Involving Students in Planning

Picture this: Your mind is blank as you stare at your calendar, wondering what activities and events you should plan for the next quarter. Nothing comes to mind, except the whining comments you heard last month from the Jr. Highers who thought your bowling idea was really stupid. You tap your pencil on the desk, look to the lights for a clue, and then give up, knowing even your best ideas won't make the grade.

If that's the way you've been planning your youth ministry calendar, no wonder you're frustrated—you're leaving out an integral element: students. Okay, okay...so it's not the new-fangled idea you were hoping to hear. But it is still the most overlooked part of effective youth ministry planning. Multitudes of youth leaders and youth pastors still choose to sit behind their desk and plan the calendar for their students instead of with their students.

Involving your students in the planning process offers you several
advantages, a few of which are:

Students will be more active if they feel ownership of the ministry.
We can increase our relevancy when the students have input.
We can have a better understanding of our students' needs and
whether or not we are meeting them if we hear what they have to say.
Students will more likely take part in leading if they have the
opportunity to plan.
Students are more likely to minister by bringing friends to youth meetings if they know it will be interesting and fun (and it will be…
since they helped plan it).

So getting your students involved in helping plan your youth ministry calendar is a good thing. But how do you do it? Here is a five-step method to help you incorporate your students in the crucial realm of planning.

1. Lay a Foundation

Get your students thinking in two ways: spiritually (tuning into what God wants to say to us) and purposefully (discerning God's purpose for our group). Whether you make "foundation laying" a long process or a short one is not as important as making sure you do it. This past year I laid our foundation with a short process, asking the students one week, "What is God calling our youth group to do?" We spent several minutes in silence pondering this question, listening to God for his promptings. Then I gave the students an opportunity to share any insights with the whole group. After the sharing, I changed the subject and dropped the process until the next week. My goal? To simply spur the students' spiritual thinking, especially regarding their youth ministry.

If you desire, you can be much more elaborate with this process. You could teach a series on the purpose and mission of the church, analyze the life of Christ, or study the pastoral epistles. In any case, do what you need to do to lay a proper and solid foundation.

Hint: If your students already have a decent grasp on what church is about, take the short approach. If they are new to church or young in Christ, adopt a longer approach. However, let your approach center more on giving them time with God, not just answers on a page. Students don't have to have a large
base of knowledge for God to speak to them, but they do need a quiet space and some guidance.

2. Brainstorm

While this is the most time-consuming part of the process, it is also the most fun. The objective here is to gather as much information as you can about what is possible for your youth group. Abundance of ideas, not necessarily the quality of them, is the goal. Here is how we accomplished this. I put four large sheets of paper on the four walls of our youth room. They were labeled Values, Activities, Service Projects, and Lesson Topics. We then divided our group into four smaller groups--two middle school and two high school groups. Before I turned the students loose to brainstorm, I walked them through a list of guidelines, what I call "idea boundaries," such as an idea's practicality, an idea's possibility, an idea's purpose, and an idea's appeal. Each group was then assigned an adult guide to walk them through the different stations of the process, making sure the brainstorming ideas stay within the guidelines just discussed. Each guide also received a handout with these instructions:

Gather your students at the station.
Explain what each station is about. Values concerns what we should deem important or consider a priority in our youth group. An example would be unity. Activities is just what it implies: outings or events you would like to see our youth group do. These are usually fun things. Lessons/topics refers to our programs (usually Sunday night, Wednesday evening, and Sunday School). This deals with needs or questions, usually of a spiritual nature. Service/Mission projects deals with things our youth group could do to serve others and build the kingdom of God. Our goal is to schedule one of these each month.
Pray and ask for God's direction and leading.
Ask the students for their ideas. Have a "recorder" (i.e., a person willing to take notes) write the ideas on the paper. See if each idea fits within the guidelines before it is written down. Feel free to discuss and/or
refine your group's ideas before you record them.
When the signal is given, move to the next station and repeat the process. After each group spends time brainstorming at each station, you are ready for the third element in the process.

3. Vote

Next, give each student a strip of colored dots. (These can be found in the mailing section of office supply stores.) I used different sets for middle school and high school, labeling each strip with a "V" for values, an "S" for service projects, an "A" for activities, and a "T" for lesson topics. This prevented a student from using all their votes on "beach trip" and not having any left to use on service projects or lesson topics. Likewise, because each strip had four dots, but only three different colors, each student had two first place votes, one second place vote and one third place vote. To give further visual guidance, I posted a key in the front of the room showing what colors equaled what vote (for instance, green is first place, pink is second place, and yellow is third place). The students then moved around the room and voted at each station.

4. Plan

After the students voted, I scheduled an extended planning time for our youth ministry team in which we would take the group's prioritized ideas and incorporate them in to the yearly structure. We decided a three-hour meeting on a Saturday morning would be best, which would be just about enough time to plan half the year. When the Saturday came, I brought the big sheets we used earlier for brainstorming and voting and posted them on the walls. Additionally, I made copies of blank calendar sheets (September-December) for all those in attendance. Here's what we did next:

We began by reading the Scriptures and praying for God's guidance.
I then divided the team members into small groups to go to each station and tally the votes. They were to identify the top four items for middle school and high school.
We considered values first. Those who tallied the values votes read the top four for middle school and the top four for high school. We spent some time discussing these top four, as well as the implications of each one. A key question we asked was this: If our ministry held to the values voted on by the students, how would that look in our ministry? We wrote these values at the top of all our calendars so we would always remember why we were doing what we were doing.
Next, we took our calendars and entered the items already scheduled (i.e, things we wanted to schedule around). We then took each remaining category (Activities, Lesson topics, and Service projects) and placed them on the calendar as we felt best fit the existing structure. For instance, the top lesson ideas were given the best-attended youth group nights, the top activities were given first consideration on the calendar, etc. We were careful not to overload the calendar or schedule big events back-to-back.
Finally, we developed plan to publicize the results of our efforts to our youth group and church.

5. Implement

Just as the entire team was involved in the planning process, so the whole team should be involved in the implementation of the plan. Believe it or not, there's a simple and easy way to do this: As you discuss each upcoming youth meeting, lesson, or activity, soliciting input from the team, you then ask, "Who is willing to handle this part?" Remember—part of your job is to act as project manager on these events and meetings, making sure team members meet their deadlines.

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Finding Funds: Connecting Money, Missions, and Youth Ministry

Involving Students in Planning

Finding Funds:
Connecting Money, Missions, and Youth Ministry