Students NEED Youth Groups. A place where they can gather with other young people, have fun, get encouraged, poured into, and prayed over. A community of Christian students and mentors will push them forward, but how do we transition the activities of Youth Groups into abiding with the Lord in their personal lives? How can we help them get the resources they need, and put the practices into place to become people of prayer and the Word?
INVITE THEM INTO DEEPER WATER
A lot of students don’t ever go deep into their relationship with God because no one invites them any deeper than where their ankles are covered by the water. You have a really unique opportunity as an adult in their life, who has the influence to call them deeper in their relationship with Jesus! There are students in your Youth Group who want to go beyond the shallows, cross the rope, and go into the deep! They just don’t know how to swim! Invite them out, make the call, and see who decides to venture out into the deep end! It might be one or two at first. THAT’S OKAY! Those students who choose to go deeper in their relationship with the Lord will be examples in your Youth Group of what an intimate relationship with Jesus looks like. Slowly but surely you’ll notice others slowly trickling into the deep end with them.
GIVE THEM FLOATIES!
We all know when you teach a child to swim, you shouldn’t just throw them in the deep end and scream “SINK OR SWIM”. You give them what they need to learn how to swim, without drowning. The same needs to be true when helping students develop healthy habits of bible study and prayer! GIVE THEM RESOURCES! Find a bible study that will help them walk through different chapters of the Bible and go into detail with what that chapter of Scripture is talking about! Soul Exercises is a great tool for this! There are studies on certain books of the Bible as well as studies on different aspects of Christian faith! Study tools like Soul Exercises will give students a specific time to dedicate to reading their Bible, lead them to specific Scripture to read, and cause them to think and meditate on what they read. This way they become doers of the Word! As they study the Bible and not just read it, it will grow deep into their hearts!
CONQUERING THE FEAR OF DEEP WATER
Students look at adults in their lives who walk closely with the Lord and who live a life of prayer and Scripture and think they could never get there. There is this misconception that, in order to be a person of prayer, you have to start spending two hours in intercession every day. This, to a lot of students, is overwhelming. So let’s break up the deep into sections so they feel like they can wade in the water a little better! Help your students come up with a structure to use in their prayer time with the Lord! Take off the pressure from their shoulders that they have to start praying for 2 hours tomorrow. The hope is that one day they will be able to sit in the presence of the Lord and pray for 2 hours, but to get there it starts with 10 minutes. Challenge them to start with 10 minutes daily. Give them structure to know what to do during their prayer time! Claim Your Campus uses the prayer structure LISTEN, THANK, ASK. This is a great structure to teach your students to listen to the voice of God and praise Him, instead of just asking God for things! It teaches them to have a conversation with Jesus, not just request things from Him! As time goes on, that 10 minutes will change to 20, then 30, then 45 and before they know it they’ve spent two hours with the Lord and didn’t even realize until they said amen and checked their phone!
CHECK ON YOUR SWIMMERS!
Make sure they know that if they start to slip out of the floaties, if they start to get lost in the deep, they have a lifeguard that can jump in and help redirect them! Check in and ask what they learned this week in their Bible readings, and ask them what their time with the Lord was like this week. Give them space to ask you questions if they read something they don’t understand. If you have a large group of students participating in reading the Word and praying in their personal lives, ask a group if anyone has questions about what they read that week! Even taking intentional time to talk about what they read with other students and praying for each other is POWERFUL! Then they are putting into practice what they have read about all week!
You have students who are itching to go deeper in their relationship with the Lord, they just don’t know how to get there. It might feel daunting, or overwhelming but that is where YOU come in! Give them the resources, help them create structure in their prayer lives, and be there to encourage and support them!
Aubrie Kimbrough
Campus Content Manager