Most youth pastors and parents would love to see their teenagers sharing their faith with unbelievers on a regular basis. We spend time and money training them, encouraging them, pushing them, and even taking them to events like Dare 2 Share Conferences. But despite all that investment, the number of kids in our youth groups who are actively sharing their faith is usually pretty low. Why is that?
What is one of the main contributing factors that cause kids to not only share their faith, but to see their friends actually make decisions for Christ? Of kids who share their faith on a regular basis, what do all of them have in common?
There’s actually been some research about this and in this video blog post I talk about some of it and what it means for us and our youth ministries.
Have you found the video to be true? Have you seen students engage because of the model you have set for them? Share your thoughts below
Hey Tim, Great post. I agree we must model sharing for our students so they can see what it looks like and feels like. I have a question for you or anyone that might have some ideas for me. Our youth group is in a very small town. Everyone pretty much knows everyone else. We are a good hour and change to a mall. We actually have the smallest Walmart in America. (yea!) So, we don’t have a real social area that lends itself to an outreach experience, that I can see. And so, that is my question. Does anyone have some ideas for a small town group for outreach? Thanks!
I agree with Greg. There are other things you can do in your community besides going to a mall. In fact, we had to be careful at the mall not to get kicked out. We went to the boardwalk at the beach (about 2 hours from us) in high school to witness, too. It was more open there and not as threatening, so that was good.
You could do it by serving people as Greg suggested and then taking the opportunity to share Christ. Or consider sports games at the high school. There are plenty of people sitting around in the stands there who probably aren’t actually paying attention to the game.
Great question! How about door-to-door service projects (install lightbulbs, shovel snow, rake leaves, clean up, etc) and use that as an opportunity to share the good news of Jesus!
Thank you for the good thoughts and suggestions. We will be in prayer to see how the
Lord leads us about what to do. Thanks for the encouragement!
Great blog I agree one 100% The youth need to see us the youth pastor, your worker, pastor sharing our faith with people! I have to be honest I have only done this maybe 10 times in front of youth that is it. It is something I need to work at. It is something they need to see. I am like Monica, we are a small town we don’t even have a wal-mart but I will try to Get our youth on some Service project. I will try to share my faith to others when they are around to see it first hand. Thanks for the blog