We don’t need to make biblical teaching harder than it already is.
But almost every single week, we crank up that difficulty level—inadvertently.
You might be sabotaging yourself without even realizing it.
So if you’re the program’s emcee, game show host, worship leader …
… keeper of order, announcement bringer and primary teacher …
… this post is for you.
Students don’t notice how long your formal teaching is. They just notice how much time you spend talking.
I’ve heard the same complaint a hundred times from frustrated youth workers:
“I can’t get them to pay attention, and I’m only teaching for like 15 minutes!”
Nine times out of 10, I bring the same response:
They won’t pay attention to your message if they listen to your voice for 30 minutes before it begins!
As a young youth worker, I bought into the myth that it was my responsibility to do everything that happened during any gathering. The result?
I shared announcements, then icebreaker questions, then made some jokes about something topical.
I explained and re-explained the rules to whichever wacky game I’d created.
I opened with prayer, read Scripture, and told the kids in the back to please quiet down and to be respectful.
I led worship with my guitar and also served as the lead vocalist.
Do you see what’s happening here?
By the time I tried to share “the message,” those poor students had already heard my voice for 40 minutes!
Of course, the cost was greater than that.
I was stuck trying to do six different jobs in the course of an hour, and was doing very few of them well.
I was stealing leadership and failing to develop volunteers.
There was no diversity of any sort on the stage. As a result, I lost some of the students who struggled to relate to me.
(Typically, this meant anyone who might enjoy a “craft.”)
I complained that students didn’t pay attention.
Students complained that everything started to feel the same.
Share responsibility within your programs.
It’s actually really easy.
Select a volunteer to lead the games. Don’t worry, you can still select and create them, but hand off the delivery to someone else.
Step back from the music and let someone else—a student, perhaps?—lead the singing.
Goodness gracious, someone else can do the announcement!
Your students deserve to hear that variety of voices …
… and you deserve to be heard when it’s time to do the teaching.
