The High School Senior
Youth Ministry with Purpose
At the medium/large church we did confirmation with 9th graders with 3 retreats during the school year. To begin confirmation we had a parent/student meeting with the rising 9th grader families in July.
We would ask them to imagine their 9th grader in May of their senior year: What kind of person do you want them to be?
Our Ideal High School Senior
What kind of person do we want our high school seniors to be when they are getting ready to graduate from high school?
We would have the students move into another room with a couple of the confirmation leaders. I would sit in the chapel with the parents. We would talk about their answers to this question.
Before we get into possible answers, let’s consider why this is important.
Learning to Shoot a Jump Shot
In the summer before junior high, my Dad saw my hormone-fueled height and dreamed basketball glory ahead. So up at the cottage in Onekama, Michigan we went out to the detached garage, hung a basketball hoop on it. He taught me the fundamentals of a jump shot, layup, and how to rebound.
I practiced all summer long. If I wanted to be a basketball player, I better learn the essentials.
Learning to Be an Ideal High School Senior
If we don’t dream about the type of high school senior we want our rising 9th grader to be, we won’t get there. We have to parent toward a goal. We have to have a youth ministry that builds toward a goal. We have to parent toward the essentials.
Some Traits of an Ideal High School Senior
Here are some of the essential traits those parents gave me in the four years I hosted this confirmation meeting:
Kind
Trustworthy
Hardworking
Gets Good Grades
Well Rounded
Stays Healthy (stays away from drug use and teen pregnancy)
Respects themselves and other people
Respects people who are different: culturally, ethnically, and interfaith
Has an active Christian faith
Loves life
What other traits would you add to this list? How would you rank order this list?
How Do We Parent Toward These Goals?
Once we had the list then we brainstormed together what we could do as a church community that supports families: parents and youth. We talked about the importance of extracurriculars in addition to keeping up with school work. How did time management fit into this?
How did good communication help everyone? How would we encourage and assist each other in building good communication between students and parents?
How Do We Parent Toward an Active Christian Faith?
The number one key to building a teenager’s active Christian faith is parent involvement. Parents raise youth to know Christ. Youth Ministry helps the parents do this. YM sometimes gets a lot of the credit in the short term, but data shows that parent(s) are the key.
Keys to Growing an Active Christian Faith
During that confirmation summer meeting with youth and their parents, we took these ideas of what we wanted to see in their future seniors and applied them to how we work together. Here are some of the keys we came up with together:
Parents will work to get their youth to 2-3 church opportunities a month including Sunday worship, Sunday School or mid-week youth, fun activities.1
Youth will tell their parents about 1 interesting thing they learned/experienced after each church opportunity they attend.
Parents would work to get their youth to all three of the confirmation retreats.
Youth will engage with when they come to church opportunities.
What the Youth Ministry Will Do
As the associate pastor for education, my promise to the parents was to build a YM that would:
Be welcoming to youth and their friends.
Show youth that they are Valued, Valuable and Loved.2
Offer engaging learning, fun, and mission/service opportunities
Give the dates for big overnight retreats or mission trips or youth camps six months out if not by September for the entire school year.
Give at least six weeks’ notice for off-site activities.
Provide scholarships for all in need youth.
Be flexible to do events that come up quickly as well.
What the Youth Ministry Will Not Do
We let the parents know what the youth ministry wouldn’t do:
Make youth feel guilty about missing anything.
Make parents feel guilty when they communicate a change of plans.
Keep secrets from the parents, though youth confidences will be kept.34
Tell the youth that school extracurriculars are more important than Church Life.
An Example
One parent kept Sunday worship a priority in their youths’ lives. Two of the youth were active in sports and the other was a theater kid. The parent supported their youth in all of these functions. Each Thursday they discussed where they would be going to church.
The youth who had the conflict with Sunday morning at our church had to find a church service to attend for them. For travel soccer weekends away they went to other presbyterian churches at 8 a.m. services. For Sunday morning swim meets they did 5 p.m. Catholic Mass. Sometimes the siblings stayed with an aunt/uncle and attended our church while the rest were doing sports.
This parent taught her children to make weekend plans that include church. And sometimes they found herself at two worship services on a weekend.
In Summary
During early May of their senior year, the church hosted a catered banquet for those seniors and their parents. We would share with them the definitions of an Ideal High School Senior that they had made together. We would change the definition to add the good things they see in themselves now as graduating seniors.
And we celebrated that this church was sending them out to be active followers of Christ in the wider world.
Youth are busy. My preferred world is worship 3x a month, Sunday School OR Youth Group 2-3x a month. My perfect world involves worship that youth enjoy and youth ministry that is active, exciting, and spirit-filled.
This is my youth ministry mantra. Youth are Valued - we appreciate them for who they are right now; Valuable - every youth has something valuable to offer the world right now; Loved - we will model God’s love by showing them that they are loved. After 30 years of YM, I find that most youths do not believe that all three of these are true about them.
I would tell parents and youth that I will help the youth share with their parents any drug use, cutting, and in any danger. In a perfect situation, we would empower the youth to share with their parents what they had shared with me. Other times we would talk to the parent direct if we believed the youth was using drugs, cutting, or in danger in any way.
On mission trips and on youth conferences, we often told the youth that anything they saw, heard us say, etc. could be shared with their parents. But to remember to show us respect by sharing the context as well.