BUILDING A friendship-first MINISTRY

Group, Mar/Apr 2005 by Kageler, Len

2. The power of a quick plug-in-How soon after they first visit a church do new attenders feel more like an insider than an outsider? Healthy churches help make it happen sooner rather than later-according to Group's Gallup study, the best churches invite new attenders to join a small group as early as their second or third visit. Or if the church doesn't plug them into a small group, they're invited to get involved in a ministry. Don't they have to "join" the church first to help out in a ministry? No.

In youth ministry, very few kids show up to our events who are absolute strangers-almost always, someone in the room knows them. Most new kids come because someone brought them. Early in my ministry, a wise Youth for Christ worker told me, "Programs don't bring people-people bring people." The challenge for us, then, is to quickly move kids from "outsiders" to "insiders."

One approach is to offer ongoing small groups. When new kids come with friends, they're automatically placed in the small groups their friends are in. When a group grows to 10 or more, it divides. I was the youth pastor of a large ministry in Seattle where we did assimilation pretty well. We had teams of 20 to 25 youth, and each team was made up of small groups. New people were automatically part of the team and small group their friends were in. The teams did stuff together outside of regular youth group time. The small groups also met as a normal part of the weekly meeting.

What about cliques? Praise God for them! When we put our teams together, we tried to pluck individuals from five or so different cliques and meld them together (enlightened youth workers like to call them "friendship clusters"). When we formed teams this way, kids wanted to do it. I knew what would happen over time...sociology was on my side. When teammates from different cliques bumped up against each other as they learned and grew together, their friendship circles broadened.

3. The power of a welcoming atmosphere2-Gallup's research found that greeters are vital in healthy churches-they're often the first relational impression a visitor experiences. New youth in our ministries already have a relational first impression through the friends that brought them. But that's not good enough.

I've always developed a student leadership team (as few as five or as many as 30, depending on the youth ministry size). We meet twice a month for 90 minutes of prayer, planning, evaluation, and accountability. To be on the student leadership team one of the requirements is: "Once (at least), in a typical youth ministry meeting or event, I will unhinge myself from my best friends and talk to someone I wouldn't normally speak with." At our leadership meetings we ask each leader to report on their welcoming role: "Last Wednesday (or Sunday, or...) I spoke with _____ and learned _____." When you have a trained core team of young people who are geared to make relational connections with everyone in the group, it produces a palpable sense of friendliness.