Offering Students Rest in Your Youth Ministry
Rest has been an increasingly popular topic of discussion in recent years for ministry leaders. As has been written elsewhere, we first need to look at ourselves and consider whether we are leading from a place of restedness: are we operating as if we must earn rest, or operating from the rest that God provides freely? We first need to apply the Biblical priority of rest to ourselves as leaders.
The longer I’ve spent in youth ministry, though, the more I’ve also seen that students are increasingly in need of healthy teaching and practices in the area of rest. More and more, I am seeing students who are absolutely exhausted physically, emotionally, and mentally. They’re getting less sleep and feeling more internal and external pressures on their lives. So while we build healthy attitudes and rhythms for rest for ourselves as leaders, we can also turn to consider how we might disciple students in their beliefs and practices around rest. To that end, I’d encourage you to think through how you teach your students about rest and how you offer them rest through your ministry.
Teaching Students about Rest
When teaching students about rest, I first want to broaden their understanding of what rest is. Usually when I bring up the topic, students tend to think I’m just referring to things like sleeping or vegging out on the couch with YouTube. Biblically, rest is so much broader and better than that.
In the Scriptures, rest is associated with things like freedom, celebration, trust, salvation, and relationship (see, for example, Isaiah 30:15, Matthew 11:28, Exodus 31:16-17, Deuteronomy 5:15). It has a purpose - it renews us! Even God chose to rest on the seventh day and was refreshed when he did so (Exodus 31:17). It’s not just about physical rest but encompasses our whole self - the mental, spiritual, emotional, social, etc.
Rest is ceasing from work and striving in all areas of life, for the purpose of refreshment and renewal. It includes things like leisure, play, feasting, contemplation, and prayer – not just “doing nothing.”
One of my favorite parts of talking about rest with students is watching them understand this broader picture. They begin to see that the things they love - like reading, sports, baking, ballet, writing, journaling, or playing with their pets - are all part of rest and are a way to honor God. Suddenly God’s command to rest becomes a much more exciting command to obey!
Secondly, when teaching students about rest, I want to help them identify what is restful for them and what is draining for them. For one student, reading may be restful but another may find it the last thing they want to do. Resting well doesn’t mean we all abide by a list of things we can and cannot do when we’re supposed to be resting.
We are all wired differently, and I want students to know and feel the freedom to embrace the reality of what is uniquely refreshing and draining to them. That way, they know what activities they should engage in when they are resting and what activities to avoid.
Providing Rest in Your Ministry
Beyond teaching students about rest, consider also the ways that you provide or offer rest in your ministry programs and activities. Ask yourself, how can I increase my students’ experience of the joy and rest of God through the ministry? Here are some examples of how you might do that:
Foster an environment where students experience rest from the pressures of life
Students spend much of their lives striving to build their college resumes and maintain their social status. Provide a relational environment where they feel free to rest from this striving, where they don’t have to keep up appearances and pretend they are someone they are not. Be a safe space for students to let their guard down and stop trying to earn their way to the good life.
Provide spaces of rest in your programs through fun
Be serious about providing opportunities for students to have fun and be playful. Let students get a taste of the new heavens and the new earth, where fun and laughter will be characteristic of our experience and the streets will be full of boys and girls playing (Zechariah 8:5). Obviously, youth ministry is about more than game time, but embrace the time for fellowship and games for whatever extent you can during your programs and don’t feel bad about the fact that students look forward to these parts of your programs. That’s good inasmuch as it means they’re embracing God’s good design for rest!
As you do this, keep in mind what is fun and restful for all your students. Perhaps some of them prefer athletic games and others prefer something more laid back. Make sure there’s a variety for students so that you offer options for everyone, not just for students who have one set of preferences.
Provide space for other elements of rest in your ministry
Think back on all the things that rest can include, such as celebration, feasting, prayer, quiet contemplation, and reflection. Are there ways you could incorporate these practices into your regular ministry activities? This could be as simple as offering 60 seconds for silent prayer and reflection at the end of a lesson, turning a night into an intentional celebration of what God has been doing in students’ lives, or any number of other things.
Avoid exhausting your students
When considering what you’re offering in your student ministry, take an honest look at your ministry and assess how you might be contributing to the exhaustion and busyness in students’ lives. Do you run so many programs that you’re asking too much of their schedules? Do you plan events or overnights in ways that encourage students to get very little sleep? As students increasingly tend to have too much on their plates and get too little sleep, I increasingly want to encourage rest and not add to these problems.
Don’t be in a rush
Your ministry programs will feel much more restful for students when they’re not rushed. I don’t know about you, but when the schedule for a night is packed and I feel like every second counts, I am much more likely to rush students. As a result, students will likely feel less at ease during the program.
To the extent you can, try to run your programs in a way that you won’t feel rushed. Through my years in student ministry, there have been times when we’ve purposely made changes to how much time we spent in games or small groups in order to not consistently feel like we were rushing discussions or hurrying students along.
It’s hard to enjoy things when we’re in such a rush all the time. Students thrive when we create space for unhurried fellowship.