How a Coffee Card Can Impact a Student Ministry
Youth Pastors should spend time with students.
Over time, more and more students show up for youth-related events and activities. It can be difficult for a Youth Pastor to get the face-time needed to develop authentic relationships with all the students.
Youth Ministry 101
A typical understanding of youth ministry suggests that obtaining and training more volunteers will spread the available impact. I definitely agree with that. When I was a Youth Pastor, I had an amazing team! I couldn’t pull off a quarter of the ministry I do, without them.
That being said, having lots of volunteers doesn’t help the students get to know me any better. And that’s just not going to happen on youth nights.
The Coffee Shop
I found the answer at a coffee shop down the road from the church. Meeting at this local coffee shop with students one-on-one or in groups of two or three made all the difference!
I’m sure many of you are thinking,
“How does a Youth Pastor pay for all those mochas, lattes and Red Bull specials?“
The short answer is, “I can’t.“
However, when a Youth Pastor starts meeting in public places with students and investing in their spiritual well-being, people notice. Then it doesn’t take long before people start wanting to invest as well.
The Coffee Card
At one point, a man in our church decided to invest in my meetings with students. Every few weeks, he carefully held out his hand, revealing a couple of coffee cards from our local coffee shop.
If there were people around, he’d pass them through a handshake or some other manner, careful not to let anyone see what he is doing.
The Student Impact
It amazed me that just as I started to run out, he was there to make sure I have the resources to continue these public meetings. It was a major blessing to me, our students and others with who I interacted by simply not being in a church office, but in a public place.
Through a simple act of giving, he greatly assisted in my personal time with students. He stands as an example to us all, of the small ways that we can invest in the greater work of the Body of Christ.
Join the Conversation; Share Your Thoughts:
- How have people invested in your ministry?
- In what ways can we add small donations to larger ministry efforts?
Thanks for your comment Gil and thanks for reading!
A wonderful couple we just met in December sent one of their employees to escort my two youngest children to meet them in California so they could escort them to England to meet us after the School of the Heart. From then on they continued to lavish us with a van instead of the rental car that would have worked for them. The drove us to Heathrow and bought our plane tickets and room in Seville. The first night there we ate a $100.00 dollar a plate meal. From there they sent us to Madrid to turn in their rental car so we could stay at Silvia’s home with her family. They did not know why. They just obeyed God and did it. For each saint, our life is a ministry. These near strangers have funded a huge part of our trip/ministry here in Spain! They will never know the return on their investment. Neither will we. Blair
Great story. Thanks for your comment Blair!