BECOME A SERVANT

 

A youth leader who had spent some time going to events and talking to people at his nearby school had noticed parents lugging heavy band equipment to and from football games. It was the same two dads every game, so the youth leader volunteered to help them each week. Obviously, they were grateful. Interestingly, after several weeks, the band director invited the leader to join them at all the practices and school functions. 

 

This kind of serving can find many different expressions: keeping stats at track meets, wrestling matches, and other sports events; judging at debates and musical contests; getting a bus driver’s license to drive a bus for school events, and many more.

 

The motive for going to the campus is not for the school to serve you and your ministry, but for you to serve the school. You have no guarantees that any students will decide to follow Jesus or come to your church, but ministering to the community, the school, and students by serving them will clearly reveal that you care about the school and the students there.

 

Just as Jesus came to serve (Matthew 20:25-28), we’re called to serve with the same servant-hearted spirit. The idea is to look for a need that the school does not have the personnel to fill—then fill it. And once you have spent time getting to know the school community, you certainly will have noticed some needs to be met. How about inviting some of your youth ministry volunteers to step up, step in, and meet some of these needs? Once that happens, the number of students each of you know begins to expand and multiply.

 

Serve Wisely

Wisdom is needed to serve on a campus. It’s true that we have the truth that transforms. We hold the key to the lives of students, and we have the solution to hopelessness, immorality, loneliness, purposelessness, and much more. We hold the answer to problematic issues that no educational institution can solve. And even though many school administrations fight to keep the church out of schools while giving godless and humanistic philosophies easy access to their students, we still hold the key—the only solution that is both true and lifechanging. 

 

Though our highest priority is to give students the hope that is in Christ, we must be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16) when we are on or around the campus. It’s wise to willingly lay aside our immediate desire to verbally share Jesus with students in order to earn the right to be heard. That’s where the amazing tool of serving comes into play. We don’t need to demand our rights to be on campus. It will only alienate us from the faculty and administration. Instead, our goal is to saturate the campus with Jesus-focused leaders who can build ongoing relationships with students and can come alongside them to meet their needs. We want to position ourselves to develop relationships that will allow us to introduce Christ, as well as encourage and embolden the Christ-followers. We can do that when we sensitively discern the needs around us and then meet those needs by serving the school and those students.

 

Meet Needs

Taking some very simple steps, you and your team can meet a significant number of needs. More than anything else, doing this is mostly a matter of showing up with a giving heart. How do you do that practically and meaningfully? 

 

1. Evaluate your strengths and the strengths of your youth ministry team. Begin by asking yourself and your team what you liked to do when you were in school. Think back—far back, for some of us—and remember what you enjoyed doing in school. Write down two or three things you enjoyed then that you might enjoy now in a serving capacity. You don’t have to excel at these because your primary role on campus is serving, not impressing people. Make yourself available to step into a serving role you will enjoy. The result is that others will be drawn in to how much you are enjoying serving them. As the saying goes, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

 

2. Prioritize your lists of needs with your team. Together, ask each of your leaders to write down two or three situations where they would enjoy serving. Discuss what you wrote, then decide who wants to pursue certain needs. Then think about them in terms of each person’s strengths, the school’s needs, the contacts you currently have at the school, and who would be interested in the need(s) you identified. 

 

3. Determine your availability. With your team, decide when each of you have time in your weekly schedule to commit to serving on or around the campus. Is it every day? Every other day? Once a week? Can you attend practice or only the event? What time can you arrive, and when do you have to leave? Commit yourself only to do what you know you can do faithfully.

 

4. Contact the appropriate person(s). God has a place for each person on your team to serve, and He will open the door for it. Yet, you still need to knock on the door. Find out who is in charge of the group you will serve, make an appointment to see that person, explain that you and others have some time to help, and emphasize that your goal is simply to serve. If that person says no, go to the next person or the next until you find an opening. 

 

5. Serve with a group. Consider expanding your serving team by collaborating with other organizations on the campus and/or other churches. For example, serve a meal to a sports team before games. Since you are serving and paying for the meal, you can give a devotional. A few other ideas: Hand out water and oranges after team practices; throw an appreciation party for the choir; gather sanitation kits for the school social worker to give to families in need. Opportunities abound with an ever-expanding team. 

 

If you follow suggestions like these for serving, you will be able to build relationships, become a positive influence in the school community, and share your faith with those who are open to hearing about it. 

 

But be patient. This can take time. Remember, when you partner with others on your leadership team, you can divide responsibilities, speed up the process, and expand your influence. But even then, don’t rush. Relationships and trust need time and experience to develop, but the benefits are well worth the wait.

 

Your Next Steps

We encourage you to keep a notebook or journal of ideas, action steps, and resources that will help you advance your ministry. You can use the following questions and suggestions for brainstorming and developing your goals and plans. 

 

• Spend some time thinking about how serving might expand your current ministry and build a solid foundation for future ministry on campus. In what ways does serving open peoples’ hearts to the message of Jesus?

 

• Review the four steps under “Meet Needs” and develop a written plan for you and/or your team to begin serving on campus. 

 

Resources

• John Maxwell, “Jesus’ Teaching on Servant Leadership,” www.thenivbible.com/blog/jesus-teaching-on-servant-leadership