Does this sound familiar? You’ve worked hard all week. You’ve arranged to have your youth room decked out to match your message that night. You worked with the worship band for hours getting ready. You spent time sending emails, texts, facebooks, and phone calls to make sure everyone is there. You prepped all your youth staff. You spent hours studying your message. Now it’s time. The students are here and you’re about to kick off your weekly meeting.
Then, somewhere along the course of the meeting you realize: NO ONE IS PAYING ATTENTION. Two boys are smacking each other in the back of the head on the left, 3 girls are furiously texting on the right, and the ENTIRE back row is asleep! What’s the point? No one cares. Why did I spend so much time preparing? Why won’t anyone pay attention?
I can describe this scene in so much detail because it really happened…. to me! And I’ve seen it happen to a whole lot of other youth pastors as well. When this happened first, I was a youth pastor in Seattle, WA and I sat down very discouraged with my senior pastor. As I described the situation of how no one paid attention during my message, he asked, “So, what did you do right before the message?” I looked at him puzzled, then told him all about the sweet game I made up where two guys raced to eat bbq beef sandwiches covered in the hottest hot sauce I could find. He shook his head and then laughed. He didn’t give me any details, but he told me to think through how to prepare the students’ hearts as we walked through the night and approched the message time.
Over the next couple of years, I thought through this a lot and got some help from some other missionaries at Word of Life. Around here, we call it “The Funnel Effect.” The idea is you start big and crazy and through the night, you constantly step the students down until they’re ready for the message. I got a lot of opportunity to hone my practice of this philosophy running meetings for Word of Life’s West Coast Camp. I’ve seen it work hundreds of times.
Bottom Line: Start out big and crazy…. start with a game, an icebreaker, or something else that gets everyone involved and a little crazy. Then perhaps move on to music… where you begin with your fastest, craziest song, and then move through your set list getting more quiet and worshipful as you go. The goal is to bring the students to a point where they are prayerful and worshipful by the time you’re done singing. Then, you can transition into a time of sharing and prayer. Finally, begin your message.
It seems like a lot of work to to plan out every second like that, but it works. Once you do it a few times, you get the hang of it and it gets easier. I found it AMAZING how just rearranging the order of the songs we sang helped focus and prepare the students. They finally paid attention! Give it a shot and let me know how it turns out.
