9 Reasons Your Student Ministry May Not Be Growing

With so many conferences, leadership workshops, coaching bootcamps and blogs we hear and read a lot of different peoples thoughts on church growth and church health but not too many on the topic of youth ministry. A friend of mine that was over a student ministry that is now traveling and speaking at churches, camps and conferences said these 9 things regarding growth in youth ministry and I believe is truth and needs to be shared:

1) Dumbing down the Gospel.
2) You view it as a stepping stone rather than a destination.
3) Weak work ethic.
4) Not involved in the students lives.
5) In denial about things that need to change.
6) Not building teams
7) Just doing ministry FOR students rather than THROUGH them.
8) Not building a current infrastructure that can sustain your future vision.
9) Making excuses for not doing the above.

To highlight just a few of these points: as youth pastors, we want to be hip, cool and relevant but lose the message in the mess of all that. We think we have to dumb or water down our messages so we keep a particular group engaged. We must not get to the point of dumbing down or watering down the gospel because that is the foundation you're setting for your students. Statistically speaking, after graduation, most students quit attending church or attend only on occasion...and that's those that attended church and were solid Christians. 

One thing I believe Bible college does is it doesn't prepare students wanting to go to the ministry to accept or want a job if it's not at a mega church. If God has called you to be a pastor...He called you to pastor. It doesn't matter where or how. Yes, some people go from graduating Bible college and get into a youth ministry that runs 300-500 and has a dream budget to do ministry. BUT the major of churches in America are not the mega churches and pastors don't see it being "sexy" and want to run away from it or use it as a STEPPING STONE to launch them into a dream church. If we chase God and His calling WHERE you are, He will take you WHERE He needs you and what He created you to do.

Growth is one of those things as pastors we tend to either not focus on or focus on so much everything else suffers. We must keep Jesus the center of our vision where He has us and not make excuses but make moves. Let these 9 things encourage and speak to you to push your youth ministry to the next level. Be faithful where you are and God will be faithful to you!