“Hey – my name is Adam. What kind of church do you work at?”
“Oh, it’s a Lutheran church, I’m the youth director there.”
“Very cool, so…how many kids are in your program?”
This is one of most common introductory conversations that happens at most youth ministry conventions. The question is often asked innocently enough, but we tend to ask about numbers.
It’s the numbers game. If you’re in ministry, especially youth ministry, you’ve undoubtedly encountered these kinds of questions from parents, senior pastors, church councils/boards/sessions, and even from some kids. “So, how many kids went on the retreat?” “That’s great – so you have more kids than last year?” “I heard only 5 kids came to youth group last night…what’s going wrong?”
For the longest time, I refused to play the numbers game. I served a church in Idaho that was pretty small, and so I was used to having 5-10 kids at youth group. I serve a larger church now, but sometimes we only get 5-10 kids at youth group as well. But I try my hardest, even though I am often disappointed in low turnout, to not get sucked into the “numbers game.” I tell myself, and others, that it’s important to focus on the kids who are there – the ones who have decided to attend youth group or a specific youth event.
But after hearing Mark DeVries talk about numbers a couple years ago, I’ve recently been changing my mind. Now I’m very concerned about numbers, but not in the way I used to be. Mark talked about numbers actually being pretty important, but the number that was important was the number of youth that have been entrusted to you.
So, I know that there are about 46 youth that are in some way connected to our church right now. Maybe they sing in a youth choir, but don’t do anything else. Or maybe they are a regular at Sunday School, but that’s the extent of their involvement. For me, that 46 is the most important number. That’s the number of youth who have been entrusted to our ministry’s care. So, when we had 25 kids come out for our kick-off lock-in last weekend, I feel pretty good about that number. Not specifically because it was 25 youth, but because it was over half of the kids connected to our church.
But tonight at youth group, we only had 5 kids. It was our first youth group of the fall, and apparently my “Hey – come to youth group” text didn’t get out to kids for some reason. So, I think that 5 isn’t a great number. But that’s not because it was only 5 kids. We had a great time, a good time of sharing our lives together, and I know those 5 students will come back. But when I look at the fact that it was only 11% of the kids that have been entrusted to us…that’s a bit of a bummer to me.
It’s a different way to think about numbers, and a way that’s more helpful and healthy I think. It doesn’t necessarily mean that bigger is better in terms of numbers, but it does ask the question, “Are you doing your best to reach out to the students who have been entrusted into your care?”
What do you think? How have you dealt with the “numbers games” in your own ministries?
Great post Adam.
I break down the youth on our roster into 5 categories: Active, Occasionally Active, Worship Only, Inactive, and Visitors
I define active as having some sort of involvement with the church outside of worship at least once a month, whether choir, youth group, Sunday school, nursery helper, or special events.
Occasionally active is defined as showing up a few times/year
Worship Only are for students who attend worship, frequently or infrequently, but nothing else.
Inactive means I rarely, if ever, see the student.
“Visitors” is self-explanatory.
There’s some subjectivity involved, of course, but the point is it helps the youth leadership team visualize a tangible goal for each student. We may rarely move an “inactive” student to “active” (though it has happened!), but we can strategize ways to encourage “inactive” students to attend worship or show up for a special event. When that happens, we might not be able to say we’re “growing the youth group”, but we can say we are touching more and more youth who have been, as you put it, “entrusted” into our care.
Once I was in a wedding where three other groomsmen were youth pastors. They spent the majority of the time comparing penis sizes, err ministry sizes. It was one up manship like they were talking weight lifting. I’m sure its absurdly easy to get sucked into, just like blog numbers. You just have to glance at them quickly and not allow an attachment to form.
Hey Adam,
I thought this was a timely article since everyone is starting up youth ministries for the fall and putting up numbers on facebook. I do think numbers are important, the 3 teens that are being discipled, the 2 teens that led their friend to faith. I wonder is our identity wrapped up in numbers?
Well said. I’m totally in agreement with this idea of entrusted. Numbers are people and people matter. That’s what I always think. When people aren’t coming I want to do what I can to get them to come so I can do a better job being relational with them. But I never want to get them to come just to add another tally to my list. Great post.
I had five at our first high school youth group gathering tonight too! Five out of 22 high school students on our roster. Totally the opposite of last fall, when a big initial turnout fell off steadily until November.
Here’s the thing that occurred to me tonight: Given attendance patterns of all our current high school students, I don’t ever expect more than 8 or 9 students on a given week with this year’s group. That’s just given the reality that most of this current crop have not participated in weekly youth group in any regular way. Maybe there’s an issue there in welcoming new students.
The task seems to be now to connect to those other students in meaningful non-youth group ways.
Thanks for this post.
Adam – good reminder – thank you. I think one area I’d like to see my church grow in is this: The CHURCH has been entrusted with these kids – not the YOUTH DIRECTOR.
Too often we as leaders see these numbers as a reflection on our own individual egos and individual successes (or lack thereof). I long to be effective in creating passion, vision and action within the larger congregational body. It is OUR program – not MY program. It’s only all about us as individuals if that is what we allow it to become.
May our names be forgotten and the camaraderie of disciples be remembered as they grow.
Agreed. I was about to say the same thing. I think the term “entrusted” is a bit misleading. These students are “entrusted” to their parents, and the primary role in shepherding students falls to them. Many times, it is a reflection of parental commitments and priorities that a student has no interest in youth group. Many of the students that are affiliated with our church have been raised to believe that academics and athletics are more important than church-related activities. When students have been wired that way, it’s very difficult to change that.
Here is my question: How many youth ‘events’ are good.? Sometimes I think the youth are kept too busy or entertained too much. By ‘events’ I mean not the normal gatherings or small groups/Bible study.