3 tips on running great youth ministry meetings.

Learn how to run great meetings for your youth ministry.

Patrick Lencioni wrote a book called Death by Meeting. The title works because everyone has felt the life slowly sap away from them as they sit in a long, boring and seemingly unnecessary meeting. But is it possible for our youth ministry meetings – in particular the ones we have before and after our gathering - to be a source of joy, encouragement and motivation for the ministry of discipling young people to know love and follow Jesus for life?

Yes!

Here are some suggestions to try:

Let your vision drive your meeting.

The vision for your youth ministry is probably something like “making whole hearted disciples” or “making disciples who make disciples” or “reaching the lost and maturing the saints”. Whatever the wording, the biblical vision of discipling young people is the central thing you do. It’s what you want to see!

Let that vision drive your meeting.

It’s easy to get caught up in logistics, allocating roles and all the exact details of the intricate game you’re pulling together but all those things are part of your program to serve the greater vision of discipling young people. So why not make that vision (and the goals associated with it) the focus of your meetings?

At a pre meeting that might look like preparing for discipling young people. For example:

• Talking about, planning and praying about opportunities to help young people to grow as disciples of Jesus.

• Talking with co leaders about how the main teaching might land in the lives of individual youth.

• Asking God that he will grow young people to know, love, and follow Jesus.

At a meeting after youth, that might look like reflecting with thankfulness on the discipleship opportunities you had. For example:

• Ask the question, “Where did you see young people living out their faith tonight?”

•   Share and celebrate when young people had significant moments of growth in discipleship.

• Reflect intentionally on areas of growth for individual youth.

 Make sure everyone knows what’s expected of them.

The most helpful piece of advice I have ever received about meetings was this – every item on the agenda should contain a verb. Verbs – doing words (for people who, like me, who were never taught grammar at school!) -  ensure people know what’s expected of them in meetings.

Are we having a 15-minute detailed explanation of the games for tonight? Or are we just hearing the names of the games and allocating any last-minute roles. Having verbs in agendas transform an agenda from this:

• Games

• Teaching Time

• Discussion groups

• Prayer

To this:

• List the games for the night and allocate any final jobs.

• Explain the main point of the teaching time.

• Co leaders discuss specific application points for youth in discussion groups.

• Co leaders pray for discussion groups.

Every meeting should have an agenda (even if it’s not written down) and you should make absolutely clear what you’re asking people to do. This will save time and help people focus on the most important things.

Focus on outputs over inputs.

Feedback is important. It helps us to get better at what we do. But if left untethered, it can put undue pressure on our inputs to ministry.

When we pour over every detail of a youth gathering it can make youth teams overly task focussed, rather than discipleship focussed – focussed on what they are putting into the ministry rather than how young people are growing as whole hearted disciples of Jesus.

How can keep the focus on discipleship? On the outputs of ministry?

At a meeting before youth:

• Spend time thinking, planning and praying about what next steps young people might take at youth this week.

• Wherever possible reduce talk about logistics. Expect people to prepare for this before youth and to communicate only what people need to know.

At a meeting after youth:

• Make sure you share and reflect with thankfulness on what God did in the heads, hearts and lives of the youth. How were they impacted by Christ tonight? How have they been growing over time?

• Consider how much time is necessary for feedback:

Program feedback can be done occasionally rather than every week.

Skills feedback (talks, discussion groups, mc etc) can be done at another time with a smaller group.

Feedback can be structured in such a way that it doesn’t dominate your whole meeting.

Youth ministry meetings can be more encouraging, motivating and interesting.

Which one of these tips can you implement in the coming term?