Build the Right Foundation for a Youth Group

Parents are the key to a successful youth group. (Remember, the Devil desires to destroy or weaken the family, the first institution ordained by God.)

While the youth worker may be the pro, he is not the parent. The Bible makes parents responsible for the following important areas:

• Education—Deuteronomy 6:6-9
• Discipline—Ephesians 6:4
• Support—1 Timothy 5:8
• Example—Proverbs 23:26

When counseling and teaching the teens, youth workers must never undermine the parents.

Teach a teen with unsaved parents how to submit to them using the biblical principles found in
1 Peter 3:1-5.

Youth workers can clearly and biblically communicate with the parents in the following ways:

• By showing their love and concern for the teens and their parents.
• By sharing their goals and plans.
• By asking for their input and ideas.
• By explaining to the parents that they the youth workers are provided by the church to help the parents fulfill their God-given responsibilities. If parents restrict teens from coming to youth group in order to discipline them, the youth workers have failed in communicating their goals and in implementing their plans to achieve their goals.

Youth workers need to know what the Bible teaches about the family so they can . . .

• Teach adults the importance of being good husbands and wives.
• Teach adults the importance of being good parents.
• Teach teens the importance of being good children.

The young adult Sunday school class is the most important class in the church for the youth pastor to teach.  If he can teach young adults how to rear good toddlers, he will have more success as a youth pastor when those toddlers are in his youth group.

Note:     In relationships with parents, apply the principles concerning trust and confidence from p.91 “Enlisting and Training the Volunteer Help You Need.”

Luke 6:46-49—And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like: He is like a man which built a house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock. But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built a house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.

Psalm 127:1— A Song of degrees for Solomon. Except the LORD build the house, they labor in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.