The #1 Evangelism Training Tool for Youth Groups

The secret ingredient to building a thriving youth ministry is simple: Focus on the Gospel, and train teens to share it with others. After all, all Christians—from kindergartners to senior citizens—are called to reconcile people to God (2 Corinthians 5:18). That means the Great Commission was given to the teenagers in your youth group just as much as it was given to you.

But training students to share the Gospel boldly and clearly can feel daunting. How do we prioritize youth evangelism in our youth groups without stressing out ourselves, our leaders, and our students? By using what 95% of American teenagers already have in their back pockets: a smartphone. Teens can use the phone to access the Life in 6 Words (LI6W) app, a user-friendly evangelism training tool that can help them share the Gospel clearly with anyone.

The Life in 6 Words app enables students to not only understand Jesus’s message for themselves, but also reach other teens in their lives with the Gospel.

Evangelism Training Made Easy: the Life in 6 Words App

With the Life in 6 Words mobile app, anyone can be an evangelist! And the app does more than just provide an easy way to share the Gospel. It also actively encourages you to constantly witness to the lost in your life, pray regularly for them, and even create a group of like-minded friends trying to spread the Good News.

The Life in 6 Words app helps your students tell their friends and family about Jesus using the G.O.S.P.E.L. acrostic. G.O.S.P.E.L. stands for:

• God created us to be with Him.
• Our sins separate us from God. 
• Sins cannot be removed by good deeds.
• Paying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again.
• Everyone who trusts in Him alone has eternal life.
• Life with Jesus starts now and lasts forever.

Using this acrostic, your students can walk others through God’s plan, man’s fall, redemption, and how anyone can have eternal life. It’s simple enough that any nonbeliever can understand it and any Christian can memorize it (although with the app, they don’t have to!).

How to Evangelize Using the Life in 6 Words App 

There are lots of amazing evangelism apps out there that teach you how to share your faith. They’re all unique, but the Life in 6 Words app specifically focuses on relational evangelism. It does this by helping you get into a relational mindset that encourages you to pray for people to know God, care for them with His love, and share the Gospel with them—an approach that Dare 2 Share calls the “Cause Circle.” Through the app, you can keep track of who’s in your Cause Circle and which stage of the relational evangelism process you’re in with each of them.

To start a Gospel conversation using the app, you:

1. Ask the person you’re talking with to choose six words on the app that describe their life. 
2. After hearing their answer, you share the six words that describe your life. 
3. Then, ask if you can share the six words that the Bible uses to describe life. 
4. If the person says yes, you can walk them through the G.O.S.P.E.L. acrostic and the Scripture verses included in the app.

Life in 6 Words also allows you to text or post an image or video that starts a conversation about spiritual things. Sometimes, a steady stream of thought-provoking questions and encouragement is what makes a difference, so these media resources are great for that. This is so helpful for youth groups, because by 2018, 61% of teenagers preferred texting, social media, and video-chatting over in-person conversations. The app lets you record yourself talking about each letter in the G.O.S.P.E.L. acrostic, helping you as you go, and then you can send the link to anyone with a smartphone. The app will even notify you when they’ve watched it and let you know if they’ve said yes to Jesus!

The Life in 6 Words Cause Circle

One thing that makes Life in 6 Words stand out from other evangelism apps is its ability to store your Gospel conversations and keep track of the people you’re praying for and witnessing to. It does this through the Cause Circle feature.

You can easily add people’s names and photos to your Cause Circle, schedule times to pray for them, and get reminder notifications to pray. There’s even a notes section so you can record details about your Gospel conversations.

The Cause Circle feature helps students realize that sharing the Gospel doesn’t end at the last letter of the acrostic. It’s an ongoing journey during which you constantly plant seeds and water them. Students will begin to understand that someone rejecting the Gospel isn’t personal, and that you may be witnessing to and praying for the same people for years. 

Using the Life in 6 Words App in Your Youth Group

Anyone can use the Life in 6 Words app, but it was made with youth ministry in mind. The app’s Groups feature is perfect for youth groups, sports teams, families, and more. The feature gives you the ability to create or join groups of Life in 6 Words app users (that you personally know) dedicated to sharing the Gospel. You’ll be able to see your group’s statistics on:

• People in your Cause Circles
• Gospel engagements
• Professions of faith
• People who’ve been prayed for

It’s hard for a teenager to do something if they don’t see their peers doing it as well, and they’re more likely to do something if they see their friends doing it. The app’s Groups feature may be a rare instance of positive peer pressure! When teenagers see other people their age sharing the Gospel and praying for their lost friends, it proves to them that they can too. It shows them that they aren’t the only teenager trying to talk to their friends about Jesus. 

Encourage your students to download the app and start creating groups with their friends in church. Your leaders can make them for their small groups, and you can create one for the entire youth group.

Youth Evangelism Training 

Not every teenager has a smartphone. While adults would agree that’s probably a good thing, teenagers without phones often feel left out. The last thing you want to do is make your students without phones feel isolated and unintentionally cause friction between them and their parents, who may not want them to have a phone. Remember, the Life in 6 Words app is just one of many forms of youth evangelism training. Other approaches include:

• Preaching about evangelism
• Doing Bible studies on evangelism
• Using Dare 2 Share’s Takeoff to Touchdown curriculum to teach evangelism techniques
• Facilitating evangelism role-play
• Taking students out to evangelize regularly
• Organizing youth mission trips focused on evangelism

And if you want a physical version of the Life in 6 Words app for your students without phones, we have G.O.S.P.E.L. cards available on the Dare 2 Share store. Or, check out our blog where we talk about evangelism boards filled with the names of your students’ friends and loved ones who haven’t yet trusted in Jesus.

Dare 2 Share exists so every teenager around the world can hear the Gospel from a friend. We have tons of youth evangelism training material, curriculum, and books to help pastors and leaders equip their students, with or without phones. We host events every year—such as Lead THE Cause and Dare 2 Share LIVE—during which thousands of students from all over the world experience intensive evangelism and disciple-multiplication training courses.

We also encourage youth leaders to join the Gospel Advancing movement. When you do so, you’ll get help applying the 7 Values of Gospel Advancing to your youth group, and you can connect with a network of youth ministers dedicated to spreading the Good News of Jesus through the teenagers in our churches. At Dare 2 Share, we believe that the most effective way for your youth group to share the Gospel consistently is by becoming a Gospel Advancing ministry.

The #1 Evangelism Training Tool for Youth Groups FAQs