Reflecting on the Year’s Children’s and Youth Ministries

As we quickly come to the completion of another school year, it’s a good time to look back and evaluate our ministry experience with children and youth. One way to do this would be to gather your ministry teams together and talk through the following questions:

• Was the Bible central in all of our teaching?
• Was God the main focus of every lesson?
• Was the Gospel proclaimed?
• Was Jesus made much of in our classroom, and did we feel His abiding presence from week to week?
• What evidences of grace have we seen God work in the lives of the children and youth in our classroom?
• How has God caused me to personally grow this year as I have taught and led these students?
• Have the students seen the love of Jesus through my demeanor, words, and actions?
• Did I spend time in faithful prayer for myself, the other teachers, and my students?
• What has been the greatest joy I’ve experienced this year in ministering to these students? Have I shared that joy with others for their benefit and God’s praise?
• Have we established good lines of communication with the parents?
• What has been my biggest challenge this year? Are there steps that I (and others) can take to help overcome this challenge?
• What would I have wanted to do differently? Why?
• Is there anything that we would want to communicate to the leadership?

I have been involved in children’s and youth ministry for more than 25 years, and I can honestly say that no two years are alike. Every year brings new mercies, joys, challenges, and even some regrets. Taking “inventory” helps me to reflect back and thank God for what He has graciously done, and it also causes me to humbly acknowledge my weaknesses so that I might call on Him to replenish my soul. It also can serve as a time of encouraging one another as a team, working to problem solve, and providing the leadership with important feedback for future planning and training. What’s a wonderful way to end this discussion time with your ministry team? Have a time of praise and prayer to the Lord using Ephesians 3:14-21 as a guide:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

²⁰Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, ²¹to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (ESV)