Even if you’re personally committed to building a Gospel Advancing youth ministry, you need a core group of students on board. So how do you go about getting your teens excited about sharing their faith with those God has placed in their lives? Here are three key steps you can take to nudge your students farther down the faith-sharing road:
1. Remind your students they’re a walking, talking outreach.
Your believing students are Christ’s ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:11-21). Whether they know it or not, whether they want to be or not, they are. They represent Him to their unbelieving friends. Challenge them to consider whether they’re being a good representative of Jesus. Help them understand both the importance of their role and the urgency of the Gospel.
Many teens have a hands-off attitude when it comes to engaging others on a spiritual level, because they see it as inappropriate or intrusive. But you can help them see that evangelism is actually an urgent search-and-rescue operation. It’s about reaching into others’ lives with Jesus’s grace and truth and rescuing them from a life without hope or purpose and an eternity separated from God.
God has purposefully placed your students in their circle of influence to share His love and the Gospel. Whether they realize it or not, their peers need Jesus. At the core of every human is a gaping hole that can be temporarily filled with stuff, sports, or sin, but only a relationship with Jesus can truly fill it. Teens need to understand that they can help their peers fill that unquenchable need for God by sharing the Gospel.
2. Teach your students to bring up God with unbelieving friends.
You’re the coach. Teach them the skills to have spiritual conversations with friends who would never attend youth group. Show them how to move ordinary conversations toward the Gospel. Here are a few examples of how to do this:
Try This! ❯
This week, coach your students on how to transition a conversation about the tough stuff of life into a deeper conversation about Jesus.
- Hurt feelings. Teens’ lives are full of challenges, which means hurt feelings often come up. Here’s a natural segue to a deeper conversation: “When I’m hurting, one of the things I do is pray. It helps me talk things through with God. Do you feel like you can talk to God about stuff like this?”
- Relationship troubles. When a friend opens up about relationship struggles, students could say: “Relationships can be tough, but the one I can always count on is my relationship with God. Did you know God wants a personal relationship with you?”
- Tragedy or loss. Whether it’s a school shooting, a natural disaster, or the death of a loved one, teens are grappling with grief. Coach students to use thought-provoking questions to guide conversations toward God, with questions such as: “What do you think happens after we die?” or “Do you believe in Heaven?”
3. Equip your students to share the Gospel in a clear and compelling way.
Ultimately, the point of a spiritual conversation is to lead to the message of the Gospel. All of your believing students should be able to clearly explain the Good News. The G.O.S.P.E.L acrostic is a great tool to help them concisely share the key points of Jesus’s message of grace.
The acrostic is not intended to be a script that’s read, but rather, to provide the basic building blocks of the message of salvation. Help your students understand that the key points should be woven into a conversation in a way that’s relevant and meaningful for the situation.
With passion, prayer, and a little preparation, your students can make a difference for Jesus! Utilize our events and free resources to help get your students excited about sharing their faith.
