How To Get Teenagers To Serve
Neal: We’re back again.
Jono: Yes, two weeks in a row. I’m proud of us.
Neal: This is great.
Jono: It is great. Mark was gonna join us, but he is at the dentist, so hopefully we can get him in here next week.
Neal: Casting Crowns.
Jono: He’s getting a crown, literally having a crown casted.
Neal: Yes.
Jono: That is the irony. So, we were having a good discussion on serving. We thought we would share a minute of that with you guys. Neal had some good stuff to say about that.
Neal: Yeah, one of the things that we started talking to our leaders about this year is seeing “whens” in your students and seeing spiritual growth. One of the things we talked about was how unnatural it is for a student to serve and how nothing in them typically says “Let me go do something for someone else.” So when you have kids that are doing that, they are sensitive to something. The Lord is doing something in their hearts. It is a win. Celebrate it, but tap into it. And I know one of the things that we are talking about, looking ahead, is developing leaders, but I would say that the kids that are serving are probably prime candidates for kids that are going to be leaders or are already leaders in your student ministry, whether they realize it or not.
Jono: No doubt. I think, and we have talked about this over the years, and I think we have probably both said this to parents and our leaders, but the students that we see graduate from high school and go off to college and not lose their minds, the ones that continue to walk with the Lord, the ones that go on to have a pretty solid marriage and keep their faith and not disappear from the local church, are the ones who were serving in the youth group. That’s not always the case, but what we see over and over again is the ones who keep walking with the Lord weren’t just on the fringes when they were in high school. They were in. They saw the value. They felt a call to serve, and so, I think, if you could get your students serving, that just sets them on a path of serving and connection to the local church and really changes the direction of their lives, no doubt.
Neal: One of our goals is not attained; we haven’t hit it.
One of our goals is we want all kids on a mission trip by the time they graduate. We want all kids engaged in their local community by the time they graduate. This is a game changer.
Jono: I know that when we have thrown out serving opportunities and whenever I have shared that with the parents, there have been more times than I can count to where some of the families that didn’t really value Wednesday night youth group or Sunday morning Bible study, you know, they were there just kind of average once every month or so. They weren’t pushing their kids. If there was anything that came up on Wednesday night, there kid was at that and not youth group, but whenever I threw out “Hey, we’re gonna serve,” some of them were so frustrated with how selfish their teenager was that they said, “My kid will be there.”
Neal: Give them a rake.
Jono: Yeah, yeah. They’re like, “I want my little brat out there serving.” You know. So, “Here, youth pastor, fix that for me.” So, that’s not ideal, but you will see parents who may not see the value of your weekly youth ministry program, you know playing games and stuff like that. Even though we know that serious good stuff happens, they may not see it. But when you start taking their student to serve and help them make their teenager less selfish, a lot of parents will get in on that.
Neal: Yeah, and, you know, you can involve the parents to help you, too. Get the parents in on it. And that’s a whole other conversation.
Jono: That is always my first question when they come to me, and they’re like, “Hey, my kid’s gonna be there.” I’m like, “Hey, well, she can’t fit in my car, so could you drive, too? I don’t have enough drivers.”
Neal: And we probably should stop after this, but think about this idea. We started talking about this, how backwards our student serving can be when our strategy is get a parent to drop off a child to go serve, because eventually that child grows up to be a parent who then drops off their child to go serve, and if they’re not doing it together, you’re only going to produce the same thing. But what would be far more valuable to that kid than just being dropped off is watching their mom or dad lead the way in serving. That’s a whole other conversation.
Jono: That’s a good goal. So, all that to say, going back to one of the things we mentioned before, we kind of want to talk over the next few months about developing a student leadership team, so this whole idea of serving, again, that’s kind of your….
Neal: Your core.