How Student Ministers can Minister during Pandemics, Outbreaks and Social Distancing

The coronavirus has taken over the world in a matter of months. Schools have shut down, major sporting events have been cancelled, movie releases have been delayed, and whole countries have shut down (Italy and Spain). It is so hard to keep up with all that is happening as something is happening every single day as the world is trying to stop the spread of the virus. Social distancing has become the norm in many parts of the world.

What is social distancing?  According to Wikipedia, “the objective of social distancing is to reduce the probability of contact between persons carrying an infection, and others who are not infected, so as to minimize disease transmission, morbidity and ultimately, mortality.” It is basically the act of encouraging people to stay away from other people so the virus doesn’t spread so easy.

Because of social distancing, people are acting out of an abundance of caution and not going out in public and being apart of big social gatherings. That means that Churches and student ministries are at a high risk of going on a long hiatus. And that could severely limit ministries from reaching people.

While there are challenges, there are also opportunities. In fact, as I told my leaders last week this is a real opportunity for us to minister to students differently now.

So how does a student minister actually minister during pandemics and social distancing? You can’t have mass gatherings and even if you did, a vast majority of people would not show up out of fear of catching the virus. So what can you do?

• Minister Online. You can do this by doing video chats (Live, on Zoom or other video platforms). You can do it in small groups, big groups or one-on-one meetings online. This provides you a way to chat with students but also disciple them as possible. It’s not a formal online “youth group” (see below) but a way you can just engage with students and encourage them with different online tools.
• Meet up one-on-one. Not everyone will catch the virus, whatever it is. So, if you are healthy and a student is healthy, plan a meet up and still keep discipling them. Be careful as you don’t want to spread the virus but if you feel like it is safe and you can meet up, plan on it.
• Create a Online Gaming Night to build community. It might be best to use the Nintendo platform since the games there are more family friendly, but you can use any platform as you see fit and appropriate. Set up a night during the week or weekend, send out what game you’ll play and connect at a time to all play together.
• Share encouragement on social media. Use social media to post an encouraging video, devotional or scripture that will inspire or encourage students and families. Students live on social media so posting daily encouragement can help you minister during pandemics.
• Do “Youth Group” Online. This can be done a variety of different ways. You can do it live on social media, YouTube or a zoom call from a living room that shows out to people in the group. You can have an element of worship, some scripture reading, even some form of online mixer and then a discussion

Conclusion

Doing student ministry in the midst of major crises and pandemics looks different than “regular” student ministry. But when these events hit, you have to think differently in how you do ministry. A lot of it involves doing ministry online. These examples are just a few of the ways you can minister during pandemics and other types of situations. While there are more ways you can minister, some of the above options may not work at times while other ideas may come up. The key is to keep adapting to the changes that happen. And , believe me, there will be many more changes that happen.

So what will you do? How do you minister during pandemics? What are you doing? Share your thoughts below or on social media using #ymsidekick when you share.

If you would like to learn digital and online tools that will help you minster to students no matter what is happening in the world, check out The Digital Bootcamp Facebook Group.