Giving youth pastors the tools they need to make and shape disciples.

Stop “Surviving” Your Youth Meeting

Some youth workers don’t like their main youth meetings. In fact, preparing for their meetings make them anxious. For some, its the pressure to “get it right.” For other youth workers, they have a casual “God will do it” mentality and do not pour a ton of effort into their meeting. This attitude could be be read as apathetic or lazy or uber confident.

Another group of youth workers are doing their dead level best to have the best meeting possible where God is the center of it all, yet, there is lack of preparedness, organization or vision that keeps the youth meetings from being all that they could be.

Surviving the youth meeting means trying to get through the meeting at hand with as few challenges or problems. The survival mentality sees each meeting as an obstacle course to be navigated instead of a foundation to be built upon.

You see, the meeting is going to happen whether we like it or not, whether we are prepared for it or not. Googling free youth ministry lessons is not a strategy for a successful youth ministry, it’s a survivalist mentality.

Consider this, our main youth meeting is where

  • most of our students will come to know the Lord
  • most student will recommit their lives to Jesus
  • students will build life long relationships
  • use their gifts and abilities to serve God
  • students gather for worship

and it is where we are judged the most.

  • Students want them to be fun
  • Parents want them to be safe
  • Pastors want them to be packed

Because so much is involved and because for so many youth workers, so much is riding on this one meeting, shouldn’t we be giving it our best?

We need to see every youth meeting as one of 52. You’ll meet with your kids close to 52 meetings a year, minus meeting canceled due to weather and holidays. You can choose to survive meeting to meeting or you can choose to see 52 meetings as a movement.

The goal of being prepared and putting the best youth meeting together possible is to build a framework for God to move through. Every youth meeting should be designed to bring God glory, draw students to Him and build a community called the Body of Christ. Fun included.

You may be thinking I am trying to make a case creating a perfect meeting, I am not. There is no such thing as a perfect meeting, there is such a thing as a prepared meeting. Our students aren’t looking for a perfect meeting, they’re looking for an excellent meeting that is taking them some where.

I would make the case that many student leave the church, not because they do not believe in God or love Jesus, they’re leaving because the meetings are sloppy, unprepared and aren’t taking them anywhere. Crossing off a youth meeting and saying “only 51 more to go” is not a what students want. If students are being told that Jesus changes lives and He has big plans for them, we have a responsibility to design meetings that reflect that.

You can see a youth meeting as something to be survived or you can see 52 meetings and see a movement.

Our youth meetings should be vehicles of spiritual growth. Youth meetings should be like planes that are taking kids somewhere. Too many youth meetings are stuck on the tarmac and we keep getting on the speaker saying. “Just be patient, we’ll take off in a little while”.

We can change our meetings into movements.

I created a resource that can help with this, it’s called My Youth Meeting Playbook. My Youth Meeting Playbook is a collection of 52 youth meeting prep sheets with every part of a standard youth meeting you can of.

  • your purpose
  • your topic
  • you text
  • your opener
  • your closer
  • how to involve students
  • how to involved adults
  • the wow factor
  • an evaluation box

I have also written over a dozen articles where I challenge you to think a little deeper about each element.

You’re going to have a meeting, so why not make it the best you can possibly make it? Get your Youth Meeting Playbook by clicking the button below and start turning your meetings into a movement.

Buy my product

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