Goals of Youth Activities

As a youth leader, your job requires you to teach youth valuable life lessons. While you should provide fun activities for your youth group, each activity should focus on a specific character-building goal. As you plan youth activities, consider what life skills you deem most important to instill in your youth and plan around them.

Unity

Youth activities promote unity among youth groups. As the saying goes, "a house divided against itself cannot stand." Your youth group must learn to trust and love one another. Once they leave the confines of your group to face the real world, they will see disunity at every turn. The Book of Ephesians instructs us to diligently "preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."

Leadership

Adolescence provides a plethora of distractions and negative choices for today's youth. That said, youth activities should teach your youth group leadership. Through leadership activities, you can effectively equip your youth with the tools necessary to scoff at negative peer pressure and plunge forward the narrow path, head held high. Highlight the manner in which the apostle Paul led the early church through all types of adversity.

Responsibility

Youth often experience trouble taking responsibility for their own actions. You don't have to teach them how to lie or blame others to attempt to avoid punishment. Let your activities focus on reversing that behavior. Successful adults possess the ability to admit to, embrace, and learn from their mistakes.

Philanthropy

Jesus summed up the Law in one command, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." It's easy for adults, much less kids, to get caught up in their own wants and needs. Youth activities should teach adolescents to put their own needs aside to consider the needs of those around them. Helping others puts life into a new perspective and helps fight the natural tendency toward selfishness.

Conflict Resolution

Young people must learn how to deal with interpersonal relationships. An important facet of these relationships is conflict resolution. As you role-play scenarios with youth, you can teach them how to effectively resolve problems amongst friends and family. Teaching conflict resolution can also help older youth prepare for romantic relationships by teaching them ways to listen and agree to disagree.

References

• Unity
• Goal of Youth Ministry