“Re-Evaluating Your High School Ministry” Notes

These are my  notes from the “Re-Evaluating Your High School Ministry” Breakout session at the Orange Conference 2020. Crystal Chiang led this breakout.

Crisis, cultural change and life stages – all affect how you measure your ministry

Gauge 1: Elevate Community 

• Give every kid a caring leader and predictable and safe community where they can grow spiritually.
• Kids want community. Community matters
• Old way to evaluate was to measure attendance. They have jobs, dating, sports, academics. It is really hard to get high schoolers to show up. They are busy
• Attendance is a terrible measurement for spiritual growth

Attendance matters, but at this stage ENGAGEMENT matters more! Measure more. Who is talking, who is serving, who is participating on social media.

Digital Small Groups may work good for high school group engagement and could be a good option.

Gauge 2: Engage Every Parent

• Engage parents to have a positive influence in the spiritual development of their own kids.
• Communication has to look different here.
  • Where we communicate matters. Parents respond we have to show up on email, social media
  • How we talk about families matter.  Families look different now.

Gauge 3: Align Leaders

• Align leaders to lead with the same end in mind with a common language and a common strategy.
• Define the win for leaders.
• Great volunteers with show up with a win no matter what mentality. Does every leader know what a win looks like?

Gauge 4: Refine the Message

• Craft core truths into engaging, relevant and memorable experiences that correlate with the faith formation of each phase
• Culturally relevant language is not the same as sharing a developmentally appropriate message.
• Work to make your messages developmentally appropriate.
• Truth matters when they can use it. Sometimes you need to share less information so they can practice more what you are teaching.
• Check out the Keys for Communicating with High Schoolers Breakout on demand with Shane Sanchez

Gauge 5: Influence Service

• Create consistent opportunities for kids and teenagers to serve.
• If teenagers aren’t serving, they aren’t being discipled
• Make every talk you share application based
• Make sure parents know why it matters for teens to serve – explain the why
• Let opportunities grow as kids grow. High School opportunities look different than middle schoolers.

What stands out to you from this session about re-evaluating your high school ministry? Share below or on social media using #ymsidekick and #OC20 when you share.

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