Youth Ministry: A Survival Experience

Growing up, I loved to go camping. My family went tent camping for years until we got a pop-up camper. In college, I became friends with a few guys who were also outdoorsy, and together we hiked some of the Appalachian Trail. As I spent time with these friends, I learned a lot about camping and survival, lessons they learned through their parents, Boy Scouts, or the military. After graduating from college, I served as the leader of my church’s college ministry, and we decided to go on a trip to raft the Ocoee River and camp nearby for a few days. The evening after rafting, everyone was tired, ready for showers, to warm up, and get a good meal. My job that evening was to get the fire going and to cook dinner.

Building a fire was something I had done time and time again, but for some reason, this evening, it just was not happening. I tried for almost 30 minutes to get our fire going before it finally started, with a small flame, and began to burn and become a useful fire for cooking. With the fire built, I started preparing what is known as “hobo bags”, tin foil bags with potatoes, corn, sausage, and shrimp inside. While working on the little bags of dinner, I felt a rain drop, then a second, and then came a downpour. One of the college students helped me cover the fire with a tarp and finish up the hobo bags to throw in the coals to cook our dinner. For the rest of the time I was cooking dinner, I had to fight to keep the coals hot enough and the water from putting out the fire. By the time I thought the meal was finished, it had burned the contents of all but one of our dinners. There was no warm dinner, no warm fire, and everyone got cold and wet from the rain. I felt like a failure.

Youth ministry can feel like this a lot of times; it can feel like you are doing everything you know to do, and it still doesn’t go the way you wanted it to. Sometimes you do nothing right, and somehow it all comes together the way it should. As student ministry leaders, we have to be prepared to do what is needed for our ministries to point students to God, and similar to outdoor survival, that means we must prioritize learning a few things: prioritizing needs, facing difficulties, and being able to roll with the punches.

Prioritizing Needs: Learning to Build a Fire

Today it is easy for people to learn how to do just about anything in the moment from simply watching a YouTube video. Need to build a fire? YouTube. Need to change the oil in your car? YouTube. Need to prepare a sermon? YouTube. YouTube and similar resources can be great tools for teaching us. However, they are no replacement for the wisdom that comes from gaining experience from other people. When it comes to camping and being outdoors, one of the most essential skills is being able to build a fire, not only for cooking food, but also for staying warm, boiling water, drying wet clothes, etc. If you’re lost in the woods, a fire can be the difference between survival and death.

In youth ministry, there are essential skills that are just as important as knowing how to build a fire in all kinds of weather and conditions; wet and dry. The answer may be different for each of us, but regardless, there are expertise you need to possess to be able to “build a fire” in student ministry. The most essential skills may be the ability to prepare a sermon, a Bible study lesson, counsel a student, or lead a small group. These may seem trivial when compared to building a fire, but in student ministry, they can be just as vital to the success or failure of our ministry goals.

Each of us probably struggles to find enough time each week to accomplish all we seek to do. During a busy week of visiting students, lunches with leaders, preparing budgets, etc., the important things can sometimes slip into the background. If we set about prioritizing and refining our abilities in the areas of our ministry’s greatest need; the longer we do it, the more easily we can do it with less time spent. This means we must spend time refining our abilities now, so we can be prepared when the busyness of life takes over and we find ourselves with less time.

Each week during the school year, I preach one or two sermons and prepare at least two Bible studies for Sunday morning and Tuesday night. It can be easy for my time to get away, and before I know it, it’s Wednesday, and I’m still working on my sermon research. My week of preparation begins on Thursday. I set aside time to look over the passage at least 3 times on Thursday. Then every day between Thursday and Tuesday, I reread the passage. Over time, I have found resources that I trust that help me work through the text in preparation for Wednesday night. This is my “building the fire” part of ministry. One thing I cannot give away is the midweek sermon. This is a huge responsibility for me in my ministry, so I prioritize getting better at preparing for midweek, knowing that each week, the ministry will ask for time and needs that can take away from preparation.

It may be preparing to counsel a student, lead a small group, or preach a sermon. Whatever it is that only you can do and that you are responsible for, Satan will seek to distract you from it. So, we want to be diligent in getting better at preparing for these times by learning from those who have gone before us and by prioritizing our time on what matters most.

Facing Difficulties: When The Rain Comes

Almost every week, we face difficulties that challenge our prioritization of what matters most. For bi-vocational folks, it could be an extra shift at work that takes time, or someone taking vacation time that makes our workload heavier. For volunteers, life can easily get busy between work and family, and it can prevent us from preparing as we should. For full-time people, office hours may afford opportunities to prepare. However, as any full-time staff member knows, you can schedule your week as you like, but someone always gets sick, needs a visit, has a sudden death in the family, or calls a last-minute staff meeting. All this to say that all of us, from volunteers to full-time staffers, face challenges that can make ministry much more difficult.

I serve as both the student pastor and the church administrator. We are completing a building project that I help oversee. One week, while preparing for my usual student ministry responsibilities, I received a text that a storm had caused a major leak in the new roof. My week shifted from sermon prep to calling contractors and roofers and vacuuming up water to prevent damage. It would have been easy in that moment to throw in the towel, call another leader to teach instead, or lower the level of teaching for midweek. Instead, because I had already made prioritizing preparation a daily habit, I was able to pivot, handle the issue, and still be prepared to teach for midweek. Did it make it more difficult, standing there for five hours on a Monday afternoon, waiting for contractors and roofers to show up? Yes. But it was not so difficult as to undo our normal midweek worship service. 

Instead of seeing the storm and giving up, I had to pivot. Like the story at the beginning of this article, I had to cover the fire. In this example, because I was already doing what I could when I could, making preparation a daily responsibility, not waiting for Wednesday to arrive before I prepared, I was able to address the present storm without losing the fire. This may be a point where we can improve, rather than waiting until tomorrow to do what we can today.

Roll with the Punches: Burnt Food

I hate serving burnt food, especially when all my effort in preparing it was to make it edible for everyone to enjoy. The reality is, sometimes, regardless of all our efforts, things won’t go as we expect. You have probably all experienced it. You have a great week preparing to teach, thinking of the perfect analogy for a passage or the best way to articulate a point. Then comes time to teach, and it seems like it just doesn’t land. Nothing we say feels like it hits the way we thought it would. The analogy didn’t make sense in the moment. It happens. There are weeks when we feel like we had almost no time to prep, and students connected better than ever. Our analogies, which we thought of in the moment, landed perfectly.

So, what do we do? Do we give up preparing because it feels like our lack of preparation did more than a week of preparation would have? Absolutely not! The reality is that the conditions can be perfect and students still don’t connect; just like they can also be anything but perfect and students do connect. We must remember that our ministry’s success is not based on whether every point we said landed with every student or every hour of preparation felt worth it. The reality is that student ministry is a long game. Sometimes we spend hours on prep only to serve up what feels like burnt food. This is where the analogy ends because God can use anything to bring Himself glory, and in our ministry, what brings Him glory is our submission to Him and faithful preparation in the time we have to shepherd students to become more like Christ. Sure, sometimes it will flop, sometimes it will land. But as a student ministry worker, we need to be prepared to roll with the punches, knowing God can use even a lesson that did not feel like it landed to bring Himself glory.

Questions to Consider

• What is one responsibility in your leadership role that only you can do well, and what specific habit can you develop this week to strengthen that skill?

• Think about a time when unexpected challenges ("the rain") disrupted your plans. How did you respond, and what can you do now to prepare yourself spiritually and practically so that future interruptions don't keep you from your most important ministry responsibilities?

• Ministry is a "long game," and faithfulness matters more than immediate results. When have you felt discouraged because your efforts didn't seem to make a difference? How does trusting God with the results change the way you approach serving and leading others?