This past Saturday I had the privilege of taking our students to an amusement center with go karts, laser tag, arcade machines, pizza, basically all the works. Crushing them in air hockey wasn’t even the best part! I was able to watch firsthand how God providentially used the event to foster community among the teens, start new friendships, and provide gospel opportunities. The best part of the event was what happened afterward! Growth and community happened!

This is why events are so crucial for Student Ministry. Events allow students to break their normal routine, get outside their comfort zone, have fun in a Christian environment, and even move forward in their spiritual walk. Truly, regularly scheduled events help make a youth group actually feel like a youth group.

But I must be careful not to do an event “just because.” In our student ministry, my goal is to have an event at least once a month, which I believe helps keep youth group a core part of our students’ schedules. Sadly, I sometimes find myself creating filler events just to get us by until our next quarter. But if the event does not contribute or point to our mission, then why do the event? The mission of our church (which certainly includes our youth group) is to reach, teach, and send out to minister. Therefore, I must be intentional that each event falls under at least one of these mission distinctives.

My goal for this blog post is threefold: 1) To force me to plan out my events with purpose, 2) To help others brainstorm events ideas (because it’s all too easy to get caught in the same old, same old), 3) To encourage us all about the influential power of a purposeful event. So below I have listed out our events for the rest of 2024 as well as the first quarter of 2025. In addition, attached to each event is its intended purpose. But please understand, I have not cracked the perfection code for events. Each event truly teaches me a new lesson. But I hope this list can encourage, inform, and inspire you!

October Event – Student Led Service (followed by SNAC)

  • Our Purpose: Send Students to Out to Minister
  • Students will take over the Sunday night service. This allows students to serve the congregation and see their place in the body of Christ. Afterwards, we will have a SNAC (Sunday Night After Church) to chill, play an unorganized game of volleyball, and eat ice cream! The hangout afterwards helps students solidify the connections made after serving together.

November Event – Evangelism Conference

  • Our Purpose: Reach Students, Teach Students, & Send Students Out to Minister
  • This November we will be hosting a two-day conference for our teens that centers on evangelism. During the two days, we will have various sessions on the why and how of evangelism, along with games, meals, and giveaways in between. On the second day of the conference, we plan to go out into the community and practice all that we just learned about evangelism. To help provide us with a foundation for the conference, we will be utilizing some of the Dare 2 Share resources (Dare 2 Share Live)

December Event #1 – Christmas Decoration Night

  • Our Purpose: Send Students Out to Minister
  • Right after a Sunday evening service, all the teens will help transform the youth room into a Christmas wonderland. We’ve done this for the past few years, and it has always given our teens a sense of accomplishment and ownership of their youth room.

December Event #2 – Christmas Party

  • Our Purpose: Reach Students
  • All the teens will meet together at my house for the most epic Christmas party of their lives. After a short devotional, the chaos ensues with very strange Christmas games and an abnormal White Elephant Gift Exchange (only weird gifts allowed).

A Tentative List of Our 2025 Quarter 1 Events:

  • January = Movie Night
    • Purpose: Reach New Students
  • February = Winter Retreat (we will rent a camp and host our own games and sessions with a specific focus on discipleship)
    • Purpose: Reach & Teach Students
  • March = Service Saturday (we will go out into our community to serve at a local assisted living center, food pantry, soup kitchen, etc.)
    • Purpose: Send Students Out to Minister
  • April = All-Nighter (oh, you definitely know this one…it’s a long night, but boy does it attract a lot of students)
    • Purpose: Reach Students

Each event has a purposeful intentionality either to bring in new students, to train current students, to send students out to serve, or to do all three!

Please remember, quality is so much better than quantity. It is exceptionally easy to fill up the calendar but much harder to create meaningful, mission-minded events. Don’t overwhelm yourself and don’t feel pigeon-holed to tradition. Instead, simply plan events, help your students catch the vision for the event, and go have fun doing discipleship with your students.

Events certainly matter and are needed in youth ministry, but always remember your why:

Matthew 28:19-20 – 19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.