I love preparing young people for university; it’s one of the things that gives me energy more than anything else. Seeing their excitement grow about what is possible at university and getting them prepared for the culture is something that really energises me!
Transition is a tricky thing for young people to get their heads around, be it in the form of heading to university, going on a gap year or sticking around and finding work after school. Their lives have now shifted dramatically and the likelihood is that they’re not getting masses of support. They’ve moved from the spoon-fed nature of school to being let loose, fending for themselves. It’s a pretty difficult time of finding out who they really are and where their identity is. Have we really considered what happens to our young people when they leave our youth ministry?
I work for Fusion, which means I get to travel around the country meeting youth workers and hearing about the exciting stuff they are doing to engage with young people and get them prepared for life after sixth form. But a question that I hear often is, ‘why should our youth group engage with students too; isn’t that what student workers are for?’
Well, to be frank, no. If we’re going to consider where and when our youth ministry ends, I wonder whether we could start by broadening our vision of youth work to include university students too. Here are four reasons I think it’s of upmost importance to include students in our youth ministry and have them help us lead our youth work.
Young people learn from other young people - not just from us
University students were young people more recently than we were. They know all about Yik Yak and everything relating to a Buzzfeed article. Snapchat is used more than any other app on their phones. I was a student only two years ago and I feel out of the loop on a lot of the jargon and apps they chat about. This doesn’t mean that older youth workers don’t have their place – mother, father and grandparent youth leaders are hugely important, but young people will look up to students as the generation that is just one step ahead of them. Our students have the ability to influence and lead our young people in a culture that we might be completely alien in.
The chances are that our young people will have already experienced ‘university culture’ plentifully before they even fill out their UCAS forms. They’ll have already been around similar pressure points, such as the drinking culture and sex and relationships that our students experience at university. It’s so important to get students speaking truth and light into our young people’s lives where they may be struggling to figure out who they really are.
God desires a generation of Christian students who will live in the pressure areas of student culture without apologising for or hiding their faith and who build deep friendships with their fellow students. It’s time that we encouraged our students to do this. And this brings a huge opportunity for our university students to lead our young people in setting strong foundations for faith. Who best to learn from than students who have walked through the teenage years so recently?
Students have time and want to invest in young people
Students flock to a city near you every September. Depending on your church set up, you may or may not have a buzzing student work in place. If you don’t, use this as an opportunity to engage with students and get them involved in your youth ministry. Listen to their ideas, use their experience and get them serving in your youth group. They will bring fresh perspective and tips that you may have not thought of. This will not only be great for you, but also for them. Students love to feel part of something, and part of a family, so give them the opportunity to.
Giving students a home, not just with their own, university friendship group but in your youth group, will get them out of the student clique and into the wider church family. We all want an inter-generational church, rather than one made up of age-specific ghettos. Student life is crazy and unexpected, especially during freshers’ week. Getting new students plugged in so that they feel a part of your family and community, could make all the difference in how they experience their first few weeks or months at university.
Including students in your youth ministry will also help them commit to church. University students are known as the ‘maybe’ generation, clicking ‘interested in attending’ to an event on Facebook rather than just committing there and then, just in case anything better comes up. Including them in your family will mean they have more opportunity to commit to church and stick with it throughout their university years, bringing life to your community.
Using students is also a brilliant opportunity to find out what your young people want. It might be that they want to hang out and spend some quality time with some older students or others in the church community; it might be that they need help to fill out a CV or apply for a job. Supporting them in what they need and want will make a difference. Do this rather than busying your schedule and theirs with stuff that they don’t want! We so often try and figure out in our youth team meetings what the young people want and need but so often we totally miss the mark! Find out from them what they want and need from the church. Students could be the answer.
Student life is training ground
Students are currently getting trained in so many spheres, so why not the church? What is it that gets students fired up, excited and passionate? It might be something that they’re really good at or completely hopeless at. Whatever it is, encourage and inspire them to pursue it and use it to influence others. Find what they’re really passionate about and cheer them on in it.
Recently at a training event, we taught on the seven spheres of influence: university edition! We took the seven spheres and reshaped them to create the key spheres in the university landscape. The seven spheres was a vision given by God to Loren Cunningham (YWAM Founder), Bill Bright (Campus Crusade) and not long afterward, Dr. Francis Schaeffer. This vision was for a church who would be influencers for Jesus in all parts of society. They had seven spheres which they saw as crucial to culture change and seeing God’s kingdom come in all areas of society. These spheres are: the family, the Church, education, media, celebration (arts / entertainment / sports), business and government. We love the idea of Christian students living for Jesus in all areas of society. Have a look at the spheres and see where the young people in your youth group are leading or being influencers, and where you can pair them up with a student to encourage and mentor them in that passion.
Housemates / friendships
Family is the first key sphere and university offers a brilliant opportunity to live in community with their mates.
Church
It’s now become far more common to see students leading in a church context, but how much are they actually influencing here?
Studies
Work is part of our calling as Christians. God is a working God and we are to reflect that aspect of his character. University is an opportunity to learn and to develop our understanding of the world. How our students study, how they lead others in their learning and how they work with educational departments in the university can be key opportunities for cultural transformation.
Campaigning
This sphere was provoked by the media - mass communication. Media shapes our culture and the messages we are sold by the media impact the way we view other people and the world. What culture shifts do our students want to see and who is speaking up about them?
Clubs and societies
It’s exciting to see this sphere getting more and more influence from Christian leaders. This area is described by Loren Cunningham as ‘celebration’ - arts, entertainment, sports: the ways we celebrate life. Where do students spend their time outside of lectures?
The city
One of the student union’s responsibilities is to try and get students to engage with their city. Where can they bring transformation, not just on their campus but in their town or city?
Student union / University body
Again, this is a growing area of influence for the Church - more and more students are taking on positions in their student union or building relationship with them. Where are they leading in the student union or inside the university itself?
Use this as a tool to see where your young people are strong in leading and where you are missing influencers. This is a brilliant opportunity to pair up students and young people to pursue these spheres of influence together.
The 12 disciples were students
The disciples were students and Jesus gave them real responsibility and then sent them out. We can do the same with ours, not just giving them ‘token’ responsibility but real responsibility. It might cost us, but it will enable them to go and be brilliant. Leading young people is such an important job, it’s affecting them at one of the most important stages of their lives. If a student is given the responsibility to help lead our young people to live more like Jesus, our job is to take that seriously.
Having students and young people investing in each other creates a brilliant legacy. A legacy that will live on into their adult years, cheering each other on and pointing each other towards Jesus. If we set this expectation in place now, we will still see the fruit of it in years to come. We have an amazing opportunity to involve more than just teenagers in our youth ministries; let’s see where students can take us!
Rosie Kersys is Fusion’s Student Linkup team leader.
‘I became an intern at my youth group’
Bex Stillwell
I started going along to the youth group at HTB when I was in year nine at school and spent the rest of my teenage Friday nights and Sunday evenings going along. Eight years later, many of my best friends were those I’d met at the youth group and we all still love hanging out with each other. In the summer of 2012 I became one of two youth interns for six months during my gap year. The team I was a part of were incredible and passionate about youth work; it was so inspiring spending time with them and seeing ‘behind the scenes’ of the youth ministry I had been on the receiving end of. It was a privilege for me, and I’m sure for other interns, to be able to witness the prayer, thought and creativity that goes into youth work.
I became increasingly passionate about the individuals in our youth group. It became more and more of a privilege to pray for them and to spend time with them, being a part of their story as they become more of the men and women God has created them to be. Another one my favourite things was the opportunity to lead some of the youth sessions - we got a bit competitive as leaders, our motto seemed to be, ‘the messier the games, the better’.
Having a chance to lead and learn at the same time was a unique and extremely valuable thing for me. The youth team invested in us and trained us as leaders and I can see the thumbprint of that time on my life now. One of the challenges of going from a youth member to a youth intern was the flip in mindset that comes with it. Suddenly a Sunday night at church was ‘work’ and my attention was focused there because I was there to play my part in serving the youth ministry. This meant I wasn’t able to chat to my friends as much as I wanted to, but more significantly than that, I learnt the vital lesson that me worshipping God cannot depend on who’s around me or who’s watching me. I had to fight the temptation of putting God second and making sure the young people were okay first. I learned that as I worshipped God I would be the greatest blessing to them. I would hear from him for them better, I would set a better example to them, and my relationship with Jesus wouldn’t take a back seat. Again, I can see the implications of this lesson on my life today. It was a privilege to bring to the team a ‘youth’ perspective, to be part of the innovative ideas that we came up with as a team, and to be challenged and taught by a team of youth workers that passionately loved Jesus and young people.
What about those young people who don’t head off to uni? How we can support young people who go to work, or head out on gap year programmes? How do they fit into our youth ministry? Here are a few ideas:
Involve them
Those on gap years or heading into the world of work for the first time will probably feel quite isolated. They’re out in the ‘real world’ and trying to navigate that, yet at the same time, we seem to expect them to move seamlessly from the comfort of youth ministry to take their place in the wider church. Obviously we want young people to integrate into the entirety of church life, but this doesn’t mean we should cut them out completely. When they’re around, invite them back to the group and perhaps consider changing the upper boundaries of your youth ministry to include those making their first steps into adulthood.
See them
Even if these young people don’t remain as a part of the youth group, that doesn’t mean your relationship with them needs to radically alter. Do young people over the age of 18 fit into your mentoring programmes? Do you still ensure you see them in a one-on-one setting? How can you make sure that they’re still supported once they leave the group?
Keep them updated
In the lonely, isolated world of adulthood, some young people may love hearing updates and stories from what’s going on in the group. They may be wondering how younger teenagers are growing and developing and how projects they’ve supported are going. We’re bad enough at letting the wider church know about what’s going on, let alone those we don’t regularly see.
Share their stories
Young people on gap years will be experiencing new things, seeing God work in exciting ways and developing in their own faith and giftings. Sharing these stories can not only keep young people connected to their existing church family, but it’s also a great way of encouraging the congregation and youth group, and ensuring young people remain in their prayers once they’re out of sight.
Get the whole church involved
Could you link each young person moving on to university, a gap year or work with an older member of the congregation? Could this adult agree to pray and keep in touch with this young person? This not only ensures the young person is supported, but ensures a connection with the wider body of Christ, rather than just a youth work ghetto.
Utilise them
Those on gap years will be learning new skills and seeing their faith grow in new ways – they can be a great asset to your youth work. Get them involved with speaking and leading when they’re around. This not only uses and encourages their giftings, but can also be a great example to younger members of the group.
