Events are a part of life in Youth Ministry.  Whether you are a Youth Worker or a Youth Pastor, events can hurt or help your ministry.  Events can be for the entire ministry, segments of it, or for your Sunday School class or small group.  Since events are a given, you must be intentional to maximize the effectiveness of your Youth Ministry events.  Here are seven ways to make sure you are maximizing your Youth Ministry events:

1. Know the purpose

If you do not know why you are doing an event, you should not be doing an event.  Knowing the purpose behind an event sets you in a direction to be able to leverage it for the maximum impact.  Every event has a purpose.  Having one to have one…that does not count as a purpose.

2. Communicate it well

Without a doubt we fail here more often than we should.  Communicating well is always a challenge.  There are tons of ways to communicate.  The real important aspect here is that you ARE communicating ahead of time and being intentional about it.  You should be communicating the details of the event (including times, cost, etc.), but you should also be communicating the purpose of the event.  If you fail to communicate well, you will not be able to maximize the effectiveness of your Youth Ministry events.

3. Have a budget (like a real one)

You can not make this up or guess at this.  Budgeting accurately is essential to maximizing the effectiveness of your Youth Ministry events.  Budgeting allows you to put the dollars where they can make the most impact.  Knowing exactly what you have to work with can give you peace and confidence in managing the event regardless of how big or small it is.  This helps your leadership more than you know.

4. Charge something

This one may seem strange, but I believe it is really important.  Charging something will help you get commitment and real buy in from the students.  When they have something invested they will be more likely to follow through with attending.  I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have had frustrated youth leaders (and one Youth Pastor…me) over students “signing up” but not “showing up.”  You put way to much time and effort into planning the event for them not to show.  Charge $1 if you need to (I usually shoot for at least $5 though)…just charge something.

5. Have plenty of help

You cannot go it alone.  Regardless of the size of your group, you cannot be a one person show.  You need a great team around you.  If you are the only one doing it all, you will be busy “doing it all” and never really be able to invest in the students.

6. Have a follow-up plan in place

I have found that if I do not have a follow-up plan in place before our Youth Ministry events, I often fail to follow-up at all.  Having a plan in place ahead of time will help you make sure follow-up happens.  It will also help you find places where you need more help and allow you to communicate that to others.

7. Follow-up

Okay, so I feel like this one should go without saying, but so many times this just does not happen.  If your event had a purpose then you must follow-up to see if you actually accomplished your purpose.  Please…please, follow-up.

What else do you think helps to maximize the effectiveness of your Youth Ministry events?  Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.  I would love to hear what else you do!