Simplifying and Improvising in Youth Group Meetings

This summer, we tried something new in our youth program. After giving it some serious thought and after listening to what some other youth workers, pastors, and leaders were doing with their groups for the summer, we decided to go low-key and informal. What that means is this. Our regular meetings during the school year consisted of us meeting upstairs in our "big room" (not really big, but it's bigger than the other rooms, so that's what we call it), where our full band (bass, drums, elec. guitar) would lead us in worship and our Bible studies would be enhanced with Power Point, video clips, or other multi-media teaching tools. Well, this summer, we gave the band the summer off to spend time with family, do their summer activities, and not feel the pressure to be at practice every week. We also didn't do as much with PowerPoint and media stuff and just embraced the intimacy of a lazy summer.

Since our summer crowd was smaller because of people travelling and going to band camps, sports camps, etc., we decided not to meet upstairs in the big room and just meet downstairs in the "hang out" area of the youth building. Most weeks we didn't even have music. We just got to sit around and talk about the Bible study topic and let the kids teach themselves as they worked out the scriptures together.

This week, though, one of our musicians called me Wednesday afternoon to see if she could bring her guitar and do a few songs. Of course, I told her "absolutely". Well, we only had a very small portion of our kids show up due to some school activities that were going on. So we scratched our Bible study and just sang with a couple of guitars for about 30 minutes. No band, no power point, no sound system, and our kids were singing their hearts out. Had we been locked into our normal routine we would have missed a very powerful time of worship.