In the last few weeks our students have been opening up quite a bit about personal struggles. I thought I’d share some insights about handling these sensitive of conversations:
For the youth volunteer to know:
- There are no new sins, only new ways to commit them
- God is not surprised
- Struggle is a normal part of owning our decision to be sold out to God
- Don’t be surprised by anything a student tells you
- Don’t promise to keep secrets before you hear what they are going to tell you
- You cannot keep secret about
- A student being harmed
- A student who will be harmed
- You cannot keep secret about
- Don’t counsel students of the opposite sex one-on-one
For the youth volunteer to communicate before the student shares:
- Ask, “Are you nervous about sharing?”
- Say, “There’s nothing you could share that will make me or God…
- …think less of you.”
- …hate you.”
- “We’re here for you.”
Allow the student to share and ask follow-up questions
After the student shares:
- Affirm him for opening up
- Reassure him that
- You are not surprised by what was shared
- You are here to help him go down the right path
- Come up with action steps and an accountability plan to help the student go down the right path
- Plan for follow-up conversations to check progress
- Pray for the student
- Assure the student that the problem will not be fixed during the course of one conversation
- Health takes breaking habits and starting new ones
- Health requires forgiving others/asking for forgiveness
- Health won’t happen without God’s intervention… and he wants to intervene in a loving way
