Starting or Restarting a Youth Ministry

As the summer comes to a close and the new school year is just around the corner, now is the perfect time to think about starting or restarting a youth ministry. To get you started on figuring out how to do this, I listed a few key things to keep in mind.

Determine a Need - A lot of churches want to have a youth ministry, however there is no need for youth ministry at their church. Before you even begin to start a youth ministry, you need to discover whether or not you have youth in your church or in your community that you can minister to. This can seem kind of basic, but you would be surprised at the number of churches who want a youth ministry because that's what every other church in their area has. However the makeup of their church and the surrounding area does not lend itself to having used in.

Develop a Purpose - There is a passage from Proverbs which says, "Without a purpose, the people will perish." This is true with churches and ministries within the church. If you do not understand why you are doing a particular ministry, the ministry will never sustain itself for the long-term. So if you are starting or restarting a youth ministry within your church, spend some time developing a solid purpose for what the ministry is going to be about.

Start Small - There is an old adage that many people know it's called the K.I.S.S. principle (Keep It Simple Stupid). This is a very smart principle to remember when starting or restarting the youth ministry program. People think that youth ministry programs need to be totally put together and healthy from the onset, but that simply does not need to be the case. If you start small and do simple ministry events, you can grow a program over time that will be healthy and will meet the needs of your church and community.

Don't be Afraid to Fail - When you're starting or restarting a new ministry, not everything is going to work the first time. If you are afraid to do an event or program because it might fail, you are limiting the potential for God to work through you. If you try a program in ministry and it doesn't work, evaluate it and see if you can change it to make it work better. If it bombs completely, you have learned valuable information. Take your failures as a learning process.

I hope some of these tips will help you in your goal to start or restart your youth ministry program. These same principles can be applied to young adult ministry programs as well. Good luck!