Student ministry seem to be filled with all sorts of things.
If you head into a student worship area you will find everything from old worship CDs to rubber chickens! This is the world we live in as student leaders.
We understand the occasional clutter in the small group rooms and student center, but the clutter can extend into other core areas of the way that we operate on a day-to-day basis.
 2 Areas To Declutter Your Student Ministry
Programming
100 years ago there was no such thing as teen specific programming in churches. Teenagers worshipped and studied alongside their parents. In the mid 20th century a wave started to change that. Churches across the country began to have programming that specifically targeted teenagers. Student ministry was born! I believe whole heartedly in student ministry, so don’t misunderstand this statement: We have too much student ministry and not enough Church. Teenagers will never become the Church of tomorrow if they are not the Church of today. Too often I hear teenagers referred to as the future of the Church. But, to be honest… It’s our fault. We have created so much programming in our student ministries that we have basically created our own little churches. We have our own small groups, our own worship services, our own mission trips, our own sermon series, our own leadership teams.
Don’t get me wrong, all of these are good things! They become bad things when they replace involvement in the Church. If it is our goal in student ministry to raise up a generation to know and follow Jesus, we must raise up a generation that loves and is committed to the Church. Just because teenagers are committed to your student ministry doesn’t mean they are committed to the Church. Don’t let too much programming in your ministry keep students from falling in love with the Church. Remember, they will never fall in love with something they are not a part of.Â
Messages
 A few years ago I did some counting. In our ministry on a weekly basis we had these things going on: Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, “big church”, and student leadership. In a nut shell that’s 5 different messages that our ministry was trying to get across to our students each week. That isn’t counting the 5 classes they have at school. Plus, their sports practice. Plus, their instrument practice. Plus, their jobs. Plus, what their parents are trying to teach them. Our teenagers are getting bombarded with messages that they are expected to apply. We are surprised when they forget what we taught them in Sunday school the week before? We are surprised when that incredible sermon from Wednesday night isn’t immediately applied to their lives? What if we streamlined our student ministries? What if ALL your programming for an entire semester had one common thread. I like to say, “beat the same drum for 15-20 weeks.” What we’ve learned at Franklin Christian is that after 5 weeks students can repeat concepts. After 10 it starts to be visible in their actions. After 15 it starts to become a part of who they are.
What if instead of having 6 different series in your ministry this semester, you just had 1? Get creative on how to put different lenses on the same idea. Maybe your small groups discuss questions based on the main program. Maybe your Sunday school unpacks some of the deeper issues of the text you don’t have time to tackle. Maybe your student leadership team highlights specific characters in the text they want to imitate. If nothing else, streamline it! Generally speaking, our students don’t need to know more; they need to do more with what they know.
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