New youth leaders can often feel a mix of overwhelmed, excited, and a bit lost as they try to navigate leading young people for the first time. This feeling can sometimes remain for a little while too.
Continuing to develop the foundations of youth ministry along with onboarding and checking in with new youth leaders beyond their first week can be extremely important in helping form effective youth leaders.
At the recent PY Encourage Sydney Day on Saturday the 15th of June, Koh Saito, Pastoral Assistant at Ashfield Presbyterian and High School SRE teacher, presented a training session for new youth leaders.
Koh shares, “My goal was to consider how we can encourage and equip these youth leaders who might have stepped up this year for the first time or maybe just in the last year or so, to feel confident in their role.”
As such, Koh shared the foundations and essentials of youth ministry, along with an encouragement to continue in this important ministry.
Foundations of youth ministry
Youth ministry can take various forms at different churches depending on size, demographics, socio-economic status, volunteer availability, etc. But at its core, Koh shares that youth ministry has four key elements.
We can help new youth leaders to develop an understanding and appreciation for these elements while channelling their mixture of feelings into being teachable and faithfully preparing each week.
Youth ministry is…
- Outward focused as seen most clearly in the Great Commission in Matthew 28 – go and make disciples of all nations. This is a great motivation for reaching the youth in our surrounding suburbs who don’t yet know Jesus.
- Downward focused as seen in Psalm 78 where the psalmist speaks about telling the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord so that they in turn would tell the generation after them, and again the generation after them. The goal here is to have generations of Christians who trust the Lord and don’t walk foolishly like their ancestors.
- All about people. 1 Thessalonians 2:8 speaks about the delight of sharing both the gospel and life together because of our great love for others. Similarly, Hebrews 10:24-25 urges us to spur one another on toward love and good deeds and to not give up meeting together.
- Helped by programs. A polished program is not the goal, but creating structure and order is necessary in ensuring that the building up of people and relationships is prioritised. In Acts 6:1-7 we see the number of disciples was increasing, so the need to distribute the work of God in an organised way increased. This is echoed further in passages like 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 where the qualifications and tasks for elders, overseers, and deacons are listed.
The scale below is a diagnostic tool to help you reflect on how you think about youth ministry, not tell you how you ought to think about youth ministry.
Where do you personally fit on this scale? Where does your youth ministry (or others in your team) fit on this scale?
Essentials of youth ministry
When considering what to include in the youth ministry activities that you undertake, the following five things are essential to consider.
- Word, Prayer and Fellowship (Acts 2:42, 6:3) – If I asked a teenager at your church “what’s your youth group like?”, will they mention God’s Word, prayer and/or community?
- Love (1 Corinthians 13:1-3) – “… if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” We need to deeply love and care for the youth that have been entrusted to us.
- Doctrine and Character (1 Timothy 4:16) – As leaders we need to stand firmly on the Word, seeking training, accountability, community and growth, so that we may model this for the youth we lead as well.
- Faithfulness (1 Corinthians 4:1-5) – Faithful to God, the youth leadership team, and the youth entrusted to you.
- Within the context of the church (Psalm 78) – Ongoing partnership with parents, relating on Sundays, creating spaces and opportunities for relationship between youth and other generations of people at church.
A final encouragement for the new youth leader from Koh…
“Your work in the Lord is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58). Take some time to reflect on God’s faithfulness. Do you have regular youth leaders meetings? Take time, each time you meet, to reflect on how God has worked in your youth group recently. Pause and give thanks to God for all he has done without getting swept away by the constancy of ministry. As J. I. Packer said: “The Puritans lived slowly enough to think deeply about God.”
If you would like to chat about how to welcome and train up new youth leaders more, feel free to reach out to us at admin@pynsw.org.au
