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Preparing Well: Spending Productive Energy on the Youth Talk

I’m a teacher. I teach at least twice a week, every week, and I’m always looking for ways to become a more effective communicator. I’ve been to all the workshops; I’ve heard and studied the great communicators of our past and our present day; and still each week when I sit down to craft a message I ask, “Lord where should I go with this one?” Most of us likely have been there: sitting with the Bible open asking the Lord to somehow pick up your pen and craft your message for you.

Recently, I’ve started worrying that somewhere along the way I was given bad advice. Somewhere in my youth I was taught simply to entertain students; or else long ago it was impressed upon me that I didn’t have to work that hard to create my messages. After all, aren’t there students to take out for a coke, kids’ football games to see, and e-mails that need to be sent? Time is short, so I’ll just get out my one-minute Bible and find a five-minute talk sheet and hopefully I’ll find a game in my new Quick Games for Students book, and then I’ll bring it all together at the end of the night with an amazing look at how all the pieces fit together like a giant puzzle.

The only problem is the pieces really don’t fit and no matter how hard I try to squeeze them all together, it’s just not working. It’s like me trying to squeeze into the same jeans I wore in college. So I read my students a story from Scripture about a shepherd or a burnt sacrifice. I try to explain why it’s such a big deal that Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath. They don’t get it, and to be honest neither would I. Our students relate to MTV, delivering pizzas, or going to the prom, but they don’t know what it’s like to be a shepherd or why in the Old Testament it seems they sacrificed everything that had four legs. We must become modern storytellers, who are, first of all, experts in biblical culture and, secondly, experts in student culture. We must learn how to make the Scriptures relevant and understandable for our students. We must invest in our teaching times the same way we invest in the conferences, books, and tapes we buy.

When I first began in ministry, I was an absolute expert in student culture. The main reason I understood students? I was one. I was still in college and wasn’t far from their age; I listened to the same music, watched the same films and television shows, and I knew and understood how they thought. I connected immediately; students were drawn to me and enjoyed my teaching. But unfortunately there was zero depth and even less biblical insight in my instruction. Thankfully, the Lord used that time to train me and somehow used my teachings, despite my own abilities.

Many years later, I became much more knowledgeable in biblical culture, and now my struggle is understanding our students' culture. If all of us were to evaluate the teaching in our ministries, we often land too far on one of these spectrums: we either lean towards student culture or biblical culture. The challenge is finding a balance on this pendulum where we can take what’s deep and true in Scripture and apply it to contemporary student culture. Any of us who are teachers desire to know and understand Scripture in more depth and all of us love students and still want to relate to them at their level. We have no problems studying the Word of God, but how many of us actually study the world our students live in. Often I prepare my messages at a Starbucks or in the mall where I can see how the culture really works and operates.

Our goal in our youth ministry should be to reveal simple truths in God’s word through visual illustrations. Our students learn with their eyes and are incredible at multi tasking. Each night the kids in our ministries sit down to do their homework, while watching Gilmore Girls, listening to the new Jessica Simpson album, talking on the phone to their boyfriends, and carrying on four hundred IM conversations at once. Just the thought of this stresses me out, but it’s the world in which they’re growing up. Multiple visual images always enhance the message. Let’s be honest. Our kids don’t want to hear a great speaker every week. They want to have a great experience each time they enter our doors. They don’t come to hear me, they come to hear from God, and when we begin to speak with the Spirit of God it becomes an ongoing conversation that opens doors for the real ministry to happen—at home too, not just at church.

Not long ago, people in our society began to change the way they hear stories. John Grisham became hugely popular, ER was a hit television show, and Pulp Fiction became a major hit at the box office. Reality TV soon followed and soon we’re watching, reading, and listening in a quite different way from how we did just a few years ago. So what do all of these entertainment pieces have in common? They’re all unpredictable. They bounce around from character to character, and you never quite know what to expect. Whether it’s a strange plot twist, a storyline you don’t quite follow, or an unpredictable character, the only sure thing is that there are more surprises coming. I’ve grown tired of the sitcom, because I know how they work. After years of watching Alf then Growing Pains then Everybody Loves Raymond, I know where the story is going. I know when to laugh, who is going to make the jokes, and when they’re coming. In fact 90% of the time I can predict the ending ten minutes into the show. How many pulpit messages have you sat through where you knew the outline and the ending within the first ten minutes? As modern storytellers, we need to move away from the formulas that we’ve lived by for so long and move towards teaching that’s unpredictable and surprising.

By the time most of our students reach our ministries they know how church works. They know what it’s going to look like each week; they know when to laugh, when to give the correct Sunday school answers, and when to bow and pray. The story never changes. We know that the word of God has power but what could happen when we begin to invest more in our teaching and present it in a way that’s culturally and biblically relevant and powerful? We begin to tell stories in a way that actually captures the hearts and attention of our students. The great thing is that it begins to stick with them. Students begin to understand scripture in a new way and begin to develop an interest and a passion for the stories.

They aren’t connecting many times because they’re simply searching for a reference point, a place to start, a connector, and that place is our culture—it’s the world we live in, and all around us at every moment there are hundreds of connectors to God’s Word. We just need to begin to search the world with God’s eyes. When I meet someone for the first time and I really want to develop a relationship, I begin to try to find a connector. Is this person interested in the same sports that I am? Do we have a common acquaintance? Does he like Mr. Pibb as much as I do? Once I find the connector, the conversation flows without effort. Our messages often lack that connector. One of our jobs as student ministers is to draw our students into a conversation with God. This begins first with prayer and the knowledge that no message or experience will ever change a heart. Only the working of the Holy Spirit can truly shape and change a young person. Our job is simply to take students to a place where that conversation with the Spirit can begin. We need to give them a connector.

It’s dangerous if each message doesn’t speak of God’s power to work in our lives daily. We can’t just tell a story about the world we live in. Students in my ministry are tired of the “five ways to get along with your parents” messages. They don’t want ten steps to overcoming a bad self-esteem. These have value, but our greatest purpose as teachers is to connect students to the story of God and his people. In a recent series about purity we created a small orchard in our building, we asked our students to take a leaf from the tree and write on it something they struggle with. They spent some time looking at an orchard of trees without leaves, and then we revealed a fourteen-foot tree and explained how God desires to prune all that’s dead in us in order to create deep roots and a tree that can bear fresh fruit. It was a simple visual that helped illustrate the meaning of a common verse. It could be done at any park or other place with trees. In the last two months we’ve used mirrors, babies, fast food, drive-thru windows, restaurant menus, spot lights, and trophies—all to illustrate what our culture values verses what God values.

Our audience is constantly changing—student culture changes just as fast as my two-year-old son does. This is part of the struggle: as soon as we begin to figure it out it changes again. A few years ago, I learned that for me to be a more effective communicator, I needed to invest more time in my messages and search daily for those cultural connectors. Why is it perfectly acceptable for student ministers to prepare a message just a few hours before we speak, but if our senior pastor prepared that way he wouldn’t be around very long? Let’s be honest, the more time we invest, the better our message will be.

A good message for me takes at least ten to twelve hours of preparation over many weeks. I need to block out time each week to prepare, study, and search our world for those connectors. Not only should we do word studies, we should also do Internet searches. Not only should we open scripture, we should open People magazine, Rolling Stone, or whatever is shaping our culture. Our staff works as a team to develop a concept and some creative ideas.

Why do most of us build teams in everything we do in our ministries except in teaching? In the past, I’ve used focus groups with students to get ideas from them, I’ve asked volunteers to help in my preparation, and I’ve found mentors who are great communicators. Our team then moves from conceptual and brainstorming times to choosing a text and trying to think of visual connectors. We either want our students to take home a visual image or an actual item that reinforces our message.

On Valentines Day, we gave the kids flowers; after a message on the cross, we gave the students nails. We wrote a letter from God to our junior high kids; and after one message on purity, we gave the students bottled water with the theme verse printed on it. Recently, I’ve learned that great speakers are great at compiling information. Gathering multiple sources, whether from Scripture or the last episode of Survivor, and piecing it all together to accomplish the purpose of our teaching. I spend time gathering pieces from Scripture, from commentaries, from expository dictionaries, and any other reference book that I think will be helpful. Then I do word searches on the Web and look for articles, illustrations, pictures, books, movies, or anything else I can find about the text or key words in the message. I place all of that info in a folder and go back and examine it two weeks away from my message. I take out the key points, stories, illustrations, and multimedia pieces and craft them into a message.

This takes advance planning and a serious effort in organization, which is always a challenge for me; but the rewards are huge. The biggest challenge I enter into each week is digging into the creativity that the Lord has given me, and trusting in God’s new idea and a new way to present truth. Some weeks everything works and some weeks everything absolutely bombs. If it bombs I chalk it up to experience and begin the process again. If it works I thank the Lord that I was able to be useful in some way. The key is to keep trying and keep inventing new ways to share what the Lord has given each of us. As mother Teresa once said, “We are not called to be successful, but we are called to be faithful.”

Ben Hardman is the junior high minister at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. He’s a speaker and teacher. He and his wife, Sarah, have a two-year-old son Cole, and little one that is on the way soon.