However, I could not find anywhere where I could do this and just integrate my current facebook FAN or now LIKE page, so I had to create a new application and therefore a NEW page so I messaged my current Likers and also the new Likers badge is on the sidebar. You’ll see very low Likes because I just placed it on there.

So I would ask that if you already were or want to become a LIKER of Youth Ministry Ideas one more time – that would be great!

Last time I checked I was up to about 620 Likers so now I have to try and rebuild that.

With that said this could still turn into a Youth Ministry Idea because if you currently have a wordpress site – I highly recommend that you implement Facebook Connect. What Facebook Connect will do is integrate your blog and wordpress to keep things updated not only on your website but on Facebook too where a lot of students are and adults.

I’m currently testing this as of today and am excited to see the results from it.

Please try it out by leaving a comment below using your Facebook account and if you will – click on share on facebook and when that window pops up just click on Publish and you will see it on your Facebook wall. It’s pretty cool and it shows you how you can use this tool to get others back to your church or youth site.

There are two answers, and they’re not always the same: The answer students give if you ask them directly (conscious or perceived motivations), or what really motivates them (true motivations).

To figure out what really attracts students to meetings, you have to watch them. What’s the first thing they do when they come in? What do they spend the most of their time doing? What do they seem to enjoy the most, and the least? Here are the five biggest motivations that I’ve seen:

Friends

This one is obvious. The number one motivator bringing students to youth group is their friends. This is true across the board, so it’s important to provide them with opportunities to hang out before and after meetings.

Games and the high-energy excitement

A lot of youth groups use games in various ways, from sparingly to all-the-time. This can attract and keep a lot of young students engaged (6th, 7th and 8th grade primarily). The older they get, however, games have less and less pull–and can even push away juniors and seniors that don’t want to associate with “kid stuff.” Be careful to not rely on games too much!

The youth pastor and other adult leaders

Strong personal relationships with students really keeps them coming back. Younger students are quicker to just look up to the youth pastor whether they know you well or not. The older students get, the more opportunities you have to build serious relationships with them, and the more important these relationships become.

The opposite sex

Students still come to youth group to flirt. Sometimes its inappropriate, but more mature students have also developed very classy flirting techniques to impress the opposite sex without crossing any lines of indecency. Sometimes this can be healthy and fun, but it can also lead to heartbreak and hurtful disputes.

Spiritual solid food (1 Cor. 3:1-3)

Sometimes it seems like nobody is there to learn about the Lord, but a select few in every youth group–your raving fans and spiritual giants–come to youth group sincerely hungry for truth and discipleship. If you let them down by playing too many games, you may loose your greatest chance to develop student leaders. Jesus’ taught the multitudes, but He pulled His disciples aside to show them deeper truths (see Matthew 13). We must be careful to give our dedicated and mature students opportunities to go deeper–and that starts by leading them there with our own lives.

What do you think about these five motivations? Did I leave any out?

Nathaniel Dame is the president of Called to Youth Ministry which provides the youth ministry resources, coaching, community and training youth pastors need. He is driven by a passion to promote effective youth ministry in the local church. Nathaniel lives with his beautiful wife, Christa, in Woodstock, Illinois.

I’m just curious and would love to hear your input as to why teens would buy a brand new ipad and then destroy it.

This post is just for discussion, please leave your thoughts and if you are a teen I would love to hear your thoughts.

Matter of fact, I’m now using Facebook to connect with adults and students in my youth ministry and it works very well. Here’s some tips on how to integrate Facebook into your youth ministry:

• First things first – you need to get a FB account. If you don’t have one you are really missing out on the online social interaction between you and your youth and of course your friends.
• Search for your students – you may be surprised that you find quite a few already on there. Do your best to add them as friends – more than likely they won’t reject your request unless they hate you or something. Don’t expect them to find and add you – you go after them!
• Create a FB Group for your youth group – It’s not hard to do, click on the groups icon and then create a new group and make sure that you name it the same as your youth’s name or whatever you normally call your group. Along with this make sure that you now go through your list of students as friends and invite them to join the group.
• Promote your group – Mention it in your youth meetings, encourage parents to join or start a parent FB group.
• Keep it updated – Nothing sucks more then when a group page has outdated info or it seems that it hasn’t been used in awhile. I update mine now about 3 – 4 times a week if possible. But minimally you need to do it at least once a week or don’t start it.
• Encourage Participation – You can have students upload their own pics of an event that you did. You can play games having them guess the correct answer to a question or riddle or picture.
• Go Mobile – Encourage students to set up their cell phones and subscribe to your SMS status updates so that they can know what you are up to and you can subscribe to theirs too. Just look up how to do Facebook Mobile and get your phone set up and teach them to do the same.

If you have other tips or ideas for using Facebook in your youth ministry please leave them as a comment for others to see.

And why do some parents put so much pressure on youth pastors to disciple their students, while taking little responsibility for their own kids’ spiritual lives?

These questions will probably continue to haunt us for a while, but it’s interesting to see study after study demonstrate just how influential parents can be (like this one and this one).

Here’s the kicker. In spite of the incredible influence parents have on teens, they don’t use it. Parents are spending less and less time with their kids. Some say they spend an average of 10 minutes in meaningful conversation with their teens every week.

Youth pastors are not and cannot be replacement parents. In fact, instead of traditional “youth ministry stuff,” we might find that some of our time is best spent helping parents be better spiritual leaders in their own homes.

That’s quite the challenge, especially for youth pastors that have never been parents themselves. But our experience with students gives us a lot of valuable insights that most parents of teens, who are scrambling to understand these strange creatures now living in their house, would appreciate.

Here are some tips for working with parents from some of my blog’s readers:

• Don’t be a know-it-all, because you don’t, and parents won’t listen to you if you sound like you have all the answers.
• Affirm that the family has much more impact on a young person’s development than the church and youth group, because it does. Emphasize your desire to partner with parents so you don’t sound like you’re trying to replace them (some parents may feel that way about you already, and resent you for it).
• Demonstrate your credibility and talk about what you do know, like trends in youth culture and issues teens deal with. If you don’t know an answer to a question, then say so, and offer to find an answer together.
• Always by sincere in your concern for parents and their struggles. Listen before you talk.

Nathaniel Dame is a youth ministry coach and youth culture expert. His passion is to equip youth pastors to be the leaders that God has called them to be and to have a deep, lasting impact on their students. He is the founder of Called to Youth Ministry and blogs regularly at Effective Youth Ministry.

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