Youth Ministry Calendar, Part 2

Flexible Planning

Photo by Polinna Zimmerman, Used by Permission.

The Youth Ministry planning calendar will give your parents and youth a clearer picture of the choices they have. By planning, you can build a year calendar that builds community, leads youth to and deeper into faith, and helps youth see how valuable they are and how much you value them.¹

I like to do the weekend and week-long trips set by the start of the school year. The rest of the planning is done in 3-month chunks so we can incorporate ideas and input from the adult Leader Team and the Student Leadership Team (high schoolers).

In the Big Church, we ran a July 1-June 30 program year. Check out the first part of the calendar at Youth Ministry Calendar Part 1: July to December.

January

During January in Michigan winter weather is to be expected. Half of the youth are super excited about skiing and winter sports. Some of the youth are hunkering down to simply get to the end of snow in March. YM seeks to double down on community and help the youth know they are loved, valued, and valuable.

• The first two youth groups of January focus on great games and old favorites. Pair them with solid lessons from your best teachers.

• Zap Zone (laser tag) is a fun, low-cost outing that the youth love.

• College basketball or hockey - We could get group tickets for $5 women’s basketball tickets that included a hot dog and pop ($14 value).

4 Great Indoor Youth Group Games

• 9-Square is 4-Square played on a PVC pipe grid at 7 feet above our heads.² We built our own rather than buy one. You rotate up the grid in a pattern to get to the center square for the Captain's Square. For disputed calls we call out for a "Judge's Ruling!" and the youth who are in line to play give a ruling. This keeps everyone involved.

• ServerBall - Using soft splash balls³ A variation on Murderball. One team stands on the other side of the serving table in the Fellowship Hall. They throw balls through the big kitchen serving window. The second team tries to catch or deflect the balls. Every ball that gets passed is a point. Youth Leaders or “I Don’t Want to Play” people do the ball tally. Use lots of balls so everyone is playing at once.

• Marshmallow Golf - Have youth with skills make a large target board drawing on large paper (3’ x 4’). Hang the target board. Use a golf pitching wedge, a red solo cup “tee” and a marshmallow golf “ball” to swing and hit on the target. Score points.⁴

February

• Many youth groups and churches do a ski day or ski weekend. My Pastor Boss wanted to lead one so he did families (8th grade and below) and high schoolers with two adult youth leaders. Devon skied right past Pastor Boss and hit the snow fence. ER visit later a nice cast for a broken wrist. I’ve stayed away from church ski trips ever since.⁵

• Snow sledding.

• Outdoor ice skating with the park system or on a neighborhood pond that is shoveled and evened by an outdoor hockey club.

• Bowling is a great activity if you pair it with lots of quarters for the kids who hate bowling but will play a video game with you or one of the other Leaders. Conversations happen at Jurassic Park The Game.

Photo by Oleksandr Pidvalnyi, Used by Permission.

Mid-High Winter Retreat

February is a wonderful month for a 6th-8th grade retreat. I like to pair a teaching topic with a clear plan of fun. I’ve done a lot of confirmation retreats this way. For one we do a trial on the question of whether Jesus is the Messiah with youth being lawyers, Biblical witnesses, and the Jury. On another, it was about sex and decision-making (taught with a high school health teacher).

Friday we do a 90-minute lesson and fun indoor games. Saturday morning lessons in 90-minute blocks. Saturday afternoon a 3-hour lesson that “spontaneously” ends after an hour for more time for sledding, snowballs, and chilling. Saturday night another lesson and then indoor games and maybe sledding if the moon is out.

This retreat is about building community.

March

Schools often have a lot of homework, projects, and sports tournaments in March. The YM calendar gets complicated by spring break. Focus on regular youth groups, and getting out to see the sporting events, concerts, and art shows of your youth.

We had 8 high schools in 4 school districts represented in the youth group. This is why I never did spring break trips. It can be divisive to offer a big outing when some are excluded. The church has been exclusionary enough.

• Big Fundraiser for the high school mission trip: rummage sale every other year; Skills auction of a pair of high schoolers working at your home; the “Dating Game” with couples of the church with free deserts and a freewill offering (the laughter drives the giving up).

• A teaching series on Parents; Finding Your Place in School; Worship - Why it Matters; etc.

• High School Mission Trip training. We did a Friday night 2-hour Junior/Senior training where they set the rules for the trip. Then a Sunday after church Fresh/Sophomore training with some of the high schoolers where they teach what a mission trip looks like.

April

• Mid-High Camp Day - Find a camp that will let you come out for the day to each camp food, do the low or high ropes, learn archery, play Capture the Flag, and generally enjoy a spring day of camp.

• Movie and Dinner. See a 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon movie followed by Mancino’s grinders (easy dinner) the youth can buy for themselves. This is a great event the youth can bring their friends too - friends who might come back in the summer.

May

Close out the youth group and Sunday School the week before Memorial Day. End with a bang rather than a whimper as people fall away with end-of-year commitments, opening the cottage, graduation parties, and sports tournaments. Let the YM finish strong.

• For Midhighs we would close on a regular night with a pizza party at someone’s home who had a big yard for outdoor games. We would make this a family event so everyone who wanted to be there could be to see what was fun about outdoor games. 9-Square was always a huge hit with the younger siblings AND the parents.

For High Schoolers we would meet at the church and walk over a mile to a dinner choice. Then we would wander downtown before “spontaneously” getting ice cream. We had two main locations for our dinner:

• The Original Cottage Inn, an Ann Arbor institution, would give us our own room, a pizza and brownies/cookies buffet with all that we could drink (only $12 per person). Our senior class would sit together and have prepared something kind to say about everyone (like paper plates without the plates). Each senior would do 4-5 of the other people in a rotation.

• When Guy Fieri of Diners, Drive-ins & Dives has visited a local burger joint, you go with High Schoolers to Krazy Jim’s Blimpy Burgers for mouthwatering burgers and fries. You sit outside, eating, laughing, and telling stories. Then we find a quiet place to sit away from the restaurant to have the seniors share what the youth group and the other youth mean to them.

June

In June we slow down. We might do a youth leader adult dinner after church some Sunday. We make sure we are covering all the graduation parties. We support each other when we have been invited to some and not others.⁶

• Promote the Mid-High events in July for your new 6th graders as they enter the youth group.

• High School Mission Trip - You’ve spent 7-10 months planning, go and have the best trip.

This is a beginning point for you. Find your own pace to build a youth group where everyone can experience the love of Jesus and feel valued and valuable.

Sincerely,

Jim

1. My YM philosophy is to help each teenager know they are loved, valued, and valuable.

2. I had a summer high school intern build one in July. Pre-fab 9-Square cost $400 at the time. He did one with plumbing PVC pipes and joints from Lowes. It cost $182 and he was so proud of it. A decade later it is still being used, unlike the many flimsy store-bought ones.

3. I like to use splash balls and some other squishy balls that have interesting shapes/textures.

4. I’m so excited I could keep going. Look for a future post of YM games.

5. Of course, I’ve been to the ER with youth for 2 blown knees, glass in the elbow, falling backward from sitting on a low fence (3 stitches), digestive ailment (Costa Rica), etc. Leading over 60 youth trips stuff will happen. Have a solid plan.

6. It is said that 10% of the youth will not bond with us. By having mother youth leaders they have youth leaders to make connections with. When we do YM with only one leader, 10% of the youth will never come as they don’t connect to us. Give all youth people who care for them. Aim to have a 6-1 ratio (this helps so Youth Leaders can miss some weeks without leaving anyone hanging). Begin with a 6-2 ratio or a 1-2 youth-to-adult ratio.