I recently realized that small groups in our student ministry aren’t working. I found this insight surprising because I’m a huge fan of small groups. In fact, I spent the last 5 years as the small groups pastor of our high school ministry. I’m still a huge proponent of small groups but I’ve realized that they aren’t enough. Unless these groups lead to something deeper we aren’t giving our student what they truly need.
What I’ve learned over the last decade of ministry is that in a culture that is largely void of adult support and care what our students need more than anything is mentors. Our students need caring adults to show them how to live and follow Jesus. They need a constant force of love, support and coaching. That is what a mentor does. I still believe that small groups are important but only if they lead to mentoring.
Perhaps the most important benefit of a mentor is that the mentoring relationship continues after students graduate out of our ministries. I am convinced that long-term mentoring relationships are the most important thing we can offer a student. So how do we facilitate mentoring? The good news is that if your student ministry is based on small groups you already possess the framework for mentoring relationships. Here are some thoughts on transforming your small group ministry into a mentoring ministry.
GET OUTSIDE
If a small group only exists within the walls of the church building or the home in which they meet then I would argue that it’s not mentoring. Mentoring takes place within the normal contexts of life. Mentoring happens when a caring adult invites a student into his or her life. Mentoring happens when adults invade the turf of students. So, if we want to see mentoring in our student ministries then we must literally get into the lives and students and invite them into ours. And, we must equip and train our volunteers to do the same.
RECRUIT DIFFERENTLY
A mentoring based student ministry requires that we make a shift in volunteer recruiting. For the first half of my career I concentrated on recruiting the coolest, youngest, most relevant volunteers I could find. My thinking was that I needed volunteers who would attract students and relate well to them. While I still think that relevance is important and cool is extraordinarily helpful, there is only so much mentoring a young, hip college student can offer a high school student. Mentoring requires experience. I now believe we ought to recruit volunteers who have life experience because they possess more of the tools required of a mentor. I want a volunteer who has the wisdom and life experience necessary to address some of the heavier issues facing teens.
Mentoring, at it’s most basic level is this: “Watch what I do and do it.” Because of this we also need volunteers whose lives that are worth copying. We need people of character and strong faith. Character and life experience trump age and coolness.
RESTRUCTURE
A volunteer only has so much time in a week. If you’re already asking your volunteers for two events a week (youth group night and small groups night) you may need to restructure your ministry. I believe that the best strategy is to attach small groups to your large group programming and cut the extra night of programming. This way all of your students get plugged into small groups and secondly, it frees your volunteers up for mentoring outside of the ministry structure. I truly believe that outside mentoring is more valuable than another night of programming. Feel free to disagree.
CHANGE YOUR FOCUS
How many students can one person mentor? Truthfully, it’s probably around 3 or 4. This means that we need more volunteers! It also means that youth pastors needs to change their focus. Mentoring is simple and yet terribly draining. Mentors are constantly pouring themselves out so they need someone to pour into them. I would argue that the role of a youth pastor needs to shift toward caring for and mentoring mentors. If the best thing our student ministries can offer a student is a long-term mentor then the primary role of the youth pastor may need to shift toward recruiting, training and encouraging godly mentors.
It’s my belief that small groups aren’t working anymore because students desperately need adult mentors. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this especially if you’ve found success in promoting mentoring relationships in your student ministry.
image credited to Matt Peoples via Flickr
