I wonder how you remember the young people who have passed through your group.
Do you ever look back and reflect on and, to some degree, evaluate them? In reminiscent mood you may recall incidents that happened at group meetings and weekends away. They can easily be about the more exuberant members of the group — those who made the most noise and made you aware they were around.
When you walk into a room of young people it is easy to engage with people who are out-going and talkative. It is easy to admire those who are coming up with ideas and interpretations in small groups. It’s even easy to be attracted to the joker in the pack because he or she is just plain funny. Because so much cultural thinking has rubbed off on us, we tend to gravitate towards the sociable because we think youth ministry is primarily about holding the group together. We tend to think that if the group has clear leaders, then the followers will keep coming. Our main criteria for group health is sociability. Many of us think if we have a ‘lively’ meeting we are doing well.
Breaking the silence
I remember doing a really difficult session on the doctrine of predestination. At the end of it someone who had never spoken openly in a meeting came up to me and asked a question that revealed a real depth of understanding as well as the fact that he had been listening attentively. He was one of the quiet ones who inhabit our groups and we can easily ignore them because the ‘loud’ ones crowd them out. It is vital that we have conversations with our group members about their walk with God. That is why we exist — to make disciples, not good citizens. In any group, I think you need to make a conscious effort to talk with all members of the group and that may mean planning each week who you will speak with. If you have a quiet person in your group, you have a responsibility to find out what they are thinking. They may not be keen to speak to you, but at least give them the opportunity.
Service without noise
It is also very easy to give the ‘loud’ people all the jobs and responsibilities. I remember one student in my youth group who was as quiet as a mouse in any group meetings. I met her recently as a married woman, with her husband, and she was serving God in a very practical way just as she did in the youth group many years before. She loved to just quietly get a job a done, made little noise about it, but you knew it would get done and done well.
As I got to know my groups, I increasingly found that some of the quieter members of the group were deep thinkers and longed to talk about their faith as long as you opened up the conversation. If it is clear that our primary group value is a growing and developing walk with Jesus Christ then we need to be talking with all of the group, including the ones it would be easy to ignore. Why not take a look at your group and try to remember the amount of one-to-one time you have given each one of them in the last three months? The results might surprise you.
Dave Fenton,
Training Director of Root 66, which runs training courses for youth ministers across the UK
