Ideafest

By: Jacob Ouellette

In youth ministry, ideas are more valuable than gold. On the other side of a great idea are souls reached & people discipled. The book of Proverbs 2:3-4 says, "Cry out for insight (ideas), and ask for understanding... seek them like hidden treasures." For some horrible reason many ministry leaders do not seek ideas like God intends them to. Maybe that's why so many ministries are stagnate and don't grow. We need to be on a mad hunt, talking to every great ministry leader in the country about what their latest and greatest ideas are. With God, creative ideas are limitless; we just need to tap into them.  We need to break out of the mold and start believing God for more.

Below are a bunch of different types of ideas that range from evangelism, growth, discipleship, to challenging your thinking. The ideas come from our youth ministry, Ignited, which has tried a ton of different things along the way (and failed a ton) on our journey from a small youth group to a powerful movement of over 600 teens. Also I included ideas from some great youth ministry minds from around the country (Blaine Bartel, Scotty Gibbons, Joel Stockstill, Keith Terwilliger, Sean Jazdzyk, & Peter De Jesus).  Some of the thoughts you may like and may want to put your own spin on ... that is exactly the goal. Chew the meat and spit out the bones. But don't let it stop here. Let this be a spring board to make a lifestyle of hunting for new thoughts and ideas. Happy hunting!

YouTube Competition

Why not have your students compete to promote your youth ministry! Here is how it works. You hold a competition where your students make a video that is one minute or less in length. The video must convey their passion for your youth ministry. They can do anything that gets their point across (pictures & videos of your youth ministry, a drama, something funny, etc.). The way you keep score is by how many hits the video gets. Obviously, they will be going crazy trying to get all of their friends to see their video so their hits go up. Give a prize to the winner. This will be the cheapest marketing you've ever done. If this is done right, then you will have more visitors and you will have created a buzz about your ministry.  

Extreme School Makeover

Here is a great way to gain favor in your local school system and community. Find the school in your area that needs the most help with construction projects and meet that need as a church. If there are people in your church that can paint, do electrical, lay concrete, trim trees, do plumbing, clean up, etc. get them to help out. Take a few months to raise money in your church so that you can not only provide service but also the parts and material. Call all the local newspapers and TV stations to cover the project.

Text Invite

Teens are texting and if you, personally, are not then you are lagging behind. Do mass text invites to all the students in your database about services, random encouragements, or big events that are coming up.  There are tons of online companies where you can text all your students at once for a very small fee. The text goes out simultaneously and only takes you a few seconds to have all your students on the same page!

Send Your Students to the Frontline

It's time that our youth ministries went from a social club to a powerful movement of young people impacting their friends.  Frontline is a ministry idea to bring accountability to your student leaders to do two things: first, invite their friends to your youth ministry and second, impact their friends at school. Each month new assignments are given to all the students involved in Frontline. The leadership structure is set up so that there is one main leader at each school (School Captain) and this leader keeps all the other students leaders on the Frontline team accountable to the tasks.  A sample of one month's assignments are: text your friends & invite to youth ministry, youth ministry spirit day (everyone gets decked out in youth ministry stuff), testimony blitz (post them up on all the lockers), pray around flagpole, carry Bible in school for a week, duct tape day- tape your mouth shut for a day at school wearing a homemade shirt that says "Faith." If other organizations can do it why not the Christians?  

Changing the Culture

If you want to change the culture of your youth ministry from apathetic Christians to students who love God with everything they have, then take them on a mission trip. I haven't seen anything that will make a greater difference in a student's life, long term, than spending themselves for Jesus on the mission field. This is a chance for them to get totally out of their comfort zone and see other people's lives changed as they personally share the gospel.  It is a moment that will mark them forever. Global Expeditions has great opportunities for you to lead your own group (double bonus). They will take on the logistical headache so you can focus on individually developing your students.

Spice Up Your Messages

Your students have grown up on TV and the Internet. We need to tap into the most creative things we can to kick our messages to the next level. There are tons of great online videos that churches have made for their services that they can't use anymore. They post them on sermon video websites and will sell them for a small fee.  This will save you time and money in the long run and add interest to your message.  Check out www.sermonspice.com, www.worshiphousemedia.com, www.bluefishtv.com.  

Speak as If

Everyone has services that are low attended.  Our temptation in that moment is to give less then our best because we are focused on who is not there. Or sometimes, we think if we had twice as many students then we would work harder and put more thought and energy into our services. Here is a great idea... speak as if there is double. If you have 20 teens then prepare and deliver your message as if there were 40 in the room. The Bible says to be faithful with a few. When we are, God will give you much!  

Get in Schools

I know it is tempting to sit back and expect people to come to your services without going where they are, but if we want to grow we need to do it! A great way to do this is to have your students start a Bible Club. This is a platform that you can work through. To start a Bible Club here are the steps; find a student or group of students who can lead the club, they must come up with a name, a basic plan, & when the meetings will occur, then have them approach a teacher to sponsor & open up their class room before or after school, have the student leaders approach the principle with all the leg work done & the school must add the club just as they would any other club in school. Here are some ideas that can flow out of a Bible club; plan an after school outreach, hand out food at a sporting event, have the student's get you into the school lunches to hang out (which will raise awareness of your youth ministry), print up some terrible towels with your logo on it for the football games (example- The Pittsburgh Stealers waving their towels at their home games). The Bible club can do fundraisers to help fund some of these ideas as well as tapping into the local church.  

Set Up Transportation

Why not get the lost & drive them to your church. The facts are clear... the unchurched parents are not that willing to drive all the way to your church to send their teen to something they don't believe in. So... you can take the excuse out of their mouth by saying we will pick your teen up. You can create pick up stops at places like the local McDonalds (or where ever is most convenient). You will need a lot of adults who will volunteer to drive their cars. The Bible says the harvest is plentiful but the labors are few. So get more labors and you will get more souls. I want to warn you... if you put your energy into making this successful then you will explode numerically. Teens are spiritually hungry but for the most part don't have a way to church.  

Do Something Global

It is so important to get teens to do something big... something that takes their breath away, something that they can really be excited to be a part of. Have them raise money to help fund different global programs such as, dig water wells for needy people in Africa or feed a village that is starving or build an AIDS shelter somewhere in the 10/40 window.  Of course there are great organizations like Global Expeditions that can set up the logistics so you can take your teens on a mission trip and get this experience for yourself.

School Rivalry Events

You can use the cross-town rivalries to give your attendance a boost. It is already in them to beat their rivals in anything and everything so why not host the competition in your youth ministry. You can do events like; eating competitions, dunk competition, powder puff, Strong Man challenges, cheer-off, school attendance, etc. One of the aspects of the School Rivalry event needs to be about bringing people from each school to vote or to participate in the games. This instantly involves everyone and the word of mouth will quickly spread. 

Structure Your Services

If you don't structure your services then you will stay a youth group that plays twister and eats pizza but has little spiritual impact. It is important to plan what you are going to do and communicate that plan to all your leaders. You can do this through a weekly typed out Service Order. This will keep your adult leaders accountable to the service flow and will also stop all your leaders from asking you all the little details of each night. You can always deviate from the plan if you feel like you should but this will keep you focused on making each night creative, excellent and high impacting. 

Take the Trophy off Your Wall

It is in all of us to get to a certain level of success and start to coast. Sure we would like more teens but for some reason we don't push with the same passion we once did. We may get to a level where we are the biggest in town or maybe our Pastor is content with how many teens we have so we put a trophy on our wall. I want to encourage you to take the trophy off the wall and start going after the lost like you once did. There are teenager's eternity on the line and we must not lean back in our comfy office chair reminiscing the past! It's time to reach more.  

Paul Revere Weekend

Unfortunately all of our greatest student leaders eventually graduate. It seems like just when they blossom into great leaders boom... their gone. A Paul Revere Weekend is an attempt to help solve this problem. Invite all of your up and coming student leader's (all the influencers) to a couple day retreat where you pour into them the importance of rising up and growing as leaders in your youth ministry. This is not a time for your favorite graduating seniors to attend. This is a special time that you have created to pull up, pour into and create opportunities for up and coming leaders. For example, after you have sold the vision of the coming year have a time where every student signs up for a specific area to serve in your youth ministry. Give them an opportunity to help create the next few months in your youth ministry. This will give them ownership and excitement for the coming season of ministry and this will help you bridge the gap between graduating leaders and the up and coming leaders. 

I want to give special thanks to the great youth ministry minds who contributed ideas for this article; Blaine Bartel, Scotty Gibbons, Joel Stockstill, Keith Terwilliger, Sean Jazdzyk, & Peter De Jesus.

Jacob Ouellette is the primary speaker & co-creator of the ATF Youth Ministry Conferences and a local youth pastor in Highland, MI. His passion is to see ministry leaders reach their God given dreams.  www.ignited.org 

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