10 Changes I Had to Make in Youth Ministry

I spent 13 years of my life in student ministry and I loved every single one of those years. As a student pastor, you get a front row seat to watch the Holy Spirit work in magnificent and sweeping ways in the lives of your students. Yet, it wasn’t just the students that God was molding and shaping during that time.

I learned a lot from my time as a student pastor and these are the ten changes that I made in the midst of ministry to how I shepherded students:

1) Praying more for and with my students – Ministry in any capacity is dependent on the power of God to bring about fruit in the lives of others. In my early years of ministry I was more focused on doing ministry than communing with the Father. The most important shift I made in ministry was depending on the work of God in my students’ lives rather than depending on my own grit and grind. Take time away from the to-do list and take time to abide in the Father (John 15:4).

2) Get parents more involved – Student ministry in the 2000s, and even today, placed a great emphasis on having an environment that was cool and comfortable for students – which led to keeping parents at the margins of the ministry. It didn’t take long for me to see that keeping the students’ primary disciplemaker (their mom & dad) away from the ministry was a colossal mistake. From then on, I was vigilant about regular communication with them, resourcing them with family discipleship resources and using them heavily in our weekly gatherings and events.

3) Preach robust sermons – There is always the outside pressure to keep sermons short (~15 min) and simplistic in order to reach kids. Yet in their everyday life they could sit for 6 hours to blow through a Netflix series and they take honors/advanced placement classes in school. They can handle a 30 minute sermon built on the meat of the Word (Heb 5:12-14). Youth will be hampered in their growth in Christ unless a student pastor is faithful to provide robust sermons for them.

4) Preach expositionally – It is easy for us as student pastors to build topical sermon series on things like friendships, dating or decision making. It is quite another challenge to preach expositionally through books of the Bible. Yet in doing so, I saw two massive benefits for my students. First, they began to see Scripture as one coherent declaration of God and His gospel and not 66 unrelated books of the Bible. Second, we ended up dealing with weighty topics – racism, depression, spiritual gifts, sexual identity – by simply preaching what was in the text.

5) Be on mission WITH them – We are people who learn best by having aspects of our life and faith modeled (1 Cor 11:1). For students, this means we present them with missional opportunities to go on mission trips and serve those who don’t look like them or have their same socio-economic advantages. There would be times when I would meet a student for a meal at a restaurant and share the gospel with someone there so the student could see real world evangelism. Give students a chance to see and repeat when it comes to the mission of God.

6) Invest in adult leaders – A healthy student ministry is only as good as the leadership is – and having a leadership pipeline in student ministry is a must. I’d invest time every week to pour into college students, young adults and parents in the ministry in order to invest in and raise up the future leadership of the ministry itself. Jesus poured into 12 disciples so that the gospel could reach the nations, which is a clear picture of what any ministry should prioritize: more workers for the harvest (Matt 9:37).

7) Remember that fun is important to them – Even though I was a student pastor in my 20s, I struggled to devise games and fun events for the students. It was easy for me to write off doing fun things in my early years of ministry because I was simply not good at it, but that meant that I wasn’t serving my students well in what mattered to them. I had to ask other youth pastors I knew for solid game and event ideas, but I was able to give my students the space to be kids and have fun.

8) Get students involved in the greater life of the church – The temptation to run student ministry as a silo ministry is massive. Yet, that’s not what is best for the church as a whole or for the students as individuals. I was passionate about handing students off to other areas of the church for them to serve and grow. His meant that the band kids were involved with the music pastor or the girls that loved to babysit were involved in kids ministry. They weren’t as involved in the student ministry specifically but they were deeply rooted in the church itself. 

9) Seek out friends – With ministry dominating so much of my time and attention, making friends was not very easy. It was honestly easier to focus on ministry stuff than friendship and it led me to being lonely, which about 55% of pastors can attest to.  It took deliberate effort and scheduling to make those friendships come to life but they breathed so much life into me. 

10) Create a repeatable discipleship plan – I thought it was solely my job to make disciples of the students. Yet, it did not take long for me to realize that I could not do that all on my own. I turned my attention to discipling 2 leaders and 2 high schoolers at a time and then when they got to a place where they were rooted in Christ and ready – I would send them to others in the ministry for them to make disciples. This way the burden on me was eased while scores of students and leaders were growing in Christ and fulfilling the Great Comission.

What about you? Anything you would add to the list?