I do have one question. Terry needs some tips in how to start a teen ministry from nothing. There are no teens in the church. He has worked in teen ministry before, but always in one that was already started. Any suggestions?
Maggie
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July 27, 1999

Printed in the GSST paper

Heard a story while I was in the Philippines. Dr. Howard Hendricks on his video, THE 7 LAWS OF THE TEACHER: Video 1: Teacher. He tells the story of a man that went to his pastor and said, "I want to teach a Sunday School class"

And the pastor indicates that there are no classes and no students.

Again the man says, "I want to teach a Sunday School class"

And again the pastor reiterates that there are no Sunday school classes or students, but adds, "You can go out and make a class"

And he did.

He walked up and down the back streets of Philadelphia and found boys playing marbles. He played marbles until he won all the marbles from the boys, and as he handed them back, invited them to Sunday School.

Eventually, 11 boys came on a regular basis, week after week, year after year. This man had no Bible College education, he wasn't necessarily educated, and frequently indicated he didn't know answers to the boys questions. But he loved them, and they knew it.

Howard indicated as he tells this story that he believed this man, who he named, loved him far more than his mother or father. For this man was Howard's Sunday School teacher. Of the 11 boys almost all are full time Christian Church workers, like Dr. Howard Hendricks. He credits this man with his salvation and keeping him from jail or worse.

Good story, don't know if it would work 60 years later. However, you must meet the students on their turf. If you set the rules, they will stay away. If you have boys, the girls will come, if the girls come, the boys may or may-not come.

If I was going to start a youth group from scratch today, four months before the next century and millennium, I would cook up an absolutely guaranteed want to come one hour. I would stand across from the Junior High or High School and hand out flyers.

The less "churchy" you can make it sound the better. For instance, our church does a VBS each year. My wife runs it. We don't call it VBS. We call it Buddy Bears Day Camp. Most churches invite the neighbors for free and 30 kids come. We have a church down the street, with about 3000 on an average Sunday in attendance, they had 185 students in VBS this year. We had 190 in our BBD Camp out of a church of 250. Last year, we had 290 and we intentionally cut back advertising this year to keep from wearing out our volunteer staff . Very little is changed from the VBS curriculum and most years we use VBS curriculum, we changed the name, added skits and
music. In the afternoons we swim, bowl, or roller-skate. We charged $50 a kid this year. We changed a name, evangelize the neighborhood and on occasion make $1000 a summer for other ministries.

Eleven years ago, we started with six and now have over 100 in our children's ministries. Whatever you do, do it with quality. Do the best job you can do. Make Jesus proud of your program. Act like he is one of the kids in the program.

Pray before you start, pray while you are doing it, and pray after as you evaluate how to do it better next week. We usually know a year in advance the direction we are going for the year, and have several months of lessons semi-planned and several weeks pretty well locked in within a minute or two.

So call your group Rock Solid, or AWANA (don't use this name, it is copyrighted, but one of the better names in Christian Ed) or come up with a certified OK name teens approve (ask church kids at another church, your nephews, some teens somewhere) and have a dynamite program, free food is better.

One of the best crowd pleasers I know of is one of the Power Teams running around the country. They bend bars of steel and break bricks, they come through Brentwood at least once a year and fill the high school auditorium at 7:00-9:00 in the evening. Once they have bent the bars and blown up the water bottles, they tell their testimony. Students get saved every year. FEEL THE POWER, Impact Ministries, Jon Pritikin Director, POB 66432, Scott’s Valley, CA 95067. Booking 510.988.3662. Jon was one of my high school students the one year I taught high school, he runs one of these teams. Don't know where you live, but there are several teams in different parts of the country.

Pray.
Pray.

Did I mention pray?

Make a plan. After you have bathed it in prayer, follow your instincts; many times it is the leading of the Spirit. Be friendly. Be real. Invite them. Have a program for the kids that is better than Nintendo and they will come. Once you have their trust, they will follow you. Once they trust God they will follow his leading.

Synergism is why you go to the mall. Why do you go to the mall, because when you park the car you can do MANY things in one place. If you have Bible study, good games, (GROUP and YOUTH SPECIALTIES both have great game ideas) donuts, hotdogs, a place to talk, good Christian music, a great prayer life you start to develop synergism. The more reasons you give them to come, the more will come. But don't forget to put in the best Bible study known to man with real prayer. Small groups can't do it all every week, but with planning you can do many fun things every week.

Real Bible study is not a lecture. There are over 100 teaching techniques, learn how to use many of them. The morgue is quiet. Kids are noisy. Use this effectively and you will rule the world, or at least the youth group. If two show up do your program like 60 showed up. You have six kids? Give three and egg and three a triangle and ask them to tell you about the Trinity in buzz groups. Give them five minutes and have them report. Then tell them the part the missed, or congratulate them if they got it right.

Hope this helps. Delighted with your vision. Tell me how it turns out. With God nothing is impossible.