My Other Horse

I few months back a student who had been in our ministry the whole year came to me and said that she could no longer come to youth. I was really discouraged and was thinking that perhaps her parents didn’t want her coming anymore, or she hadn’t connected in the group, but I was way off. She told me that the reason she couldn’t come to youth anymore was that she had to ride her other horse. WHAT?? She had two horses and the other one was not getting ridden enough so she had to ride it on our youth night.

Not to long after the horse situation we held a one day weekend mini-conference on prayer and I was surprised how few students we able to make it out. Our youth group meets Thursdays and weekend events are not a huge part of our culture.  During my post-mortem of the event I came to several conclusions but the most glaring was that Students are busy. They play two sports, an instrument, have a part time job, volunteer and in some cases have two horses to ride. They are busier than I can ever remember them being in the past 10 years of Ministry and where this plays out, is that as students compartmentalize their lives and fit things in. being a part of a Youth Group either gets prioritized or it doesn’t. As youth pastors it can be very defeating when students are not able to make, or are unable to come to events.

What I have found has been working, is instead of doing multiple events per week, we do one and do it well. We have our youth gathering and small groups on the same night, 100% of students are in small groups and by extending our night we were able to have our multiple event week on one night.  Doug Fields said once when it comes to youth ministry that “more isn’t better, better is better.” If we expect students to prioritize being at Youth, I need to prioritize making sure that when they come, my ducks are in a row and that we don’t waste an opportunity to speak into their lives if we only see them once a week.

Geoff Stewart is the Youth Pastor at Peace Portal Alliance Church in Surrey B.C. where he oversees Journey Student Ministries. He is married to Lavonne and they have two cats, Norman and Puff Daddy. Geoff co-authors the Blog morethandodgeball.com Follow him on Twitter @geoffcstewart.