5 ways to help students belong in your ministry

Picture your last ministry gathering. When students arrived, who did they gravitate towards?

No doubt, it was other young people they know well.

It’s a phenomenon that happens everywhere, in every ministry I’ve ever led or seen: young people move toward the people they know best (and let’s face it, adults do too.) Scan the room at youth group, and you’ll see clumps of teenagers huddled up by age or interest, talking or scrolling TikTok together.

Recently, I observed this phenomenon at my own student ministry event. Because I’m new to my church, I asked my leaders what they thought of it. Several exclaimed, “It’s so great that our students already know each other from school!”

That’s true…for some students.

In most youth ministries, there are young people who know each other from school. But not all of them.

Why we can’t assume every teenager feels like they belong

If your ministry draws young people from multiple schools or from a combination of public, private, and homeschool settings, teenagers don’t know each other from school. Even young people who go to the same school may not actually know each other. Different classes, interests, and friend groups make it entirely possible for teenagers from your ministry to attend the same school as others from your ministry without ever really seeing them, let alone getting to know them.

Regardless of how small or closely connected your community is, it’s dangerous to assume that young people in your ministry know one another from someplace else. This assumption leaves out students by reinforcing pre-existing cliques. It also makes it easy to forgo intentionally connecting students across age, school, gender, and interest. It can lead to the perception that your ministry caters to one school over another. When that happens, even if it’s not true, students who go to other schools will struggle to belong in your ministry.

Because Where do I fit? is one of the three big questions that every teenager wrestles with, helping young people belong—regardless of where they go to school—is one of the cornerstones of good relational ministry.

5 ways to help students feel connected in your ministry

So, how can you intentionally help young people connect with one another?

1. Evaluate your roster. Sort students by school. Pay attention to which schools you’re currently drawing the most and least students from, as well as how many different schools are represented in your ministry. Take time to visit teenagers at their schools. While it can be strategic to start with the school that most of your young people attend, don’t stop there. Visit schools that are home to fewer kids too. Doing so lets them know you value and care for them, too. Meet with administrators and teachers to look for ways to partner with and support local schools throughout the year.
2. Plan your calendar in a way that cultivates trust among all students, not just students from a particular school. A new student ministry director recently shared how she was going to leave for their fall retreat early on a Friday because students were off school that day. When I asked her if every school her students attend was off that day, she told me, “Just the main one we draw from.” As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she realized her mistake and shifted plans to leave later in the day so that all her students could attend the retreat. If we plan events based only on the calendar of one school or community, no matter what else we do, our ministry will never grow beyond that.
3. Carefully orchestrate the first ten minutes of any gathering your ministry holds. Drop-offs and pickups are the loneliest times for students, especially those who don’t know others from outside your church community. To combat this, intentionally prepare your environment. Make sure that every teenager who enters your gathering is welcomed immediately and then given something to do. Involve them in a game, an art project, or a prayer station. As you do, connect them with other students. Rather than assume people know one another’s names, introduce people to one another; that way you’re the awkward one, not the young person. A parent recently told me about the experience his teenager had at a local camp. His introverted daughter was the only one from her school at camp, something that caused both the student and her parents concern. Much to their relief, the student had a fantastic week. When I asked what had contributed to it, this student’s dad immediately explained, “They had her from the moment she stepped out of the car. Her leader greeted her by name, asked her a question, and gave her something to do at a table with other teenagers doing the same thing. My daughter was so engaged in what she was doing that she never looked back!” We want that level of engagement and intentionality at youth group, too.
4. Strategically think about how you break young people into small groups. Many ministries break students into small groups according to schools in hopes they’ll have more opportunities to connect with one another during the week. This is often a good strategy. That said, consider what happens to those young people who attend other schools, or those who are homeschooled. Young people will always feel excluded if they’re the only ones like them in a certain setting (i.e.—the one teenager who attends the local Christian school in a small group where all the other students attend the same public school.) Grouping students by school also assumes that young people want to hang out with people from school outside of school, which may not be the case. As a result, you might find it helpful to level the playing field for all students by intentionally grouping young people with those they don’t know, in order to help them form a community with everyone who’s involved in your ministry.
5. Train your leaders to look out for those on the margins. Teach leaders to look for the student standing on the outskirts of a group or scrolling through the phone by themselves. Equip them with questions that get teenagers talking. Help them identify other like-minded young people to connect them with.

When we stop assuming young people know each other and instead, intentionally connect them with one another, we show teenagers they belong at church. And when teenagers know they belong at church, they also know they belong to God.

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