bored-teenagers“It is a sin to bore a kid with the gospel”

Jim Rayburn, the founder of Young Life, a ministry geared toward adolescents, is credited with this bold declaration. Whether we agree with it or not, oftentimes a church youth group or Bible Study tends to be boring if the leader is not engaging. Part of my Urban Youth Ministry Training provides leaders with tools to change that, including  this list of helpful tips that can liven up any youth or children’s gathering. Ask your Youth Pastor/Director does he/she do any of the following:

  1. Adjust your room set-up–Switching up your set-up is a SUPER easy way to liven things up a bit. Who doesn’t appreciate a change in scenery?
  2. Use an object lesson--Find an object or an image to use as a metaphor to drive home the theme being taught.
  3. Creative participation–Let students create something. Tie in an activity with your lesson where they are taking pictures with their phones, or writing words on a giant sheet of paper.
  4. Competition rules–Don’t be afraid to craft some group games or competitions to use in your lesson. These are a great way to spruce up a lesson.
  5. Use video–If you don’t use video regularly, arrange to show one. Take the extra steps to borrow the necessary equipment to make it happen.
  6. Don’t use video–If you use a video or media clip each lesson, take a break for a lesson or two. Plug in one of these or some other suggestion in it’s place.
  7. Get students up and moving–With a little work, pretty much any lesson plan can be adapted to get students up out of their seats. Use stations. Ask “yes/no” questions of the group where one response has students standing up or sitting down.
  8. Don’t forget current events–For some reason, when teaching teenagers, we don’t always think of events in the news. Big mistake. Tying-in current events are an easy way make a lesson relevant and timely.
  9. Use case studies–One easy way to help make lessons feel more relevant is to modernize a principle you’re teaching by creating case studies. Case studies are short, fictional vignettes where you create characters, and a problem or an issue they are dealing with. Simply read them and have students respond to how they would react, or what they think should happen, etc.
  10. Play a game on PowerPoint–Create a slide show presentation with multiple-choice questions based on the general theme of your lesson (love, forgiveness, etc.). Make it a competition. Have fun.
  11. Let students own the spotlight–Create activities that have students talking about themselves. Maybe stories from their family’s past, opportunities to talk about their achievements, arranging to have them take pictures during the week and display them during the lesson, talking about key figures in their lives, etc.
  12. Utilize music–Have students listen to a song (print the lyrics) and respond.
  13. Creative prayer time–Set-up prayer stations. Guide students through biblical examples of different prayer postures. Do one-word prayers. Do sentence prayers. Have student turn to their right and pray for their neighbor.
  14. Have open-ended discussions–99.9% of discussions look for predetermined “right” answers that must be spoken before we move on. They are linear discussions. What about discussions where the goal is to wrestle with a concept? The Bible is chock-full of huge concepts that can’t neatly be dealt with in a 7-minute discussion. Have some fun with those concepts.
  15. Experiment with your environment–What if students sat on pillows instead of chairs? What if you adjusted lighting? Used candles? Decorated your room to coincide with your lesson’s theme?
  16. Let students teach–Adapt your lesson so students are teaching each other, whether in groups or as individuals.
  17. Role play–Any narrative passage of Scripture can be turned into a script really easily. Have students volunteer to be specific characters. When time comes to read the lesson’s passage, it becomes a little mini-drama your students can both watch and follow along with in their Bibles.
  18. Draw on a dry-erase board–Story through a Bible story on a dry-erase board drawing pictures to represent characters and events in the course of a narrative.
  19. Pop culture narrative–Movies, TV shows, and celebrities are awesome sources for creative examples. Look to popular culture to pull analogies and stories that will help serve as examples for your teaching time.
  20.  Film festival–Give your students two weeks to shoot and edit short movies (3-5 minutes) around a specific theme. Give them guidelines and rules. Then, on the day of your lesson, use them to support the biblical theme your teaching.

Hope these help. If you don’t have a youth ministry up and running or you need help with these tips, call me and let’s talk–AC