If you were to visit our church, you’d see students involved in just about every area of ministry at just about every level.

On Wednesday nights you’d see students helping in the kitchen serving the family dinner. You’d see students greeting other students as they enter into the worship center. You’d see students on the stage in the youth band, in the control booth on the tech crew, sometimes giving the welcome and announcements, and sometimes even doing the teaching/preaching. On Sunday mornings you’d see students sometimes along side of adults greeting people as they enter. You’d see students serving as ushers, and playing in the worship band. You’d sometimes see students reading the scripture during the service and sometimes even serving communion. On both Sundays and Wednesdays, you’d find students all over the building serving as volunteers in classrooms, the nursery, the kitchen, and so on. Elsewhere you’d discover that students are on our Student Life leadership teams alongside of adults and you’d even find that we have several students that have become official members of the church. You’d find that students are serving alongside of adults at the local Soup Kitchen, Foodshelf, on Mobile Servants teams, and other compassion ministry teams.

Giving students the opportunity to be genuinely involved in the regular life of the church beyond the annual “Youth Sunday” or youth group is an important aspect of developing a Sticky Faith.

Yet, as I write this, I know we have too many students who aren’t involved enough. The growing edge for us here is to develop more intentionality for giving more of our students these opportunities to get involved. It’s hard to orchestrate all these connections so most of these teens have simply “caught” the culture of getting involved. I’d like to capitalize more on this and be even more intentional about it.

What are you doing to get students involved?