DIRT Blog

The headline of this blog is copied from a recent article in USA Today that highlights some of the challenges of keeping our teens involved in the church and growing in their faith. Teens want something that challenges them and stretches them. How else will they grow. If we continue to feed them a diet of pizza parties, tired games and shallow religion (the easy way to do ministry - water seeks it's on level!), then what should we expect other than them dropping out as soon as they get a car or their first job?

Are you doing the hard work of growing students into spiritually powerful adults that will become champions for Christ? Have you heard that todays teen wants to change the world? Society in general is quickly moving to a desire for "the cause" whatever it is: Charity Water, Tom's Shoes, Kiva, etc.

The sad thing is that many the greatest benevolent causes today have no connection to Christ and therefore offer no lasting spiritual transformation. While at the same time the dilema of today's church is "Irrelevance". How can we the church be irrelevant when over 70% of this generation says that they are "Spiritual"?

I think we have become fat and lazy on pizza!
Stop being a second rate entertainment venue and start giving students what the world does not offer. A not so easy, challenging, disciplined, high expectation, drive you to your knees journey with Christ.

Note: Many do not lead at this level because they do not live at this level themselves - ouch.

By: Bryan Fox Youth Pastor, Northwest Church
“And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.”  Acts 2:42 KJV

Have you ever watched students when you announce Circles of Prayer? A few jump right into groups ready to go, some quickly form a group with their friends over in the corner and a few just kind of stand there wandering what is going on.

Circles of Prayer can be a difficult activity for students not used to praying in a group and for visiting students not used to anything “Christian”. It can also seem like a lot of work to the leaders when we begin implementing it into our group. We end up spending the entire time helping students find groups, splitting up the one or two massive groups, making sure visitors understand what is happening and reminding the talkers to relax and be respectful.

Over time though, the regularly attending students begin to grasp the concept and help others form groups, explain to visitors what to do and calm down interruptions. You still may need to help the lone student find a group or split up the massive one but eventually Circles of Prayer becomes an integral part of the student meetings.

This is when Circles of Prayer becomes alive and vital to the group. It provides a place for students to pray and ask for prayer in a safe environment, it builds confidence in students as they pray out loud to God in front of their peers, it brings the entire group together in prayer and it creates a habit of joining together in prayer.

This habit of prayer becomes a huge blessing to the students. I witnessed this in action a few days ago. A student received a call saying one of their friends was having family difficulties. After the call, he shared his concern for his friend with some other students. They immediately joined together in a small circle to pray for his friend. They didn’t need to discuss how to pray, should they pray or who was going to pray. They just joined hands and began praying. These students were in the “habit of praying” . I’m certain having Circles of Prayer a part of their regular meetings had a lot to do with that.

If you aren’t doing Circles of Prayer in your meetings, I challenge you to begin. If you are, keep it up. Even those students who may seem completely oblivious and uninterested to what is going on will be blessed by being part of a group of God’s children calling out to their father. Eventually they will develop a “habit of prayer”.

I have a wonderful idea to share with you that can easily and inexpensively be incorporated in your student ministry and should produce an immediate impact. I call it "Worship Stations" and this idea is growing rapidly in popularity. The first time I heard of worship stations was from one of our youth pastors who had just returned from a ski retreat at Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters. I have also experienced the use of stations in church services, on college campus, and this last summer we setup worship stations at our D.I.R.T. Camps.

At Snowbird they have a prayer chapel (a rustic cabin up on a hill) that is a great example of worship stations. Inside the candle lit cabin you will find an altar for prayer and several composition notebooks for writing prayers on and around the altar. Next you might notice a sand garden that is about a foot and a half wide and three to four feet long. This is for a person to write their sin in the sand as an expression of confession and then wipe it away as a picture of forgiveness. They also had a world map laminated on one wall where the focus was missions. You could use a dry erase marker to circle the area of the world that you prayed for. They had a station to pray for our troops and write them a letter. They also had a cork board for writing praises on note cards and more. The cabin was opened throughout the week for students to visit and by all accounts they loved the experience.

A great benefit of worship stations is the opportunity you give students to respond to God, especially at the conclusion of a message. Think about it, every week (hopefully) you are presenting a Christ honoring message in some form to students that you hope will generate a heart-felt response. In the typical scenario we find ourselves giving an "altar call" (which I have done many times) or making some closing statement that says we hope they will respond somewhere, sometime. Now how unfair is that? With your message you bring them to a place where God may be speaking to them but you never lead them into an opportunity to respond?

Worship Stations have become an anchor in our D.I.R.T. Camps. It is impossible to fully express the spiritual impact they have. At the end of each night's message being able to offer something much richer that the standard invitation. Of course we invite students who wanted to receive Christ to speak with a counselor, but we are also able to say, "If you have a friend who is not a Christian there is a cross where you can write their name and pray for their salvation. If you want to praise God there are some clear plastic sheets that I want you to write your words of praise on and then place them on the over head projector for all to see...." We had a communion table setup and we has several areas where students could pray. We had a prayer journal to write in and there were counselors stationed around the auditorium that students could talk to about spiritual needs.

At our camps each night 90 percent or more of the students engage in some form of response during the invitation time. Each night this time of worshipping God goes on for 30 minutes or more. It is powerful and amazing. As some students would return to their seats we would join in praise and worship while others continue in their response. Only God knows all the decisions, prayers and life transformations that take place during a week of camp. I can tell you it is one of the most dynamic times of worship I have ever experienced.  

I want to encourage you to find some space in your youth area to experiment with worship stations. Be creative and prayerful about it. Ask God to show you how to incorporate worship stations in ways that fit your world. I believe you will be amazed!