen. When you realize you need to start the ball rolling on the discussion, you know some things have to look different for it to be successful. For us, some of those topics have been sex, pornography, issues with parents, and a few others. There are a few things we’ve done to be as successful as possible:

  • PRAY PRAY PRAY – The best thing you can do to prepare is seek out God’s direction. Know where God wants to lead your students and how he wants to speak through you.
  • Consider changing your location – In my small group, we meet at one of the guy’s houses every week. When we’ve planned these sensitive discussions, we try to go somewhere else that we won’t be overheard. This puts all the guys way more at ease and helps them be more open.
  • Have a game plan – Don’t go into something like this without having some kind of plan set out ahead of time. If you go in blind, it could end up making things more awkward and then you flounder around looking for ways to move forward.
  • Give students and parents an “out” – If we know there’s something coming up that’s out of the ordinary, we give parents (and our students) a couple weeks heads-up. This gives them an opportunity to opt-out if they’re not comfortable with what we’re discussing.

If you’re in student ministry, junior high or high school, a sensitive topic is going to come up at some point. Don’t freak out, don’t run away from it, and have some kind of plan.

Matt: I think a lot of conversations go unspoken and  lessons go untaught because student ministry leaders are not sure how to begin the discussion, they are afraid they might do more harm than good or they just don’t “want to go there.” As leaders we need to sometimes have the tough conversations and we need to be there for students. It might be an uncomfortable lesson, but we probably have students who want to have that discussion and they have not communicated that to you out of fear of what someone might think of them. We’re doing them a disservice if we avoid the tough topics. I start out with small talk and get students into their comfort zone (that might be a different place for each student, keep that in mind) and once I feel like they are communicating and ready to be open and honest I just go for it.

Steven has listed some great suggestions above. I would also recommend that you keep your composure whatever students tell you. It’s during these tough topics that small groups can get “real” and students will  speak from the heart. If they tell you something that might be shocking or something you’re not expecting your reaction to that will either keep the conversation going or shut it down. Just roll with it, don’t show alarm. Wait until the time is right to point out when students are doing wrong and do it in a loving, biblical way.

The biggest mistake we can make is NOT have a conversation or present a lesson because it’s a sensitive topic.

Filed Under: Counseling, Parent ministry, Small Groups, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

When students stop communicating…with parents

April 24, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Yesterday Steven and I posted about how to deal with students who stop communicating with you. Tonight I had a phone call from a parent of one of my high school small group students and she felt her son had stopped communicating with her. She asked if I would reach out to him and try to help him with a situation he is dealing with.

I’m always willing to help parents out but I always make sure that I go over a few points with them first:

  • They are the authority in their student’s life, not me. I’m happy to help but I need to work WITH them, not IN PLACE OF them.
  • I don’t want to go against their wishes but sometimes I need to talk with a parent and get them to compromise a little bit in the beginning. Small steps early on will lead to big steps later.
  • I always offer to pray with the parents. This particular situation I’m helping this family out with now is affecting the whole family, not just the student in my small group.
  • In this case I’m going to need some help from Scripture to show this student that what he is doing wrong is pointed out in the Bible as not a way that Christians behave and represent themselves. Always arm yourself with Scripture before you delve into a problem with a student.
  • Have a list ready for a student. These are the things you are going to talk about and where your student needs to change. When you give them a piece of paper to look at and take with them it makes the problem real and gives them something physical to look at and to work on.
  • Pray! Pray! Pray! Don’t try to take on a students problems, especially one that is affecting an entire family, and try to fix everything yourself. Ask God to give you direction and the right words at the right time to work through a problem.

Everything we put in the post yesterday also applies to this situation. We didn’t intend for this to be a two-part post but that’s what’s happened in this case. I’ve learned to roll with what God hands to me!

 

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

Keeping confidentiality — Part 2

April 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment

This is the second part of a team post on confidentiality. If you haven’t already, make sure you check out yesterday’s post from Steven to get the second viewpoint on this topic.

I’m a huge believer in relational ministry and one of the fundamental things that is necessary for building a relationship with a student is trust. Students have to be able to trust that things they tell you won’t be repeated. If you expect students to open up to you and talk about their lives and what is going on not only out front but behind the scenes, they have to trust you. Period. A couple things come to mind here as I write this. First, no matter what a student tells you, don’t act shocked. If you do it will shut them down. I’ve had students talk to me about situations that have made what little hair I have stand on end. But I can’t show that. I have to sit there stone faced and not jump up and shout, “Wow that’s really bad!”

Second, students need to know that what they tell you will not be repeated to other students or other small group leaders. I have had situations where I’ve wanted to consult with another leader to get some advice on how to handle a situation, but I always ask the permission of the student first. I’ll let him know that I want to talk to so and so and is that okay with him. On occasion Steven or I will write about a situation with one of the guys in our small groups. Before we do that we either ask the student’s permission or we make the post so generic that there is no way that someone could figure out who we are talking about.

The only reason I would ever violate the trust between myself and a student is if he told me something where I thought he or someone else might get physically hurt. If you’re in that situation you need to tell the student that unfortunately you need to talk to a parent because you feel that your student or someone else might be in danger. It’s also at this point that you need to consult with parents and with your student ministry staff if you are a volunteer.

I want my students to think of me as a “vault.” I want them to feel completely open and comfortable talking to me about anything. I want them to know I’m here for them and to know they can come to me for help no matter what. I want them to be open and feel safe talking about any subject during our small group time. If you don’t have a student’s trust, that will never happen.

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