4 Tips for Preparing Youth Group Lessons
Sharing the Gospel and introducing students to Jesus is one of the ultimate goals of youth ministry. As youth leaders, we do this through a relationship with our students, in small groups, as we disciple the youth in our lives, and in sharing the lesson during regular youth group and youth events. Here are four tips to help you prepare your lesson and effectively share the Good News of Jesus week after week.
Spend time with God
Read the Bible and pray. It’s as simple as that. Your relationship with God is important and it should not be neglected-not even for ministry.
It’s easy to slip into turning time with God into a youth group planning session, but you must faithfully pursue your own relationship with God and your own study of God’s Word outside of your youth ministry. A healthy ministry starts with a healthy leader and a healthy leader is one who walks daily with the Lord.
Plan ahead
Whether you’re a busy church staff member with many people needing your attention or you're a youth leader with a 9-5 job, it can be tempting to push off planning the youth group lesson until the last minute, but I encourage you to plan ahead. Trying to plan out a quick lesson the night (or hour) before is not effective and, honestly, it’s just too stressful.
Make a list of your goals and priorities for the youth ministry and allow them to help guide you as you plan. Keep a notepad on your phone where you can jot down lesson ideas and teaching series that you come across and, then, set aside time to pray and plan. At Thrive Resources, we have a library of teaching series to help you save time planning while still delivering quality lessons.
You can just start by planning a month in advance and, eventually, you may find that you want to plan your whole ministry year in advance. A simple framework of lesson topics or teaching series will actually help you save time and stay organized.
Use one main point
Keep it simple! Use one main point and focus on one main verse or passage. Middle school and high school students have short attention spans and high energy levels, so don’t feel like you need to deliver a stirring, long-winded message with several points.
You’ll probably find that the longer you speak, the less your students will listen.
Just try to simply share the truth from the Word of God in a direct and specific way. Drive that one main point home!
Use theme nights to your advantage
Theme nights or special events with costumes, games, and prizes are fun and exciting. These fun events give you a reason to decorate your youth space and gives you something exciting to promote on social media, but these events also serve as a great opportunity to deliver a short lesson that turns the theme into one giant reminder of a powerful message from Scripture.
For example, our alien night is a fun, easy-to-execute theme night that can be used as a special event or to add a layer of fun to a normal youth group night. Alien night is not just about dressing up like aliens and playing fun games. At the heart of the night is 1 Peter 2:11, “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul”. The whole night is about helping students remember who they are and their purpose in this world.
Theme nights are a great way to get your students excited about God’s Word and a great way to get the message you’re delivering to stick with them.
We understand that those in youth ministry have a lot on their plate. That is why we’ve created resources like our teaching series or special events like Alien Night. We help do the planning and organizing so that youth leaders can lead thriving youth groups and focus on what really matters.