For the first part of working with one youth group, I was having a hard time finding out what the youth were interested in and what their passions are. They were junior high age so I found this task a little more difficult. There were days I thought all they were worried about was what big dance was happening at school or their extra-curricular actives. I found several ways to help over come this.

One way is to come up with a list one night at one of your meetings. If you think your group will be really open about this, then it works out great! My group was more open than I thought. When I gave them examples of things I was passion about it was good starting point for them. They came up with a huge list of things that they thought were important. It was any where from wanting to do more for the church to things like cancer.

Another way is to use a survey type of situation. At the beginning of the year, you can find out what they would like to do and have them write down groups or organizations that they would like to help out. If our group tends to be shy about things or you’re trying to find out about them, this maybe a good way to go about it.

The internet is one way I found to be a good way. Facebook is amazing for this. You can create an account and find out a lot about your youth and keep up with them all at the same time. You can get them information. You can create groups or send out messages. Beyond all of that, you can find what they think is important in life. There are several “applications” that you can look for that will make it really obvious what they are passionate about. I have the ribbons application and another called Causes. I’m sure that there are several more applications similar to that.

By finding out what they are interested in, you can tailor some service projects according to their interests. One thing that we ended up doing was buying the daffodils from the American Cancer society and taking them various people at our church or those they knew who were going through difficult times. One gentleman was suffering from cancer and another woman was suffering from other health problems. It was awesome to see how they came up with these things and wanted to help other organizations as well.

This definitely helped me out when I was trying to teach them lessons about being good to your neighbors and how that can be done. There are so many options out there for our youth to help with.

There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. – 1 Corinthians 12:5