In our high-speed culture, engaging in long, thoughtful moments of prayer doesn’t come naturally. Even the most mature followers of Jesus, people who are entirely convinced that their prayer life is crucial, still struggle to develop routines and rhythms of deep prayerfulness. So how can we help teenagers to pray? How can we develop a culture of prayerfulness in our ministries?
So how can we help teenagers to pray? How can we develop a culture of prayerfulness in our ministries?
Why it matters:
- Your students will be “stuck” spiritually if they don’t do this; an active prayer life is the assumption in the New Testament
… in fact, try imagining a disciple of Jesus, from any point in history that doesn’t pray! Prayer is central to our communion with God and our life of faith. (See Matthew 6:6, Matthew 21:22, Mark 11:24-25, Luke 11:9, Luke 18, John 15, Ephesians 6:18, Philippians 4:6-7, James 5:13-18, 1 John 5:14…. I could go on here.) - Teens who pray regularly are 18% less likely to suffer from depression
Along with showing up to church, cultivating a great prayer life is one of the best things your students can do for their own mental health (see the research here: https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/187/11/2355/5094534). - Let’s be honest – prayer is the key to growing your youth ministry
As slick as your programs have become, we both know that life change and transformation depend on Jesus…. not that new fog machine.
Three ideas for promoting prayerfulness in your youth ministry:
1. Don’t plan an activity, build a culture
Have you every shown up to a new place where everyone already knew each other, and it only took you about 5 minutes to realize what you’d need to do to “fit in”? Whether it was “not talking too loudly” or acknowledging a deep reverence for the musical contributions of Jimmy Hendrix, the cues in the group were clear to you.
These behaviours were normalized, and you knew right away, “that’s just what this group is about.” Contrast that with most youth ministries where we make a REALLY big deal about prayer… but not in a good way. When ministry leaders say things like, “OK everyone, I know we’re all having fun, but we need to stop and pray…” I cringe. What you’re really saying is that prayer is both boring and an unnatural “bolt-on” option to the program…. and what that really means is that when students (and leaders) feel prompted by the Holy Spirit to engage in prayer, they’re going to have to fight their inner voice of insecurity before they act on it.
When ministry leaders say things like, “OK everyone, I know we’re all having fun, but we need to stop and pray…” I cringe.
Flip the script. “Hey everyone, it’s that time of night where we always pause to thank God for his gift of community…” As a youth ministry leader, when you normalize prayer as the most “natural” thing in your community, you give everyone else permission to embrace it without being “weird”.
Try this out all month long and see what happens:
- “Thanks for attending this meeting. Can we just quickly pray over these plans before we head home?”
- “I’m just about to head up on stage to speak… would you mind praying for me?”
- “Hey Phil, it’s great to see you. The whole team pauses for prayer at 6:30, do you want to join us?”
2. Take the pressure off students
Second-guessing yourself is an unintentional hobby for teens. So while God’s invitation to us in prayer is to meet with our good and loving Father, it’s easy for a 14-year old to worry that they “might not be doing it right.” The fear that I “won’t feel anything” or that I’ll be “doing it wrong” the whole time can stop your students from engaging before they even start.
The fear that I “won’t feel anything” or that I’ll be “doing it wrong” the whole time can stop your students from engaging before they even start.
Mark Yaconelli has great advice here, and suggests that we should invite students to “do an experiment” when it comes to connecting with God in prayer. Try this on your next retreat or gathering and see what happens:
“Jesus told us that when we pray, we’re talking to our Good Father. We’re going to do an experiment together… rather than worry about getting your words right, take a few minutes privately to just pray out loud whatever is in your heart: worries, ideas, plans, anything. We’ll come back afterwards and talk about what that was like — just unloading on God without worrying about how it sounds.”
3. Make better decisions on what you “cut”
We’ve all been there when everything is running behind and the doors are supposed to open in 22 minutes. Between the mishap with game-setup, that soundboard problem, or the volunteers who said they’d bring the snacks but forgot, you’re feeling pretty overwhelmed.
What gets cut?
Usually (if we’re being honest), it’s prayer. Prayer gets abbreviated to, “Hey we have a lot to do, so as you’re working please pray that everything goes well tonight…” And before we know it, we’re in a pattern where 3 out of 4 youth nights have rushed, skipped or anemic prayer preparation.
I hate to say it, but what we “cut” tells us the truth about what we believe is responsible for life-change in our youth ministries. In a ministry where rehearsals, game prep or sound-check are never cut for time, but prayer frequently is, we need to be tell ourselves the truth: while theologically we believe prayer is essential, practically we believe it’s expendable.
I hate to say it, but what we “cut” tells us the truth about what we believe is responsible for life-change in our youth ministries.
Even if it means putting up with a sub-standard game or asking a few volunteers to finish putting out the snacks during the bible study, the long-term effect of prioritizing prayer both privately in your ministry preparation and publicly in front of your team will be substantial. That’s not to say that if there’s an emergency, or something uniquely odd happens that you need to become legalistic around this… it is to say that we need to flip the “cut” stats when we’re running behind, skipping prayer 5% of the time instead of 95% of the time.
The best thing about cultivating prayerfulness in your youth ministry?
It reduces the pressure on you, as a youth ministry leader, to have all the answers and produce all the results. It keeps all eyes on Jesus as the author and perfecter of our faith, and it deepens both ours and our students dependence on Him.