What’s the major difference between the typical youth ministry with a paid, trained youth worker and a youth ministry run by volunteers?
Understanding what makes students tick.
Why is it that youth workers can get students to do stuff willingly that leaves parents with their jaws dropping open? It’s not the “cool factor” nor is it that youth workers trend towards being the students age.
It’s understanding how students tick.
Students have been rewarded to death. By the time a 6th or 7th grader reaches the youth group they know how to play the reward game. They know how to give just enough to earn the teacher’s reward. The coaches reward. The Awana award. In grade school if you set up a good reward you can motivate the children to do anything. In their concrete world, rewards make sense logically to them. “If I do x, y, and z I will get something I don’t deserve.”
Fear is a short term motivator. (Repeat that to yourself 4-5 times a day)
As these students grow into adolescence, external rewards become less rewarding. Sure, you can pull the reward button now and then because a truly great reward is interesting enough to motivate a seasoned adult as much as a 6 year old! But youth workers have the task of motivating students to do stuff when rewards aren’t working for them anymore. They know how to play the game so well that they will manipulate the game on the surface (bringing friends to get a prize) while not believing a lick of the reason. (Evangelism)
The answer is teaching students truth. That’s right, the uncool Bible. By teaching the Bible students will be motivated to serve God, please God, and rearrange their lives.
Fear is a short term motivator
What does that mean? Youth workers learn early in their career that it’s easy to draw kids. You can dangle a reward like “bring kids to youth group and we’ll have a pizza party.” They will do what you want and bring kids so they don’t lose the opportunity to eat pizza. But have you changed anything in their heart?
External motivators don’t work with adolescents (long term) because they learn that you are using fear to motivate them. Internal rewards (long term) work because in their hearts they want to please God with their lives.
External motivators don’t work with any faith. You can’t legislate away sin. The puritans tried it and failed. Today, hyper-conservative Muslims try it and it doesn’t work. Christian schools try it and it just makes things worse. Conservative churches tried it for decades and failed. Awana’s rewards are laughable to most students.
On and on… where you see faithful people trying to motivate adolescents and adults with an external reward, they fail. They fail not because they are bad people or because they practice a false belief. They fail because adolescents will do 100 times more because they want to do something in their hearts and not to please someone.
This is a good thing! As church leaders we want people to act on their faith because they want to… not because a church leader manipulates them to.
How do volunteer youth workers in small churches all around the country get it right?
Rest assured, you can do it. You don’t need a degree to do it. All you have to do is be authentic. All you have to do is try your hardest to faithfully teach students the Word of God. Remember that book? You know… the one that is sharper than any double edged sword? The one that seperate bone from marrow? The one that is illuminated in the hearts of believers? In order to effect long-term, life-changing results in the lives of students all you have to do is show them that you are internally motivated to act on what you believe.
A disclaimer
Every time I mention this I get parents and pastors mad at me. There are exceptions to this, of course. With younger adolescents you can get away with a lot more external motivation. Even with adults and middle and late adolescents, external motivation can work. But remember that fear is a short term motivator. It will affect a short term change and not long term motivation. A person will work hard to earn an external reward… but only an internal reward will make a long term difference. This is why raises don’t make people’s quality of work increase. This is why gifted kids quit piano in middle school. This is why honor roll kids flip out in college and try new “external rewards” like sex, drugs, and alcohol. Short term motivators have given false positives. An employee will come early and stay late to earn a raise. But has his work gotten better? A young kid will work hard on the piano because he likes the way people pat him on the back, but he won’t work hard into adulthood if he doesn’t want to later in life. This is why parents who enforce external rewards for their kids chastity externally see failure when the rewards of the world outweigh the rewards of mom and dad.
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