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13 Things You Should Never Do in Youth Ministry
Tired of all these youth ministry blogs (this one included) telling you all the things you should be doing? Me too!
Who died and made us experts that we get to tell everybody else the best ways to recruit volunteers, evangelize youth, plan events, manage time, and on and on and on? So, in the spirit of knocking us all down a peg or two, let me share with you my list of things you should never do in youth ministry. Of course, I have personally done every single one of these!
1) Never use college drinking games for icebreakers even though you use soda instead of alcohol (and no excuses just because you didn't know the game was based on a college drinking game!)
2) Never call off a lock-in (or similar event) because only a few teens sign up/show up unless you want to send a message that those few don't really matter.
3) Never suggest to the youth that the adult part of the church just isn't as cool as the youth ministry part (unless you want teens to run screaming from the Church when they turn 18).
4) Never ask a parent to be a youth ministry leader or chaperone without getting permission from their teen FIRST! (or else you may get the parent to show up at the event...but not their teen.)
5) Never allow teens unfettered access to the church building for a video/photography project unless you find out the subject matter first (which is preferable to finding it out after the images hit Facebook or YouTube and the senior pastor is giving you a call.)
6) Never say "I promise" to youth unless you really mean "I promise."
7) Never drive anywhere alone with one of your youth (unless you are trying to escape from the T Rex that has just flattened the church building and even then the teenager should ride in the back seat!)
8) Never assume you know the sexual orientation of your youth, their parents or family members.
9) Never call youth after 10:00 PM on a school night unless you want to incur the wrath of their parents (besides, this is the time when they are supposed to be in their rooms, pretending to study, while they talk to their friends on the cellphone.)
10) Never show a movie before previewing the whole thing (a mistake I should have learned from in my teens when my youth leaders showed us "An American Werewolf in London" -- sex scenes and all!)
11) Never assume that your youth group members are keeping their parents "in the loop" about what you are doing in your ministry.
12) Never forget that, once you add them to your "friends list" on Facebook, your youth can see everything you are posting (unless you can figure the ends-and-outs of how to block them from reading your politically charged rants or the photos of you from the high school glee club.)
13) Never buy into the lie that just because the other youth ministries in town have more teens that you must be doing wrong. Just keep loving your youth and modeling, as best you can, Christ's way of peace, justice, and grace.
Anybody have any more to add? (Remember, to be fair, they should be things you've actually done yourself!)
--Brian
10 comments:
I have done a number of items on your list as well, definitely a good list.
Never encourage youth to break rules their parents have set, regardless of how foolish you feel those rules to be.
(Proper path is to deal with those rules with the parents and explain why you will be doing something different.)
Amen, Jay. In fact,undermining parents is a good "never do this" thing to add to the list.
How about never sacrifice an animal in the church...unless you have permission from the janitor?
Ooo...BIG number 7...I got a close friend right now that's getting burned real bad because of this one...
Uh KaGe...I think we need to hear the details on the "sacrificing an animal" story!
KaGe-
I think you need to post the story of this sacrifice on your blog!! I am dying to hear it...
agreed that #7 is a good piece 'never do that' advice, but one that handcuffs us in a lot of ways. Grr... it frustrates me to no end that I cannot pick up a youth and go play racquetball or whatever.
I'm a youth leader, I'm from Brazil. I think that's a very good "never do this" list to youth ministry.
Overall I can say the youth ministry around the world need upright leaders.
Kenny Hard - SYOH Blogs
I would take kenny's post and actually add it to the list.
"Never bring a leader on board in your ministry order to minister to that leader."
(Know your leader's character and ability to lead before giving them access to the kids.)
Obviously this is all within reason, no leader is perfect and you can set the bar too high, but you should at least have a bar to set. Moreover we should minister to our leaders, that is our job. However we should not bring them on board simply to minister to them.
I brought a young man on board once for that reason... major backfire.
I would have to say out of all of those rules, the most important is actually 13. In the past i have been easily discouraged when I hear about the numbers of other youth groups, or discouraged by the fact I get 4 kids out to an event that I thought was awesome. I am still learning how to process this but the shift from numbers based merit is hard. Remember Christ invested in 12 disciples when he got really big groups around him he often slipped away.
Great list and we always need to be reminded. One thing I would add is to be careful about giving advice to teens, especially if it involves some sort of conflict or other situation with their parents.
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