BY YOUTH SPECIALTIES ON JUNE 19 2012
Here are a few principles to help you ensure that the events you plan as a youth group are maximizing their potential to transform young lives.
Clearly define the purpose of your event
What specific transformational outcomes are we hoping to achieve through this activity we are pulling together?
Strategically calculate adult to student ratios
If transformation happens in the context of relationships are we ensuring that enough leaders are available to facilitate the outcomes we hope to achieve?
Deliberately disrupt routines
How will this activity or experience stand apart from the predictable routines of a student’s life and thus create a new setting in which some new things can happen?
Purposefully introduce discomfort
Do we understand the importance of pushing our kids out of their comfort zones and stretching them into appropriately risky places where new kinds of growth can occur?
Carefully consider the “flow” or “shape” to the event
Have we intentionally shaped the components of the event to lead somewhere instead of randomly throwing the elements together with no sense of how each piece of the program relates to the others?
Unapologetically invite transformational response
Do we have the courage to call kids to radical responses that will potentially change everything about the way they currently live their lives – to raise the bar to a truly costly level and ask kids to commit?
Don’t manipulate transformation – Leave room for the Holy Spirit to show up.
Do we trust God enough to allow Him to bring about the changes he wants to see in the lives of our students without us having to coerce, manipulate or guilt trip kids into “transformation?”
Intentionally implement accountability as follow-up
Are we prepared to carefully nurture the roots of a transformed life and provide the accountability and support that’s necessary for changed direction to become permanent and enduring?
