So, it’s a current trend that involves food, friends, fun, and possibly a theme—sounds to me like a great idea for a youth fall outreach event! When I did this event with my students in the past, they absolutely loved it. It was simple to pull together, intuitive for volunteers to understand, and easy for students to invite friends. Here’s how to really make it shine:

1. Promote your event well. 

Don’t underestimate the importance of this step. Communicate in multiple ways (email, text, social media, verbally) and with great clarity and enthusiasm. Make sure your students know this is a great opportunity to bring their friends (the word friend is even in the title) and that they can expect there to be fun, food, testimonies, and a clear Gospel message.

Create an easy-to-share invitation (digital or physical) with the details for the night (don’t forget the address and time) for your students to give out to their friends. You can make the event a potluck and include information on the invite about what food you want the participants to bring.

2. Pray for the night.

In addition to praying for this event yourself, enlist volunteers and students to pray, and suggest that they set an alarm as a reminder. Ask them to pray for the details to come together, for the students who will be giving testimonies, and for friends who don’t have a relationship with Jesus to come to the event and be open to the Gospel. Spend time in prayer for salvations and for the students to be clear and brave in their invitations.

3. Prepare a few students to deliver their testimonies.

Prayerfully pick a few students whom you think could confidently deliver their testimony at the event and invite them to do so. If they need help outlining their story, encourage them to use the Before—Then—After resource and help them walk through the steps of writing out their testimony. Listen to them deliver it to see if there’s an opportunity to bring in the idea of gratitude, specifically gratitude for Jesus’s sacrifice.

4. Plan the details of your night. 

• Make a plan for how you want to greet new attendees and capture their contact information.

• Create the schedule for the event, and be sure to give enough time for the testimonies, a Gospel message, and prayer.

• Write a very brief devotional that focuses on the power of gratitude, the Gospel, how all good things come from God, and this verse:

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever. Psalm 107:1

• Ask a student with a strong faith if they could pray for the meal.

• Plan a fun game or ask a volunteer to do so. Here are a few great ones we recommend. Several of these games could be easily modified to fit a Friendsgiving theme. For example, Charades Replay could have categories related to fall and Thanksgiving.

5. Pull off a great event and follow up.

Execute the night in a fun and casual atmosphere but with great intention. Help your students relax and enjoy the feast that each of them has contributed to. Of course, you’re likely to get a lot of bags of chips, but you may be surprised at the effort some students put in to what they bring. I was amazed that several of my students prepared something special from their family’s favorite foods and at the pride it gave them to contribute to the celebration. Enjoy learning more about your students’ families and interests as they share these food items with your group.

Don’t forget to end the night with an invitation to join you for your next gathering, and definitely don’t forget to follow up after the event. This could mean you personally contact the guests or ask the students who brought their friends to have a follow-up conversation that involves talking about the Gospel.

All throughout the Bible, we see examples of God working in powerful ways through feasts and celebrations. Let’s copy that and see how God reaches students this fall.

The post How to Gospelize a Friendsgiving appeared first on Dare 2 Share.

Here are seven creative ideas to ensure students are a priority this year:

1. Enlist “student ministry ambassadors.”

Coach your students in the weeks before Easter to come early to Easter morning services and focus on finding and befriending new teenagers. Equip them with an invitational postcard that has meeting times and locations for your youth group and a cool gift to give—stickers, coffee gift cards, hats, T-shirts, or travel mugs would all work well. Make sure you train them in detail on how to start the conversation, exchange names, give the gift, and personally invite the guest to a future youth event or gathering.

2. Convince your senior pastor to have a student up front.

Nothing shows guests who attend Easter morning services that your church values youth more than having one on stage, so work with your senior pastor to brainstorm a way to make that happen—maybe a student could make an announcement or lead a prayer. Or perhaps they could be part of an Easter skit, choir, worship team, or video testimony.  

3. Encourage teens to serve in strategic places.

Work with students, parents, and church leaders to encourage student participation on the greeting team, food team, coffee team, picture booth team, or other area where they would have opportunities to interact with new teens. Encourage your youth to be on the lookout for and talk with other teens and invite them to youth group.

4. Promote a follow-up event for students.

Plan a seeker-friendly event the week following Easter, and create some great promotional materials to make it clear to visiting teenagers that they’re invited and it will be worth their time to come. Ask your senior pastor if you could promote it during the main service in some fashion, and have students and leaders pass out postcards with the details.

5. Do a “cross experience” just before Easter.

There are many ways to approach this unique youth group night. Typically, you’d use a large wooden cross as a visual and allow students some time to reflect on the sacrifice Christ gave us, how they personally have sinned, and a clear Gospel message that helps them understand their redemption. One idea is to play worship music, have them write their individual sin on a piece of paper, fold it in half, and pin it to the cross. Then follow up with a short teaching time and group discussion, using any combination of Scriptures that explain the Gospel and describe Jesus’s experience from Palm Sunday through the resurrection. To make it easier on yourself, use the free Walk to the Cross curriculum.

6. Create a next-level Easter egg hunt just for teens.

Whether it’s Easter morning or a different time and day, consider doing an over-the-top hunt for eggs, with some creative twists. Here are a few ideas you could use:

• Use giant eggs, and fill them with unique things (bendy Jesus, Starbucks gift card, Legos, shoestrings, earphones, batteries, scrunchies, etc.).
• Boil eggs, and hide a combination of boiled eggs, raw eggs, and plastic eggs. After all the eggs have been found, play a game of egg roulette.
• Get donations from congregation members and local businesses for gift cards, cool stickers, gifts, and large candy as prizes or things to put in the eggs.
• Put some written dares inside some of the eggs. One of them could be related to sharing the G.O.S.P.E.L.
• Make it a competition:
  • Hide a golden egg that gives the finder a special prize or advantage.
  • Have an “egg race”: Give a bonus prize to the player who collects the most eggs in a set amount of time.
  • Have teens hunt for eggs in teams, and the team with the most at the end wins.
• Do the hunt in a public place, and incorporate surprise challenges along the way, such as having students do a dance randomly or share the Gospel with a stranger using the Life in 6 Words app.

Be creative in your planning, and do lots of promotion beforehand to get your students excited.

7. Raise the expectation.

Traditionally, at many churches, students are expected to serve in kids’ ministry on Easter. And while that’s good, I suggest you pray about the above ideas and discern what the best approach for students in your setting is. If your students volunteer in kids’ ministry, I encourage you to have a meeting with the leader to discuss raising the bar for how they utilize students. For example, instead of students just being a bathroom monitor they could be challenged to prepare and teach the lesson.

Regardless if you do one, two, or more of the above ideas, make sure to do something intentional this year to build relationships with teenagers, point them to Jesus, and show them they’re a valuable part of the church. Easter is for everyone, and it’s important that every student knows that!

The post 7 Creative Ways to Engage Teens This Easter appeared first on Dare 2 Share.

Over time, our group has figured out some strategies that work well. To illustrate, I’ll walk you through what we do leading up to Dare 2 Share LIVE. We follow three main steps to make it a powerful and well-attended experience.

1. Initiate excitement.
2. Invite others.
3. Increase ownership.

Here’s how it looks:

INITIATE EXCITEMENT

At least a month before Dare 2 Share LIVE, I start casting the vision for the event to our students. Then I promote it again every week leading up to it, using a variety of methods. A few examples:

• Plan fun games and activities to accompany the event and talk them up to students.
• Communicate that it will be meaningful and fun.
• Promise free food (we use Chick-fil-A, of course).
• Give away custom-made T-shirts or swag.
• Offer a snack bar at the event for them to buy inexpensive snacks and drinks. 
• Promote the event extensively to parents as well.
• Promote heavily within your church body.
• Put together and consistently show a recap video from the previous year’s LIVE event (or a similar-style event).
• Post the video and other D2S LIVE graphics (available on the portal after you sign up) on social media.
• Here’s an example of a hype video we made to fire up our group. We also offer it to other groups in the area that will be joining us.

INVITE OTHERS

Early on, I challenge students to consider which friends they can invite to D2S LIVE, and I coach them to make sure they give their friends an accurate picture of what to expect, including the fun aspects. I encourage you to consider also inviting your senior pastor, other staff members, elders, potential future volunteers, or members of the young adult community at your church.

Several weeks before the event, I also invite a number of local churches in my community to join us, and I‘ve received a great response. Now others are hearing about it and want to join us too. In your community, you might also want to invite campus organizations to participate with you. You could even consider asking some of these partners to own a portion of the event, such as providing the worship team, planning games, or organizing the outreach. This year, I even created a website to make it easier to communicate. Check it out here.

INCREASE OWNERSHIP

The next major aspect to think through is building ownership with your group. One way I do that is by asking students to prep decorations and signs before the event. I make a rough plan and gather materials, and they outline, trace, and paint large sign boards that we hang around the building.

The week of D2S LIVE, I invite students to set up and decorate our building for it—including chalk art outside, signs, etc., and I sweeten the deal by offering free Chick-fil-A for those who help. At the end of the event, we have students sign the large boards and hang them in our student area as a reminder of all that God did in and through our lives during the event.

You can also give away ownership as you prepare your outreach. Recruit students, parents, or partner ministries who are passionate about organizing or food preparation to help if you are hosting a block party. For those who don’t mind some manual labor, you can delegate tasks such as delivering canned food to a food bank, if that’s what your outreach entails. 

WORTH IT

These steps we take for D2S LIVE can work for just about any event you’re planning. They might sound like a lot of work—and they are, but the payoff comes when students buy into your vision and even help make it happen. As Colossians 3:23 says:

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters…

If we work at preparing and promoting our events as if working for the Lord, we’ll have the privilege of seeing even more lives transformed by the power of the Gospel—and that’s worth it!

The post Youth Ministry Events: How to Get Students Hyped appeared first on Dare 2 Share.

To help bring this Gospel Advancing, cause-centric culture into your youth group, we’ve got eight fall outreach ideas to get teens serving others and sharing their faith. The true impact of these events comes from focusing on the Gospel. Without training your students to engage in Gospel conversations with their friends who attend, these events are just fun activities without any eternal impact.

8 Fall Youth Outreach Ideas

1. Host a fall festival.

Get students on the front lines of reaching your neighborhood by hosting a fall festival at your church. This can be a church-wide event or hosted by just your youth group. Either way, the intention is to invite your community to a fun event where they are seen and loved by people who love Jesus.

You don’t need to break the bank for this. There are a lot of inexpensive activities and games you can do. Here are some activity ideas for a fall festival:

• Cornhole
• Face painting 
• Ring toss onto a pumpkin
• Pumpkin painting
• Relay races
• A hayride

With an event like this, it’s crucial to involve students in the planning and prep work. It’s one thing for them to volunteer at a church event, but it’s another entirely for them to feel ownership and urgency for the impact of this fall festival.

Pray with your youth group regularly in the weeks leading up to the event. Train them to share the Gospel, practice Gospel conversations, and position the entire event as a night to share God’s love with your neighbors.

2. Plan a hot chocolate social.

Ice cream social season might be over, but sweet treats and quality time with your students are still within reach. As it gets colder, host a “hot chocolate social” at your church or even one of your leaders’ homes. Here’s how you can host this event:

Step 1: Schedule the event and make flyers, social media graphics, etc., that students can use to invite their friends.

Step 2: Remind students that this is an outreach event to share the Gospel. If you haven’t already, train them on the G.O.S.P.E.L. acrostic (what we call Life in 6 Words), which lays out a simple, clear message of salvation they can share with their friends. Make sure they all download the Life in 6 Words app to keep track of their conversations, too.

Step 3: Buy hot chocolate bar supplies. They make all kinds of hot chocolate flavors these days, and you can include marshmallows, whipped cream, syrups, sprinkles—the works.

Step 4: Have a great night with your students, and share the Gospel message! While you have the attention of your students and their friends, give a brief talk on what the point of this gathering is: to learn about God’s love for them and grow in friendship with each other.

3. Schedule a fall picnic.

For a successful fall picnic, you just need a good space for teens to gather and lots of fall-themed food. This is like the fall festival but on a smaller scale. The intention is for students to invite their unsaved friends so they can talk with them about Jesus in a low-pressure environment.

To get Gospel conversations rolling, you or even a student could give a brief talk and Gospel message. Try posing deeper questions for students to discuss in small groups after the talk. You and other leaders could join some of the groups and help guide conversations. Either way, this is incredible practice for students to articulate their faith and a great time for new teens to get to know God.

4. Collect canned goods.

Most of us gain a few pounds from all the food we eatat Thanksgiving and Christmas, but 1 in 8 Americans have been food insecure in recent years. Food is one of the most immediate and easiest needs your youth group can help meet this fall. And when people’s needs are met, their hearts are more open to hearing about the God, who is the ultimate provider.

Thankfully, there are food banks throughout the country you can partner with for this. To execute this event, choose a day to go door-to-door in a local neighborhood, where students can kindly ask for canned goods and share the Gospel.

This can feel a little uncomfortable for even the boldest students, so here’s a script for teens to follow when someone opens the door:

“Hello! We’re your neighbors from [Church Name], and we’re doing a canned food drive for the holidays. Do you by any chance have any food you’d be willing to donate?”
*If they say no, follow up with: “No problem! Is there anything we could pray about for you right now before we leave?”
*If they say yes, wait for them to return with the food and then ask the same question about prayer.

Train students beforehand to pivot conversations toward the Gospel, but it’s OK if not every interaction goes there. This event is building students’ boldness, their trust in God, and their heart for the lost and those in need within your community.

5. Volunteer your group at a homeless shelter or community center.

If you want to give students an opportunity to directly interact with people in need, organize a time to volunteer at a homeless shelter, community center, or other local organization where students can serve others.

This is actually a great event for the cooler weather, because many of these organizations need help indoors. Again, students should be prepared to have Gospel conversations with those they meet, but it’s also important to respect the guidelines of the organization you’re working with.

6. Worship around a bonfire.

Bonfires are an ideal opportunity for quality time with your youth group! Host a bonfire worship night for your group to bond over praising God, having intentional conversations, and just having fun. Bring some snacks, blankets, and hot chocolate, and tell your teens to bring their friends.

7. Rake leaves for people in need.

Fall is beautiful—until all the leaves fall . Chances are, there are people in your community, even your own church, who could use the help of some able-bodied teens to clean up their yards.

Remind your teens that this isn’t just any community service project—it’s a chance to tangibly love others and open the door for Gospel conversations (if the people are unsaved). For this fall outreach, start with a list of people in your church who could use some help, pick a Saturday to do it, and then take your students to the homes to bless those who live there.

8. Sign up for Dare 2 Share LIVE.

Last but not least, Dare 2 Share LIVE is a powerful outreach event that students can participate in alongside thousands of other teens across the globe.

One of the main portions of Dare 2 Share LIVE is local outreach. After being trained on the G.O.S.P.E.L. in the morning, every group does an activity of some sort that enables them to start conversations about Jesus. Dare 2 Share LIVE is inspiring, empowering, equipping, and fun for teenagers all across the world, and it’s completely free to join!

Dare 2 Share LIVE 2023 is practically here, so if you’re looking for a last-minute but powerful outreach event for your youth group, make sure to register today!

The post 8 Fall Youth Outreach Ideas to Mobilize Your Students appeared first on Dare 2 Share.

For each of these events, keep in mind that while fun=good, the most important element is sharing the Gospel. The more you bring up the Gospel, the more familiar students become with it and the more opportunities their unsaved friends have to hear it. When you incorporate the Gospel, these five events are tools for a greater purpose—to reach lost teens with Christ’s love and equip believing students to share it.

1. A “Gospelized” Car Wash

Summer is the perfect time for this service opportunity. This idea is featured in our 5 Outreach Ideas for Summer for Youth Ministry e-book, in which real youth pastors share their top outreach-event ideas. This idea came from Virginia youth pastor Josh Weatherspoon. As he explains:

We did an outreach event called the ‘$1 Car Wash.’ As people pulled in to get their car washed, they’d try to give us money up front, to which we’d tell them that we’d get it all settled up after their car was clean. Once clean, we would then have them look their car over, and we would give them $1 (or at least try to). This would lead into a somewhat natural transition based on this simple analogy about grace and God giving us what we didn’t deserve.

To get ready, make a church-wide announcement about the car wash a few weeks beforehand so that people can start inviting their neighbors. You can also take up donations of buckets, sponges, towels, soap, and other supplies for the day of. For more tips about running this Gospelized car wash, check out this blog post.

2. Water-Fight Night

Who doesn’t love a good water fight on a hot day? This summertime favorite is a great chance for students to invite friends to come have a blast and hear the Gospel. This event will take some planning upfront, so here are some tips to prepare:

• Announce the water-fight plans a few weeks in advance so students have time to invite their friends.

• Give instructions on what to bring (appropriate clothing, water guns, etc.).

• Find a place on your church property, or in someone’s backyard, where there’s plenty of space to run around and access to a hose. Make sure it’s an area where the owner doesn’t mind having a slightly muddy mess to deal with afterward.

• If you want to incorporate games, get supplies like water balloons, pool noodles, extra water guns, etc.

FOR MORE GOSPEL-CENTERED EVENT IDEAS FOR THIS SUMMER, CHECK OUT THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO OUTREACH IDEAS FOR YOUR YOUTH GROUP.

3. A Bonfire and S’mores

This classic event is ideal for students to invite unsaved friends to because it’s a welcoming setting where good conversations about God can happen, especially while leaders are around to help answer questions.

Share the Gospel at some point during this event by giving a short message while everyone is gathered around the fire. Also make sure to provide enough s’mores supplies, and maybe bring some yard games for another avenue of fun.

4. Neighborhood Invites

Don’t let your students stay siloed in the youth room this summer! Instead, give them an opportunity to reach your community. If your church is hosting a VBS, a Fourth of July celebration, a church picnic, or other event, get a bunch of flyers and take students into the surrounding neighborhood. Break up your group into smaller teams and assign them a few streets to canvass. The goal is for them to knock on doors, give a friendly invitation to your church’s event, and ask for prayer requests to hopefully spark a Gospel conversation.

Here’s an easy script students can use as they engage with your neighbors:

Hey there, my name is ______ and my friends and I are from _______ Church just down the street. We wanted to come out and meet our neighbors and invite you to come to our event. We’re going to have ______, and we’d love for you to come have some food and a fun time with your family (or give others details of the event). Before we go, is there anything we can pray about for you today?

Here are some other tips for sending students out:

• Give guidelines for engaging strangers, such as: (1) Be respectful and friendly, even if a homeowner is not. (2) Knock or ring the doorbell only once. If there’s no answer, leave the flyer on the door and move to the next house.

• You can pair your event flyers with a small gift, like a bag of microwave popcorn or candy.

• Send at least one leader with every group of students—a 5-to-1 ratio works well.

• Give groups a set time to meet back at the church. Then debrief, and pray for the people your students talked with.

5. Gospelize Your Summer Trip

Camps and missions trips provide ample opportunities to make sure students both hear and share the Gospel. If your camp speaker isn’t sharing the Gospel during the talks, be sure to share it during your group discussion times and invite your students to trust in Christ.

If you’re embarking on a missions trip, be sure to plan a Gospel-sharing element, in addition to any humanitarian work you might do. After all, there’s nothing more humanitarian than helping someone come out of darkness into God’s wonderful light! (1 Peter 2:9)

Or for a fully Gospel-focused event, attend Lead THE Cause, a weeklong, transformational Gospel-training conference that helps teens personally know Jesus’s love and equips them to share it with their friends. For more information, join the Lead THE Cause insider list.

A Fun, Faith-Building Summer

We hope these youth event ideas will help you plan a summer that’s exciting and spiritually significant for your teens!

What other youth group events do you like to plan for your church in the summer? Share your best ideas with our community of youth leaders on Facebook!

The post 5 High-Impact Summer Youth Events appeared first on Dare 2 Share.

Dare 2 Share LIVE 2021 is going to be another powerful event where teens learn how to share their faith and get the chance to serve others in Jesus’ name. It’s a free, simulcast event streamed live from Denver, Colorado that can be experienced anywhere in the world where there’s an internet connection!

You’ll never regret taking steps to inspire your teens to pursue God and training them to reach others with His love. Learn more about how to bring this effective simulcast youth evangelism conference to your church on November 13th, 2021!

The post The Youth Evangelism Conference That Lit Up a Dark Year appeared first on Dare 2 Share.

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Don’t let the fire die in your youth group. Keep the momentum going. Reach out to your city, schools, and neighbors with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You came. You saw lives changed in your group. And you made an eternal impact on a city with the power of the Gospel.

But now what?

WHERE DO YOU GO FROM HERE? HOW DO YOU KEEP UP THE ENERGY AND EXCITEMENT IN YOUR YOUTH GROUP?

the LI6W app

Keep learning and training your teenagers to join THE Cause with a fresh passion for G.O.S.P.E.L. conversations.

Use the FREE Life in 6 Words app to equip your teens to pray, care, and share the Gospel with their friends.

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“I took my best friend to Dare 2 Share in Denver last weekend. Before the conference she had an eating disorder and a self harm addiction. When she was there she experienced God for the first time and was healed of all her addictions and spiritual bondage. She claimed the victory that Jesus won for her. She also had a very serious dairy allergy, if she ate dairy or any sort she would die. During the conference God told me to pray for her.

Afterwards she felt like God was telling her to eat cheese, so she did. Nothing happened! God healed her dairy allergy completely. The enemy was trying to starve her of all happiness and sustenance. God gave her all of that back and then some. She was able to eat full meals of whatever she wanted. Seeing her now after the conference is like seeing a whole other person. You can just feel God on her when you are around her. Thank you for providing a platform for her to experience God and completely change her life.”

Lead THE cause

Bring your students to a one-week intensive leadership training meets urban mission trip for an experience they’ll never forget!

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dare 2 share live

A teen-led movement of Gospel conversations from coast to coast.

Never before have we put on two conference tours in one year, but we are introducing the BRAND NEW D2S tour coming to a city near you: Dare 2 Share LIVE!

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The Live It Up! conference saw more than 34,000 potential Gospel conversations initiated by 17,300 teenagers, along with more than 1,700 youth leaders trained on Gospel Advancing ministry in more than 900 youth ministries.

"The drama is always one of my favorites. This year we had two salvations and one of the young adults rededicated his life to Christ! An 8th grade student that I have really been trying to reach is now on fire and growing in her faith."

JoAnna, Youth Leader

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(leer in español)

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The vast majority of Americans believe in some sort of God, but many see Him as remote, disapproving and unengaged in their own lives. Check out “Danielle the Deist” for practical tips on how to tell others that Jesus desperately loves them!

View the webpage.

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