Are Your Students Serving?

One of the greatest things about being involved in a normative sized church (one that is below 125 for Sunday morning worship) is the opportunity to serve and to have young people serve. While larger churches provide many things, service opportunities can be more limited. Students can often be relegated to non-serving roles when excellence ought to be the primary concern.

During my high school years at Springdale Missionary Baptist Church, the church gave me some opportunities to serve. I shared a devotional before our Bible Training Service (basically Sunday night Sunday school), sang in the choir, provided special music, and was the Song Leader the summer after my high school graduation. Did I do those things perfectly? Not even close. I read the devotional more often than I “shared” it. My song leading was weird and awkward during that summer. In general, I was young and stupid. And while I am sure that my stupidity probably annoyed a few, the church, as a whole, continued to love me and help me get better at those things.

Are we allowing our students the opportunity to serve and fail? That can be hard because we want our services and ministries to go off without a hitch. We want to leave a good impression with visitors. We are afraid that our students’ mistakes may reflect poorly on us. If we aren’t careful, we will care more about what others think than the messy process of making disciples. Let me encourage you to embrace the mess. See the mistakes as opportunities for your students to grow.

If you and your church have drawn a hard line about students and service, I would encourage you to reconsider it. Find ways for your students to belong through service. Let’s consider some easy steps to get your students serving more.

1. Encourage families to serve together. 

Whether it is church work days or outreach opportunities, the family unit is a great one to encourage service. It pulls everyone into the mix. Annually, we have a Fall Fun Fest here at Calvary Baptist Church of Fayetteville. It is a great way for us to show love to our neighborhood, but we couldn’t do it without the help of everyone here. Our LIFEgroups are asked to provide food for a booth, and there are a number of other ways to serve. Our families with youth group age students get involved by helping their LIFEgroups and serving as support staff. I am so thankful for these families.

We like to segregate in the church. That may sound harsh, but it is the truth. Too often, we want the students to hang out and serve with the other students. We place the children with the children and the adults with the adults. However, we forget that we are working with family systems not just individuals. If we can get mom and dad serving, our students will often follow. This doesn’t just happen though. We need to be intentional and creative in the process. It may take planning a “family ministry" event to get them moving in the right direction. 

2. Give your students freedom to serve. 

Recently, one of my students came up to me about our church website. He has been quietly working on a redesign. He has helped us out in the past by creating QR codes for us. He loves the “techie” stuff even more than I do. He asked if this is something that he could do. I was encouraged by what he was working on and loved seeing him want to invest in our church. I had two ways to respond. I could have said, “No.” That is something we leave to the adults and paid professionals. Or, we could encourage and help make his gift of service one that is useful for the church and helps him grow. Really, I wanted to say, “Of course, you can make our website better (for free),” but his dad was standing there.

Do your students feel free to embrace service, or is it locked behind a gate of some sort? It is important to be a people of excellence, but we never wish to dissuade our students from bringing their gifts of service to the church. If they still have progress to make in their competency, work with them. Help them grow.

3. Look for ministry opening where students can train, as well as serve. 

My church is blessed with not one, but two Dahler girls. They are both in college now, but they both desired to serve well before that. Kaitlyn and Averee both served in our children’s church for many years, but are now a regular part of our tech team. Kaitlyn, a senior at the University of Arkansas, has been running our presentation software for years. I would put her up against anyone. She is outstanding. She learned and grew in her area of service to the point where now our lead pastor and I want her back there all the time. To be honest, if she has to be gone, we get a little nervous. Averee, Kaitlyn’s younger sister, started training on our sound board before our sound tech, Steve, was called home. She continues to learn and is so faithful to help.

Are these girls perfect? No, but they are getting better all the time. They provide a service to our church that is so valuable. Training is important. Both of these jobs are technical in nature, so it can be even more challenging. However, they continue to work hard to learn and serve. While your church may not have two Dahler girls, you do have plenty of openings where students could be paired with adults where training could happen. I think of children’s church, Sunday school classes, and even greeter roles. Help your students serve, but never forget to train them.

I can’t thank Springdale Church enough for the opportunities they gave me back in the day, and their patience in watching me fail. Think about your own ministry journey. Did someone help you grow in your understanding of service in your church? What did that look like? How are you passing those things on to your children and students? While service is one of the spiritual gifts, God has called us all to serve one another. That means our students need to learn and embrace that truth early. There is nothing quite like the joy of serving in the church and knowing that you are contributing.

Are your students serving? Are you standing in their way or helping them bringing their gifts of service before God?

Questions to Consider

• What was my first entry into service in the church? Who helped me start serving?

• What ministries at our church should our teenagers avoid?

• What age guidelines do we have in place at our church regarding service?

• What is a service project for the community or our church that I could lead our families to serve in together?