Tag: intergenerational

A Simple Approach to Intergenerational Ministry

A lot has been said and written recently about the importance of intergenerational ministry.  The Sticky Faith research has pointed out the importance of adult mentors in the lives of students.

I think many student ministries assume they are doing well in this area simply because they put adults in proximity with students.  Personally, I do not believe that quality mentoring relationships will naturally grow out of proximity.  It takes intentionality.  Here are 3 ways we intentionally promote intergenerational mentoring.

1.       VISION VOLUNTEERS

First, we INSPIRE our volunteers to become mentors.  Before every Sunday or Wednesday night we hold an hour long leader meeting and one of the things we do in these meetings is tell stories of great mentoring.  We talk about how our volunteers have made a difference in the past and how each person investing in the lives of students today is altering the trajectory of a student’s life.

We EQUIP our volunteers to become mentors.  We teach them how to pursue students, how to manage and effectively lead a small group, how to interact with the parents of their students, and how to handle crisis conversations.  We don’t hold quarterly or even monthly training meetings; we train our volunteers every time we meet for large group.

We EXPECT our volunteers to become mentors.  We believe so deeply in intergenerational mentoring that we create standards.  I understand that it is impossible to quantify mentoring but we do our best to do it anyway.  We require a certain amount of small group activities, one-on-ones with students and parent interactions.

Although our mentors are volunteers, we still hold them accountable to their role.  If they aren’t performing, we carefully confront them.  If after a few more weeks they still aren’t performing, we fire them and find someone else who can mentor our students.  Yes, you can fire a volunteer.  This is how deeply we believe in intergenerational mentoring.

2.       STRUCTURE FOR MENTORING

We happen to believe that over time, small groups are a great place for mentoring relationships to develop.  Because of this we don’t ask students to opt into a small group.  We simply place EVERY STUDENT IN A SMALL GROUP and leave 30 minutes at the end of every LifeLine night for small groups.

Mentoring relationships take time to develop so we leave our small groups intact for all three years of middle school and all four years of high school.  Particularly in high school, we believe that SMALL GROUPS TAKE 1-2 YEARS TO BUILD TRUST.  The next 2 years are fertile soil for mentoring relationships.   

3.        SIMPLIFY PROGRAMMING

We believe that faith is best learned outside of the church building.  Students need to see faith lived out in action.   Because of this belief we require our volunteers to get on their students turf and to interact with them outside of our student ministry programming.

We know that volunteers only have so much time to devote to ministry.  Because mentoring outside the church building’s walls is a premium, we simply cut our programming to make space and time for our volunteers.  WE DON’T DO EVENTS.  Our senior high ministry literally has no events other than our Sunday night programming, snow camp and mission trips.  We simplify so that our volunteers can commit to pursuing their students outside the walls of the church building.

“No events!” You say?  Are you crazy?  Well, I guess that was a lie.  We have all sorts of events but we don’t schedule them—our small groups do, organically.  They are better and more strategically targeted than anything our staff could ever dream up.

 

So there you have it.  3 simple ways to promote mentoring in your ministry.  How have you promoted mentoring relationships in your setting?

 

 

3 Things You Can Do to Fight Faith Abandonment

We’ve all seen the doomsday statistics about how many students are walking away from church and faith when the get into college.  If you’re like me you probably have a few names and faces that represent the numbers in those statistics.  What’s difficult is that while you’re spinning on the hamster wheel of weekly student ministry it can be difficult to think strategically about college transition.

The temptation is to become paralyzed by the hugeness of the problem.  Guilt and fear tells us that we need to restructure our entire ministry because everything we are doing apparently sucks.  This is a dirty lie.  The truth is most of what we are doing in student ministry is great for the long-term faith development of our students.  Instead of scrapping your entire structure consider tweaking your ministry.  What is one thing we can do differently to improve college transition?  Here are 3 suggestions of ways to tweak your approach to college transition.

 

Who am I?

Perhaps the biggest issue our students face as they graduate from our ministries is that they don’t know who they are.  They don’t have a clear picture of how God has designed them or what He might be calling them to.  Helping them make progress in this area can be a huge service to your students and maybe even save them a few thousand dollars in college tuition.

Maybe the way to tweak your ministry is to help your seniors discover a little about how God has wired them.  There is no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to helping students understand who they are.  Currently, we are using Donald Miller’s Storyline as a template for our discussions.  Jon Acuff’s Start may be more geared for adults but it’s hilarious and insightful.  Finding Your Way is also another great resource that is specifically designed with this purpose in mind.

 

Senior Retreat

Maybe you don’t have time to create an additional program just for seniors but I bet you do have a weekend available somewhere during the year.  A retreat just for seniors is a great first step toward improving college transition.  It doesn’t have to be fancy.  Find a cabin or a lake house and spend the weekend helping them build a strategy for how to grow spiritually during their first year of college.  Our version of this is called Senior Sneak.  See what we did there with the two “S”s?  Genius.

 

Transition Mentors

Programs will never compare to relationships.  An entire year’s worth of transition curriculum isn’t worth much unless caring adults are pouring into the lives of your students.  Without mentoring relationships students will have trouble implementing the principles you are teaching.

Perhaps you’re too busy for either of my previous two suggestions.  That’s fine.  Delegate it.  Recruit other people to do it.  Find mature and caring adults who are willing to mentor students and turn them loose.  Even if you do have the time and resources to develop a college transition ministry, you should still pull in quality adults as mentors.  Inter-generational mentoring relationships are like a magic bullet against faith abandonment in college.

Faith abandonment in college is a huge problem but don’t let it paralyze you.  Instead of restructuring everything, simply take a step in the right direction.  For now, pick whatever suggestion sounds best.  If none of them sound good then invent your own.  Just take a step.

 

 

 

 

Image courtesy of t0zz / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

College Transition: 4+Life

A few nights ago was the season finale of our senior cell family.  In our ministry structure, cell families are regional collections of 6 small groups.  One of the things we do to help our students with college transition is cluster all of our senior small groups into their own cell family.  We meet together every other week and talk about transitioning into adulthood.  Last night was the last cell family of the year.   It’s tradition for us to give our small group leaders the floor on the last night and let them share their final words of advice to our graduating seniors.  They all shared from the platform of years invested in their small group so their words carried some weight for all and immense weight for a few.

One of our leaders said something that I will remember for the rest of my life—something that reminds me that connecting small groups of students with a caring adult is probably the most important thing we do.  This particular leader said, “Whatever happens from here on out, whatever mistakes you make, we want you to know that we are here for you for the rest of your lives.”  The beautiful thing is that I know from watching her lead her small group that she meant every word of that statement and I know the same is true for the other leaders sitting around that circle.

Ever since I heard Kara Powell explain the core concepts of Sticky Faith in a breakout session at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference, I have made the “4+1” concept a key component of our volunteer recruiting and training.  We’ve asked for a four year commitment for as long as I can remember but we began visioning volunteers to continue mentoring their students during their first year of college.  I believe that this concept has made a significant impact in the lives of our graduates.

Here’s the clincher:  if you recruit the right people and vision them the right way, not only will they give you 4+1, they will give you 4+life.   I understand that not every leader has this kind of capacity and not every small group relationally cements together in this way but even if only half of them do—think of the incredible lifelong impact our student ministries could have.  This is why I believe that nothing we do is more important that leveraging inter-generational mentoring relationships.  Life-changing student ministry isn’t complicated.  Find adults who love Jesus and are willing to love a handful of students, equip and vision the heck out of them and unleash them to be the pastors in your ministry.  4+life.