Need help creating a young adult group at our church

[Maintenanceguy]

I attend a small country church and my wife and I started a teen youth group about 4 years ago. I was the teen Sunday School teacher and our church closed for COVID. During the shut down, invited my class out for a day of crabbing on the water and before we left the dock, my boat broke down. While we were sitting on the dock eating lunch, with a disabled boat, I learned how much the shutdown was effecting these kids. Not seeing friends and watching a computer screen all day was a big deal.

So, I broke the covid rules and opened up the church one night a week to the 5 kids in my class - so they could have each other to hang out with, for a couple of hours. We either wore masks or were outside but it was a good time. They started inviting other kids. What started as just a social get together time 4 years ago has evolved. We now sit down together for a meal each week and we added a Bible lesson / discussion time. Some weeks, after the lesson we move to the church sanctuary for some worship time with contemporary music. Some weeks we play volleyball, sit around the campfire, or play darts inside. We have had teens approach us to ask if they can share their testimony or lead a Bible discussion topic - which is really great.

The group has now grown from 5 teens to over 30 who attend our Thursday night youth group regularly. The group includes devoted, experienced believers, new believers, and some who aren't there yet. It's actually really amazing and not something I expected. God's hand has absolutely been working here.

But I have an issue and I need some advice.

Our group is "teens" so we have kids from 13 to 19. It seems that several choose to stop coming or come only occasionally once they reach 18 and once you're 20 - we have no other program to offer. The interests of 18, 19, and 20 year olds is just different than the interests of our 13, 14, and 15 year olds. Our regular church service and activities are more geared toward families and a 30+ crowd. So from 20 years old to mid 20's we don't have a program and our existing program becomes less interesting as you get closer to 20.

I want to build a new program as the next step to our teen program and could use any advice from churches that have done this well. Thank you.

 

[Snackersmom]

Awwww, that post made me tear up! God bless you and your wife for what you are doing with His help. <3

I am involved with the youth ministry at my church as a volunteer chaperone/helper, but I do get more involved with planning when the youth pastor and his wife get overloaded (like when they were expecting their first baby last year). Our group has gone from about 15 to about 25 in the past year, and it took some adjusting for sure.

One thing that helped was giving more responsibility to the older members as we felt they could handle it. This involved letting them teach some lessons, share their testimonies, lead prayer teams, take a hand in planning activities, invite them to decision-making sessions with the grownups, and just in general encouraging them to seek God about what He wanted them to do to serve and encouraging them in their God-given gifts. But not everyone is called to lifelong youth ministry. Sooooo.......

One of the dads has been hosting a weekly hangout at his house for the older teens/early 20's. They do lessons about Godly leadership, personality typing (to help them understand their natural gifts better), spiritual gifts (many people, especially young people, are not aware of their gifts on their own, you have to tell them what you see in them and encourage them to recognize and use them), and also seeking God for the next step in life (several are headed for the mission field this Fall). They are also encouraged to get involved with the worship team, children's ministry, and to start their own side projects if God is calling them to that (3 of them recently got together to host a monthly worship night at church).

It seems to be going well...so yeah, I guess to sum it up I'd say that the trick wasn't leading them more, so much as stepping back so God could be their leader......The grownups are mostly just providing moral and practical support. It has been really neat to watch!

All the best, it sounds like the Holy Spirit is really blessing your endeavors!

 

[Snackersmom]

Hi, me again! I thought of something else worth mentioning:

The Dad who started the YA group networked with a few other local churches who were also lacking programs for late teens/early 20's. I think there's peeps from about 5 different congregations attending at this point. I live in a fairly rural area, so lots of smaller churches and of course we lose some at that age to college and such. So having one big group offered better diversity of gifts and experiences. They even get together about once a month to drive 40 miles to the nearest city for community service & street witnessing. The young people added in the street witnessing element themselves.....I can't tell you how proud I am of these kids!

I also wanted to tell you that your story really did bless me a lot. I wish more ministries were like the one you and your wife are running, where it's not about ego and committees and titles, just doing what God has gifted you to do. Sometimes I wonder what our country would be like if every serious believer spent as much time actually working with God as they do complaining about politics and the general state of things. But I digress.

Also, you might get more answers if you post this in the Pastor/Small group leader forum. But ya might also get some knuckleheads screeching that if you were teaching "true" discipleship then those numbers would be going down instead of up, church is not supposed to be about food and games, the kids just want the free pizza, yadda yadda ad nauseum..... I'm sure you can weed those comments out though.

All the best!