Relational Ministry Wins Over Time

Everyone wants the big events with lots of people coming out. Everyone wants a better social media presence so students are engaging with you. Everyone would like to be a more gifted communicator of the gospel. In student ministry we want what is big and trending.

While all those things would be nice to have, that doesn’t show the true effectiveness of your ministry. It just shows that you are good at drawing big crowds and can engage with students. What truly shows how effective your ministry is depends solely on how effective your relational ministry is. And this isn’t just how effective YOUR relational ministry is, although that is important. It really comes down to how effective your student ministry leaders are at building and developing relationships with students.

Student ministry takes time. Sure, there can be things you can do that gets immediate results and quick wins, but in order to have long term, stable success, it depends a lot on the quality and effectiveness of your teams overall relational ministry with students. The more your whole team is apart of relational ministry the more likely you will have greater impact with students. And life changing impact is what we are all striving for.

So, how do you get volunteers to invest in students?

• Cast vision and clarify the expectations. Let them know what your desire is for them in regards to relational ministry. Then, as you meet regularly with your leaders to encourage and train them, keep that vision to be with students in front of them. The more you can be reinforcing this, the more likely they are going to get on track and start doing this if they aren’t already.
• Set them up to develop relationships. Whenever you are at a Church or a student event, make sure you are connecting students with volunteer leaders. The more you can connect students and leaders together the more likely leaders will be able to start those relationships and follow up with them.
• Show them. The next time you do contact work with students, invite a leader to 2 along with you so you can show them how to do contact work with students. The more you can show your volunteer leaders how to do contact work and build relationships, the more likely they are going to be able to do it on their own.
• Share stories. When you do leaders meetings or send weekly emails, take some time for leaders to share stories of success and failures in doing relational ministry. That way you can rejoice and celebrate the wins but then pray and encourage the others who are experiencing some losses. Regardless, you are putting it out there to the team about what you value as most important.

Conclusion:

Everyone wants big numbers and immediate results. And while a big number on “youth group” night may be nice, it doesn’t always show the real effectiveness of what you are doing. People come back long term for relationships. The program may be stupid and the games silly, but if they know leaders and other students there, they will come back. Without those connections they w0n’t come at all, no matter how “cool” or great the event is. That is why relational ministry wins over time.

What do you think? How have you seen relational ministry win over time?  Share below or on social media using #ymsidekick when you share. 

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