Graduates | Aaron Buer

A Culture of Transition

Recently I was asked to describe our high school to college transition strategy and practices. Since this is one of my life’s passions I thought I’d give it a shot. I hope you find it helpful and I’d love to hear your ideas and strategies.

Culture

What keeps me awake at night is the thought of our students walking away from Jesus and the church in life beyond our student ministry. I believe that our ministry has not been successful unless our students are continuing to pursue Jesus in college and beyond.

I think the mistake many youth workers make is jumping to practices that help students transition before stopping to consider the influence of church and student ministry cultures. What students feel and experience is more powerful than what we say from the stage, especially for those who are involved in our churches from a young age. Here are the culture pieces that I believe are crucial to healthy transition.

1. A Culture of Community

I tend to believe that students walk away from churches where they never actually belonged. Belonging is something that is felt and experienced not taught or preached. We begin placing kids in small groups as soon as they can walk around. We fight for a culture of community from the earliest days of involvement in our children’s ministry. This is crucially important because kids learn:

Adults in my church care about me and my faith development
My story is important and valuable.
Faith is meant to be lived out in relationships.

Everything else that we do in our transition ministry is built around these values.

2. A Culture of Mentoring

For years in student ministry we’ve talked about the importance of small groups in student ministry. I believe that small groups are crucial but only when they are the right kind of small groups. You see, more than anything the students of this generation need mentors. On the whole, our culture no longer invests in the next generation. It exploits them.

We must become ministries and churches that pour into students. We must walk alongside them and demonstrate the way of Jesus. In our ministry, we pair a mentor with 5 or 6 students for 4 years. We use the model of small groups to achieve this. However, we are clear that the “win” is not small group discussions. The “win” is mentoring. Small groups are the spring board into a mentoring relationship. This long term mentoring relationship is key to our transition strategy.

3. A Culture of Honesty

Many students who walk away from faith in college were silently drifting long before they formally walked away. These students never spoke their doubts because they weren’t welcome to do so. Left in the dark these doubts became stronger and eventually overpowered their faith.

Our student ministries must become places where doubts are acknowledged, appreciated and talked about openly. Our student ministry cultures must communicate that doubts are normal. We need to stop providing quick and flimsy answers to deeply disorienting questions. Faith isn’t the absence of doubt. Rather, it is faith in the midst of doubt. Doubts pulled out into the light of community lose their power over us.

4. A Culture of Integration

Some youth workers may disagree with me but I believe that one of the biggest obstacles to students transitioning well is student leadership or ministry teams. Hold on. Let me explain.

Many students walk away from church as emerging adults because they never felt like they belonged to their church in the first place. They felt a fierce belonging to their youth group but after graduating high school they never connected with the larger church body. Leadership and ministry teams are often counterproductive because they foster intense attachment to the student ministry and not the church as a whole.

Our strategy is to encourage our students to serve within the larger church body rather than within our student ministry. We want them to become attached to Ada Bible Church, not LifeLine. We believe that the best place for a student to serve is in our children’s ministry. There they can use their talents to serve kids and perhaps more importantly, they serve alongside and develop stronger relationships with more adults from the church community. This way they can also continue to serve after graduating high school. Integration is the friend of transition.

Helping students pursue Jesus after leaving our student ministries begins with culture. It requires a culture of community, mentoring, honesty and integration. Tomorrow I’ll outline the specific strategies we employ to promote long-term faith development.

What Your Kid Needs From You in College

So how do you parent a college student? While every child is wired differently I’d love to share a little about my college transition experience, and share some advice on what worked for me and others around me.

LET THEM BE

With the freshman year transition, immediate physical separation from my parents did a lot of good. As counter intuitive as it may sound, I noticed that the less my parents were physically present, the more I grew into my own skin.

In high school, your parents are kind of “always there”, and therefore a link to the life you need to transition away from. In my belief, it was good for me to cut myself off from my home; it also forced me to rely on The Lord and His strength, and not my own. My relationship with Him grew so much more when I only had His presence and promises to lean on.

Now, I’m not saying “PARENTS DON’T TALK OR BE WITH YOUR KIDS EVER, YOU’RE STUNTING THEIR GROWTH!” Believe me, your kids will need to talk. A lot. I couldn’t even tell you how much time I spent on the phone with my mom. That’s definitely needed. But, it should stop at that: advice and wisdom.

Additionally, encourage them to not come home as often. Again, I don’t mean to sound harsh, but establishing a presence on their campus does WORLDS of good for them. It allows them to make their school their new home, and also allows their own individual life to be established, instead of constantly having their adolescent life being fed into their present reality. Staying at school on the weekends, although hard sometimes, allowed me to develop new relationships, get to know my surroundings better, find a new home church, and just simply establish my roots. And I’m so glad I did.

STAY THE COURSE

My first semester of college was awful. Really awful. I didn’t want to be at the school I was at, I was homesick and terrified of becoming an adult. I love my school now and it had truly become home but at the time I was really struggling. However, the best thing that my parents did during those times was to remind me of God’s faithfulness. The Lord had provided in so many ridiculously amazing ways for us to even afford college and He would see me through.

My parents did the wise thing and redirected my focus away from my emotions and toward the logistics of how God had shown Himself real and present. A quote that got me through a lot: “When you cannot trace God’s hand, you can trust His heart.” (Charles Spurgeon)

THE SHIFTING OF ROLES

I found that my relationship with my parents grew tremendously when I went off to college. Our relationship transformed from one based on authority to one based on friendship and shared experience.

And the beautiful thing is that through college, I began to see my parents as wise adults who have been in my shoes before. Yes, my parents were my age at one time and learned the same exact things I did. That mutuality is absolutely priceless. Embrace that transition. It’s beautiful.

LISTEN

As I said earlier—college freshman need to talk things out. Talking helped ease the stress that I was feeling—and parents who were willing to listen made all the difference. This doesn’t mean you towards “fix” the problems. Sometimes just having somebody to talk to makes all the difference. These conversations further cultivated our relationship. Don’t shrug off the times that your child wants to talk. Those times mean the world to us.

LOVE AGGRESSIVELY

Despite what I’ve suggested about transitioning away from home, please continue to show your kids that you love them. Some of the best moments in my college career were when I had this feeling of “Man, I’m growing into my own person. I’m becoming Spencer Penfield,” and then that afternoon I received a letter from my mom just saying that she loves me. Or a random phone call from my dad asking how my day was going. That combination made me feel like I could do anything

Finding ways to show your child how much you’re rooting for them, how much you love them, and how much you think what they’re doing is great- that’s what gets us by. Being separate, but continuing to love and encourage, that’s what it feels like to grow up.

So, whatever stage of the transition process you may be in and however frustrated or great you feel, rest in this truth: transitions are meant to bring us to a spot where we have to put everything into the Lord’s hands. It is through these times that we are given the beautiful opportunity to surrender to the One who is constantly working something in us. And that is a beautiful truth to rest in.

Guest Blogger: Spencer Penfield will be graduating with a major in Strategic Communication, and a minor in International Business from Cornerstone University this spring. There, he is the Marketing Intern where he helps manage the University’s social media. Spencer is an aspiring photographer, writer, dreamer, and storyteller. You can see his work www.facebook.com/spencerpenfieldphotography or www.spencerpenfield.com

Image Credited to Paul Stainthorp

2 Ways College Freshmen Struggle

One of my favorite student ministry events over the last few years is our graduate reunion event. I love gathering our previous year’s graduates together with their small group leaders over Christmas break and listening to their stories. Hearing their struggles and triumphs reorients my ministry focus.

So, what did I learn from spending a couple hours with former youth group kids who just polished off their first semester of college? I’m glad you asked.

ADJUSTMENT

Nearly every graduate who shared talked about how hard it was to adjust to life beyond high school. Most of them experienced loneliness during the first semester and talked about how difficult it was to find a group of friends and solid Christian community. They talked about how hard it was to be so far removed from the people in their lives with whom they could be vulnerable and honest. They felt like they had lost their cheerleaders and supporters.

Some of our graduates also felt a sense of letdown as they adjusted to college. For years they had been told that college would be the best time of life and how they were going to have the time of their lives. And yet, during the first few months of their first semester, most students felt profoundly alone and disoriented. Most were not yet experiencing the good life they were promised.

BALANCE

The second thing our graduates talked about was balance. Students struggled to juggle their new found freedom, social life and school work. Most of the students said they planned to focus on school more next semester because they weren’t happy with their grades.

Several of our students talked about how they had to learn to say “no.” One girl joined 18 different clubs before she learned the “n” word.

Balance may seem like a peripheral issue but I think it is actually the main issue for most of our students. Because they struggled to manage all their roles, important areas of their lives suffered. For many it was their spiritual lives. It wasn’t that they didn’t care about God or that they wanted to make bad choices. Rather, it was that they didn’t know how to structure their time in a way that created space for the things they really cared about.

LESSONS LEARNED

We place a major focus on transition in our student ministry. Our goal is that every graduate of our student ministry would continue to pursue Jesus after high school and our programming structure reflects this value. What I’m realizing is that it isn’t enough to prepare our students to defend their faith, find a solid faith community, and warn them of the dangers in life. If they can’t manage their roles and responsibilities, some of the things they deeply care about will inadvertently be put on a shelf.

We as parents and youth workers need to prepare our students to manage clubs, intramural sports, laundry, homework, dating, money, sleep, video games, and family. Maybe these things don’t seem very “spiritual” but teaching our students to manage their time and resources may be one of the greatest gifts we can give.

image credited to Mark van Laere

Green Dye and Dr. Seuss

People learn best through hands on experience and observation. At least, that’s how I learn and I’m assuming you’re the same. In our student ministry, we spend every other Sunday night preparing our high school seniors for college. We talk to them about everything we can think of: money, faith, dating, balance, picking a major, drinking, etc. I firmly believe that these conversations have an impact in helping our students prepare for the their transition to college but one event from a few years ago trumped them all. You see, every spring we do an event for our seniors called Senior Sneak. It’s a weekend retreat to an undisclosed location for fun and extended training on college transition. It’s one of our milestone events and it’s a little fancier than anything else we put on. It’s our way of blessing our seniors one last time before they run off to college.

We’ve learned over the years that the weekend we choose for this event is hugely important. For example, don’t schedule it on a Prom or musical weekends. We fancy ourselves at being highly skilled at picking the right weekend. However, sometimes things surprise us. As it turns out, one year we inadvertently scheduled our retreat for Chicago on St. Patrick’s Day weekend. Call me boring, but I don’t really pay attention to St. Patty’s so it was completely off my radar.

The funny thing about Chicago on St. Patrick’s day weekend is that it gets nutty. Actually, it gets really nutty. They dye the river green and then proceed to party down. In the words of Dr. Seuss, they “drink, drink, drink, drink, DRINK!” This is what I mean by learning from experience and observation. We essentially provided our students with a front row seat of first semester frat parties. On a side note, how do they dye the river green? Is it just a whole lot of green Kool-Aid?

Although there were quite a few awkward moments as we walked through the city, the weekend ended up being a great experience for our small group leaders and students. All the partying around us provided context for great conversations about boundaries, balance and the partying scene. Sometimes youth groups and churches are guilty of ignoring the realities of the “real world.” One way or another, we need to make sure that our students aren’t surprised by what they encounter. They ought to be prepared to face reality.

I don’t know that I would recommend taking your students to Chicago for St. Patrick’s Day but I do recommend getting your seniors away with their small group leaders for strategic conversations about their upcoming freshman year of college. Are they ready to face the pressures, challenges and opportunities? Now is the time to talk about it.

I’d be happy to share the playbook for our Senior Sneak weekend if you’re interested. And if you have a recipe for green dye please let me know.

7 Reasons You Should Do a Youth Group Reunion Event

One of my passions in student ministry is to remove the cliff–the graduation cliff. Student ministry is at it’s best when it bridges high school and adulthood. I’m done with the days of graduating students and forgetting about them. That was one of my greatest mistakes as a new youth worker. Now, I believe in equipping students for the transition to adulthood and setting them up with mentors to walk with them through the process.

One of the ways we work toward this goal is hosting a reunion event over Christmas break. Basically we’ve invited all of our 2013 graduates and their small group leaders back for an event. I’m so pumped for this event that I’ve come up with 7 reasons why you should do it too.

1. Reconnect Students and Mentors

The best reason for putting on a reunion event is to reconnect students with their mentors. Our graduates, even though they are freshmen in college, still need quality adults in their lives to mentor them. And, truthfully our adult mentors need students in their life too. Mentoring brings life to both sides. Anyone who has ever mentored a student knows this is true. You always get more out of it than you give.

Relationships are the key to growth. Rekindling the relationship between students and mentors is reason enough to do a reunion event.

2. Evaluate Your Ministry

Getting graduates together for a reunion event is a great opportunity to listen. We are very intentional about creating a curriculum for our senior class that will help them transition. Did the curriculum work? A reunion event is a chance to ask our graduates, “What surprised you? What do you wish you would have known? How could we have prepared you better?”

If many of your graduates are struggling in their faith maybe it’s time to rethink how you are doing student ministry. But, you’ll never know unless you ask students who have graduated out of your ministry.

3. Reorient Your Graduates

A reunion event is a great opportunity to speak truth to your graduates. Getting them together over Christmas is like speaking to students at Winter Retreat. They are out of their normal environment. They are more open to truth. They are evaluating their first semester choices. Take advantage of this to remind your graduates of what is important.

4. You Still Belong

It’s terribly disorienting to go off to college. Even after only one semester, your hometown feels different. Church doesn’t quite feel like home anymore. You’re not really welcome in the student ministry and your old friendships have changed. A reunion event is a great way to tell your graduates that they are still a valued member of the community. They still belong. Their small group leaders and mentors still care about them.

5. Evaluate Your Church/Ministry Recommendations

One of the things we do in our student ministry is connect each of our graduates with a church or ministry wherever they are going after high school. Our goal is that the church or ministry would connect with them before they arrive on campus.

A reunion event is a great time to ask about these recommendations. Were a few of your recommendations duds? It would be good to know. I love it when a student falls in love with a new church in their college town. That is a great feeling!

6. Encourage Your Graduates to Plug In

So maybe a few of your recommendations were duds. Or, maybe you didn’t make any recommendations. Get on it for next year!

We know how crucial community is to growth. A reunion event is a good opportunity to remind our graduates of how important community is. Encourage them to plug in. Maybe Christmas break is new opportunity to help them find a good ministry.

7. Remind Yourself of the Goal of Student Ministry

Hanging out with graduates of your student ministry will force you to grapple with the outcome of your work. It isn’t about numbers. It isn’t about great bands, environments or talks. It’s about students pursuing Jesus after leaving your ministry.

Listening to graduates talk about the joys and struggles of life after high school will help you better understand what topics you need to address while they are still in high school. It will remind you of the importance of mentors. It will remind you of how powerful inter-generational church is. It will remind you of the goal of all we do and will help you reorient your practices around these goals.

So, schedule a student ministry reunion event. There’s still time and your graduates will be bored over Christmas break anyway. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Bring together your graduates and their small group leaders. Encourage them, listen to them and reorient them. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how it went.

What Exactly Are Students Walking Away From?

We’ve all read the numbers. We all get a little panicky when we think about how many students are walking away from church. If the numbers are true, we’re facing a very serious problem because what we’re doing as parents and youth workers is not working. We must grapple with one very difficult question: why are students walking away from church after high school?

Maybe I’m over simplifying the issue but I think the answer is very easy. Students aren’t walking away from church. It’s not that the statistics are wrong. Barna and Fuller have their numbers right. That isn’t it at all. And yet, I believe that students aren’t walking away from church. They never belonged to church in the first place. They’re walking away from something else entirely.

WHAT IS CHURCH?

What is church? That’s a really good question. Personally, I think it’s best to define church by what I read in the New Testament. Church is the Jesus community. It’s a people bonded together by the presence, love and mission of Jesus.

The church is marked by the presence of Jesus. There is something to be experienced in the church that cannot be experienced anywhere else. The experience is different because Jesus is Immanuel. The presence of God is with us. Lives are being transformed. Light is shining into darkness. Life is breathed into death. Hope is breaking forth in the midst of tragedy.

The church is defined by love. The Jesus community shocked the world and overthrew an empire with love. The Jesus community transformed the world in a few short centuries through inclusion, radical service, and care for the oppressed and forgotten. Where the Gospel is preached and lived the world can never be the same.

The church is defined by the mission of Jesus. The church is inviting people to follow Jesus. It’s not asking people to join a club. It’s not trying to fill seats in a building. It’s inviting people to follow the most compelling person who ever walked the soil of this planet. The church is inviting people into the restoration of the world through the Gospel of Jesus.

WHAT ARE STUDENTS WALKING AWAY FROM?

This is the church. Students aren’t walking away from this. People don’t walk away from the church. It is far too magnetic. The true church—defined by the presence, love and mission of Jesus is incredibly compelling. It transforms lives, communities, cultures and nations. Our students are walking away from something else entirely.

Maybe the problem is not that students are walking away. In fact, they might be doing us a favor by pointing out the real problem. Perhaps the problem is that we aren’t being the church. Maybe we as parents, pastors and church leaders need to look in the mirror and ask ourselves some hard questions. What exactly are we doing anyway?

Equipping Graduates for the Next Step

Roughly half of youth group kids are walking away from faith in college. This map shows where the 50 graduates who were under my care this past year are headed in the fall. If you’re wondering, I stole the idea for the map from HSM at Saddleback Community Church. You can see their version here.

All I know is that I refuse to accept that 50% of my students will walk away from faith. I’ve made it my mission to reduce that percentage among LifeLine students. Over the last 3 years, we have revamped our approach to the senior year experience. Here’s a glimpse of our strategy.

1. CELEBRATE SENIORS

We love to make a big deal about our seniors. We give them a lot of stage time, put on a retreat just for them and give them their own house group–no underclassmen allowed! In our ministry, being a senior is special and you get access to opportunities that are only for seniors. We do this to help retain our seniors. We want our students to have something to look forward to. Typically, seniors seem to disappear from youth group but by offering them unique experiences and the spotlight we are able to keep them involved. And, this is very important to us because we have a lot we want to teach them.

2. TRAIN SENIORS

In our ministry context, half of our programming nights take place in homes. For seniors, their home is only for seniors and the curriculum is designed for them. We talk about how to choose the right college (or not), what college will actually be like, debt, politics, partying, dating, apologetics, calling, mission, and a bunch of other stuff that we feel will help them navigate the challenges of life beyond high school. Again, by offering them a curriculum that hits them where they are at, we are able to retain our seniors through the year.

3. HAND OFF SENIORS

Rather than a book and a handshake, we attempt to hand our students off to both a mentor and a new ministry or church. The mentor is actually from our ministry–the same mentor they’ve had for the last four years. We just encourage the relationship to continue through the first year of college. I stole this idea from the Sticky Faith book. They call it 4+1. If you haven’t read it, you really should.

We also want to hand our students off to a new church or campus ministry. During their senior year we constantly talk about how important it is to find a church or campus ministry with the first two weeks of college. Most students who don’t connect within the first two weeks never will.

We identify churches and ministries for our students and then contact the ministry leaders and ask them to connect with our graduate before college begins. We also send our graduates a care package in early September to encourage them and remind them to plug into a church or ministry.

So that’s a brief explanation of how we highlight the senior year and attempt to equip our students for the next phase of their lives. How do you do it?

Category: Graduates