I have decided to make this a series of posts as I look back and reflect on the culture of inviting our group seems to have and look at how we have gotten to this point. Check out:

Creating An Inviting Culture: Take A Good, Hard Look At Your Service

We are gearing up for our student lead series called YOU OWN THE NIGHT next month. For 4 weeks in a row, we have no adults on stage. Everything is planned by and for students. Each a week a different high school takes over the night and gears the service to something they believe their school needs to hear. I’m not going to lie, it’s a lot of hard work to make this happen but it’s always one of my favorite series we do all year long.

You can check out a very detailed way to pull this off in the DYM store HERE.

I believe this has fast-tracked the initing culture of our ministry. Our motto for this series is, “Every student on campus gets an invite.” We know not all students will come through CCV Students but we will make sure they know what it is. I have given you some main reasons why a student lead series will help with an inviting culture below:

Students take ownership and pride in ministry. Schools have rallies and big rivalries for sports and students own it all. They make posters, sport their colors and logos and go nuts for school. Why? Because they own it. Allowing students to take over, does the same thing.

Students reach is far greater than yours (youth pastor). I can go around campus and interact with the students I know and meet a few of their friends in the process. When students take ownership of a service, they want to invite friends and have them be a part of the service in some way and their friends come to see. We have had students who would have never stepped foot on a church campus come, hear the Gospel, accepted Jesus and now are some of our core students. All because students owned the night.

It allows your leaders to connect with brand new students…. who don’t go to church. Nights like this, leaders get to be strictly relational and meet brand new students. They get to be cheerleaders to the students they know and are involved with the service. They get to have fun and support what the students have had planned for that night.

Students pay WAY more attention to their peers than you. The selfish side of me wishes this was not true.  What did your senior pastor teach 7 weeks ago? Students listen to students better. Students teach better to their peers. We have students write out their whole testimonies and they read it straight from the paper and it’s way more powerful and engaging than if I were to memorize and give to most epic sermon ever. When they see someone like them on stage, they are brought in and God can grab their attention in a way that you as an adult cannot. Students teach students better.

When students say “me too” it’s powerful – When students have the opportunity to share, they can hear the story of one of their own and have the opportunity to say “me too”, and that is powerful. When a student can hear another student’s story and hear about the sin, addictions, struggles of those students and say “me too” it’s memorable. Then they God hear what God does when lives are fully given to Him and then they can say, “I want that too”. It gives hope that God can move in their lives too.