Student Ministry Topic

One of the greatest opportunities that are afforded to you right now is a church youth group. I have been involved in several over the past few years. While I was a teenager I was in Liberty Baptist Church’s youth group, while in college I ministered for three years in the youth group where I went to church, and now we have a youth group in the church that I pastor at Southern Hills.

If repetition is the key to learning, then, when it comes to working with young people, keeping a big picture focus is the key to sanity. It’s so easy to get into a rut in which we tire of the repetition necessary to develop students.

Having a pastor is the greatest advantage of being a youth worker. You don’t have to worry about marriage counseling, financial meetings, budget cuts, P.T.A. meetings, administration, raising offerings, and preaching three times a week. Always keep it in perspective that you work for him. He was doing fine before you came along. Because of his church-building abilities you have an opportunity to serve.

Upon graduating from Bible college, I drove nine hundred miles pulling a U-Haul behind my 1977 Plymouth to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. When I arrived at Central Baptist Church, where I was to be the youth pastor, I asked the custodian where my office was. “I didn’t think you were coming until next week,” was his reply.