How To Draw Youth To Church

How can your church help youth claim a vital organized religion? No question is more critical to the future of the church. Here are 50 Ways your congregation can strength ministry with teens and their families.

Award the spirituality of youth

Appreciate and validate youth every bit persons of sacred worth with legitimate spiritual needs and responses.
Empathise young persons as participants in ministry, not objects of ministry.
Shake off stereotypes of youth every bit irreligious, rebellious and difficult.
Don't brand young people be like you before they can be similar Jesus.
Don't guess at immature people's needs. Solicit input and feedback from teens themselves, not just parents and adults leaders. Invite them to suggest ways the church tin can help them grow in faith.
Appreciate that youth ministry building is more than youth group. Encourage youth to be involved in all aspects of church life.
Advocate for youth.

Equip parents to nurture their children's faith

Know that parental influence is the primary gene determining the religious delivery of youth, fifty-fifty for older teens.
Back up faith germination in the parents of youth. Getting parents involved and serious about their own organized religion is the best way to get youth involved and serious.
Start a report group for parents of teens aimed at helping them understand how to nurture their teenagers' spirituality.
Provide resource for practicing and discussing organized religion at home — for praying together equally a family unit, for observing Christian holidays, and conversing about faith issues.
Consider an intergenerational format for Christian educational activity that has youth and parents written report together.
Provide support groups and resource on family concerns and kid-raising problems.
Teach parents the importance of merely hanging out with their kids.

"Get real" with Christian Teaching for youth

Inquire if your youth Sunday Schoolhouse curriculum is seriously addressing the questions kids are actually asking.
Honestly accost issues related to sexuality. Offer a first-rate program on human sexuality to which parents would want to send their kids.
Recognize that word and chat are essential to faith germination.
Employ current events as word topics.
Requite teens permission to ask questions and talk about their doubts.
Empower youth to rewrite hymns and prayers in ways that are meaningful to them.
Get acquainted with the music kids spend their time listening to. Assistance youth make connections betwixt their music and faith. Allow them to detect their voice and worship God in their own musical languages and styles.
Articulate the bones tenets of the faith conspicuously and often.
Emphasize experience-centered learning. Faith must be experienced before information technology can be articulated. Experience is oft more than important than data about faith.
Provide training in spiritual disciplines — prayer, Scripture reading, acts of mercy. Emphasize the practices of faith.
Integrate "service learning" into Christian education to teach discipleship. Involve youth in planning and leading mission activities.

Provide excellent adult leadership for youth activities

Recruit adult leaders for youth activities who are knowledgeable, committed, spiritually mature, and constructive in communicating with young people. Don't assume that a young adult is necessarily best suited for the job.
Provide training for youth teachers and leaders, particularly on discussion and listening skills.
Perform required groundwork checks for volunteers and staff working with youth. Implement policies and procedures to prevent child abuse.
Invest in youth ministry. A meaningful commitment to reach youth must be reflected in your budget and staffing decisions and the delivery of the pastor's time.

Make worship meaningful for young persons

Requite youth meaningful and visible roles as worship participants.
Make youth worship experience-based. The elements of worship should all connect to a central message that causes the worshiper to make a connexion with God.
Use popular songs, movie clips, or poems to connect the message with the broader civilisation.
Have youth write their own liturgies and prayers.

Create a sense of belonging for youth

Youth ministry is about relationships. Relationships are more than important than programs. Young persons are seeking a sense of belonging.
Strive to integrate youth into the church building as a whole. Youth programs should equip and empower youth as congregational participants, not isolate or "ghettoize" them.
Exist present for kids. Listen.
Kids need and value stability, routines, and ritual, even if they don't act like information technology.
Combat cliquishness. Reinforce inclusiveness and acceptance of peers.
Build grouping cohesiveness with retreats and mission trips providing opportunities for sustained interaction.

Cultivate competence in youth

Build a sense of accomplishment amid young persons with challenging music, drama, or service activities. The ability to develop "competence" is ane of the hooks connecting kids to church.
Requite youth real responsibilities.
Extend leadership opportunities to as many youth as possible. Give them an active role in the leadership and decision making of the church.
Start a youth-led worship service.

Strive for effective Youth Fellowship

Be consistent with your meeting times and place. Coming together at the church is frequently preferable to coming together in dissimilar homes considering it is a well-known location and "neutral" territory.
Divide junior high and senior high youth if possible. Older teens volition tend to fall manner from groups with many younger kids.
Involve the youth in planning all their activities.
Balance recreation, study, devotion and fellowship.
Schedule a "big event" every month to go far easy for youth to invite their friends.
Enlist parents as allies. Their support is critical.
Accept articulate policies nearly behavioral boundaries and subject field.

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