Building lasting relationships in your youth group
takes some serious intentional effort. While not quite as important as teaching the Bible, building friendships and trust in your youth group is essential.
Often the major amount of the youth groups budget and time goes to trips and activities. There’s nothing like a six hour car trip (if done right) to an event to build friendships. But with the always present budget constraints and the priority of faith-building, the arguments for not doing these trips quickly gains credibility.
Youth Group Group-building, however, can take place anywhere kids gather. That means that the Sunday School class room, mid-week youth group, even church can be a catalyst to relationship building. That is what we will concentrate on on this page.
My Friends Middle School Survival Series
By Kurt Johnston & Mark Oestreicher / Zondervan
Will your middle-schoolers’ peers help spur them on—or trip them up? Teach your teen students how to make great friends and be one! Exploring what God’s Word says about friendships, Johnston and Oestreicher offer helpful advice on choosing close companions, dealing with conflict, and smoothing the bumpy road through adolescence with trustworthy fellow travelers.
Youth Group Relationships are Important
Many surveys have shown that the most important factor for young adults continuing to attend church is that they believe connection to a church has real value for their lives. As middle and high school age kids they found strength and comfort in their relationships at church and with other church attendees. These relationships go beyond the youth group involving caring adults in extended family situations. More on family ministry.
Throw & Tell Ice Breakers Ball
By Group Publishing / Group Publishing
Looking for a way to get the fun and conversations started with your teens? The teen’s throw and tell ball is an easy and fun conversation starter! With 52 fun and thoughtful icebreaker questions, simply toss the ball, call stop and have the holder answer the question under their right thumb!
This silly thing actually works.
Youth group relationships extend into other areas of their lives:
Every youth group is made up of a bunch of kids. A strong youth group is made up of a bunch of kids who like each other. When they look forward to seeing each other and genuinely care for each other they will feel this way when they are at school and at home. The kids will draw strength from trusted peer relationships to help handle the stressful environments of school and home.
Our goal then is to teach them how to be a good friend and give others in the group the chance to demonstrate that they are trustworthy.
Experiential Youth Ministry Handbook
By John Losey / Zondervan/Youth Specialties
Wish youth-group fun could accomplish more than burning off energy? It can—if you have the right tools. This innovative Youth Specialties resource offers lots of action with a purpose for weekly meetings, small groups, mission trips, retreats, and more. Programming sequences and adaptable templates offer approaches to activity that make spiritual lessons stick.
Friendships and Cliques:
“Cliques are groups of friends, but not all groups of friends are cliques. The thing that makes a group a clique is that they leave some kids out on purpose. Usually one or two popular kids control who gets to be in the clique and who gets left out. Kids may act much differently than they did before they were part of the clique,” so says Kids Health
Friendships are extremely important to kids at this age. Be mindful of this when forming groups or selecting teams for games and activities. I recommend allowing friends to stay together for discussions and some activities. This is especially true if the newcomer was brought by his or her friend. This close attachment is exactly what we are trying to foster. Watch out for the loner.
Groupbuilder Games and Activities for Youth Ministry
By Group Publishing Inc / Group Publishing
Building unity among teenagers is as easy as Ready…Set…Go with this must-have resource packed with cool youth games and activities with a purpose. Unique and loads of fun, these games and activities will help tear down walls and build community in any group of teenagers. Unlike other game books on the market, it emphasizes teamwork to build a stronger group and to shape self-confidence in teenagers.
When designating teams or groups, do it quickly, so the loner or unpopular kid isn’t stuck waiting to be picked. I prefer the counting method to designate who is on what team or in which group. Quickly go around the room pointing to each kids and say, “One,” then, “Two,” etc. Tell them where their group is supposed to gather and encourage them to get there fast. This keeps the discomfort of the kids with poor self-image to a minimum.
Encourage but never force anyone to play. They can just watch if they want to. Good prizes make good incentive for them to get involved.
Karaoke is actually fun
On Sunday I have the kids in my middle school Sunday school class stay in the service for praise & worship time. Praising God together is a great group building activity. Unfortunately, I don’t play any instruments and am not very musical. The answer is karaoke. No kidding. There are a lot of Praise Karaoke CD’s available. These are the “official” song tracks that pay the musicians their royalties. They come with a “G” computer CD that has the words for you to print out.
Casting Crowns, Volume 1 Karaoke Style CD
By Daywind Music Group
Includes: CD+Graphics, Lyric Sheet, Karaoke Track and Vocal Demonstrations by the finest studio musicians in Nashville. (Not original artist recordings). Includes “Here I Go Again,” “If We Are the Body,” “Lifesong,” “Praise You with the Dance,” “What If His People Prayed,” and “Who Am I.” Available from ChristianBook.com for $10.99. The website has a demo you can listen to before you buy.
This is really fun to do with the kids. If you sing loud, they’ll sign loud. Then it’s a blast.
Choose Student Leaders:
Pick one boy and one girls for every eight attendees of their gender to be student leaders. These student leaders should be the most mature and natural leaders already. Train these student leaders to be sensitive to assist in creating a welcoming, comfortable environment in your youth group. It’s really heartwarming to see your student leaders blossom into shepherds with just a little direction. When given the responsibility these natural leaders just take the reins and run.
Crowd Breakers & Mixers, Idea Library
By Youth Specialties / Zondervan/Youth Specialties
Break the ice and warm up your group – at meetings, parties, studies, or any other youth group event – with one of these 230 crowd breakers and mixers! MIXERS – Make is fun for kids to get acquainted! Lots of creative ways for a group of strangers or classmates to circulate and learn a lot about each other in a little time. MEETING-OPENING CONTESTS – All you need usually are two or three brave souls to jump feet first into a crazy competition while the group watches – like Greasepuff (page 55) or Foot Signing (page 112). MUSICAL CROWD BREAKERS – Your youth will enjoy these engaging musical openers. All you usually need is a tape deck or CD player. QUIZZES & WORD GAMES – Quizzes with absolutely no academic consequences, but loaded with crowd breaking potential (and lots of laughs, too). If you’re a youth worker or recreation director in a church, school, club, or camp – Crowd Breakers & Mixers is your storehouse of proven, youth group tested ideas.
Sibling Rivalry:
In most cases siblings do well together. When joining a new youth group they will support each other. If this is the case, allow them to remain together (sitting together, being in the same small groups, and same teams for games). However, it is very common to see siblings bully one another. Most of the time they are not aware that their actions can be very emotionally destructive. Teach my lessons on bullying to the whole class. If things do not improve make a home visit to discuss the behavioral issues privately, one-on-one. A home visit can be a real eye-opener into the family dynamics that might be behind the behavior. Sometimes helping parents with parenting is the best solution.
More Team-Building Activities for Every Group
As a sequel to the popular book Team-Building Activities for Every Group , this book contains 107 more games and activities that promote team-building in an interactive and fun way. The games are new, different, experiential, exciting, easy to lead and require minimal resources. With 61 “Team Up” activities and 46 activities to “Mix It Up”, “Stir It Up”, and “Open Up”, there is something for every group, no matter where they are in the team-building process. The “Team Up” and “Open Up” games come with discussion prompts to help the leader facilitate group discussion after each activity and increase the level of learning and insight. Each game in the book lists the objectives, materials needed, group size, and comes with an easy to read description. Many of the activities also include helpful variations to help tailor the game to fit any group no matter the size, age or skill level.
Take Pictures:
Take pictures at every opportunity. Copy the photos on the back of my one-page Sunday school lesson plans or send as attachments on e-mail. Send them to parents as well.
Do not publish them on FaceBook, MySpace, or from your phone unless you have express written permission from parents and students in each picture. Pictures sent via any public media are easily copied and used for other purposes (not always good).
Relationships Unfiltered:
Help for Youth Workers, Volunteers, and Parents on Creating Authentic Relationships
For more than 50 years relational and Inca national ministry has been a major focus in youth ministry. But for too long, those relationships have been used as tools-as a means to an end-where adults try to influence teenagers to accept, know, trust, believe, or participate in something. While our motives may be good, it’s possible that by focusing on these goals, we’re not ministering to the whole person. When we chose not to engage in the full life of a teen, we run the risk of failing them and our ministry. In this thoughtful and insightful book, Andrew Root challenges us to reconsider our motives and begin to simply consider being with and doing life alongside teenagers with no agenda other than to love them right where they are, by place-sharing. As he shares stories of his successes and failures in relational youth ministry, you’ll find practical ideas to help you recreate the role of relationships in your youth ministry.
Friendships that last
Building friendships and relationships within your youth group will benefit your students throughout their lives. Strong unity within a youth group offers teens a stable base to face the challenges of their fast paced lives. Strong friendships can help teens defy society’s current trend towards casual sex. Friendship is the springboard to every other love relationship.
