Do Numbers Matter?
Even if hundreds—or even thousands—of students show up for your youth service, if there is no discipleship happening, is your youth ministry truly healthy? God has called us to pastor students, and last time I checked my Bible, Jesus told us to “go into all the world and make disciples,” not to go into all the world and have huge service experiences. So, while our services are important and should be an environment for reaching the lost, what’s the point if we aren’t taking them somewhere? I think the real problem is that most of us don’t have any real, intentional way to disciple young people. We hope that our leaders are helping to disciple them, but there is no real system in place to help with that process. I am part of a church network that believes that life change happens in the context of relationships. And while I wholeheartedly agree with this statement, I believe sometimes we become one-dimensional in our understanding of it. Life change does happen in the context of relationships, or a better way to say it would be, “Life change happens in the context of four relationships” So if we are going to truly disciple young people, we need to help them to develop these four relationships:
o Relationship with God—Maybe this seems obvious, but helping students to develop a healthy relationship with God is so important to their development.
o Relationships with peers—I think we do a good job of encouraging peer-level relationships. We talk about the importance of friends all the time! But two other relationships are essential in all our personal development.
o Mentor relationships—We all need mentors and should be encouraging students to find theirs. Hopefully this relationship can happen in the context of your student ministry. This is one of the reasons a strong adult leader is important to the health of your ministry.
o Mentee relationships—We should all have people in our lives whom we invest in and encourage students to do the same. A great way to encourage this is by developing a strong student leadership team.
When we have that understanding and we implement that into our student ministries, the natural occurrence is discipleship! I also want to encourage you as a youth pastor or leader to always be making disciples of and pastoring your students. Even if you are a large church and you think “I will just have my leaders do it, because I have more important things to do”—NO YOU DON’T! Do for the onewhat you wish you could do for them all. And don’t expect your leaders to do something that you aren’t willing to do yourself!
If you want to know how healthy your student ministry is, stop gauging health solely on service attendance and start looking at other numbers. How many students have accepted Christ? How many students are being discipled? How many students are in small groups? How many students have gone on missions? How many students are becoming leaders? You see, all of these numbers are just as important in determining the health of your student ministry. In actuality they are more important. Don’t deceive yourself by thinking that you are winning because you have a lot of students attending your service or event. Where are you taking them? Let’s be about building people not just attendance. Numbers do matter! Let’s just make sure we are looking at the right ones.
Matt Moore
Pastor & Author of Intentional Youth Ministry