After decades of youth ministry, I’m beginning to better understand why it’s important that I pay as much attention to how the Lord wants me to work as I do to the what—the outcomes He wants me to pursue.

When I do good work my way, I’m tempted to share in the curtain call of applause after the show, but the stage of glory was created for the One True God alone. My imprecise obedience sends up a different credit screen, implying that my modifications to the Father’s clear instructions earn me recognition as a co-director of His work.

They do not. If anything, our improvisations on God’s grand designs brand us as incorrigibles and diminish our testimony of His lordship in our lives. Even Moses was dispatched to a very public penalty box when he stick-slapped the rock instead of speaking to it as he was told. Before they entered the Promised Land, God’s chosen people needed to know who was in charge; Moses’ creativity was out of line.

Why should we worry about the foundations of youth ministry? Here’s what’s at stake.

Forget your job description for a few minutes and set aside your annual goals and weekly to-do list. If we take our kingdom assignment seriously, we realize the change we seek to bring about in young people is of the supernatural variety. Unless we cooperate with the Spirit of God, our best efforts to develop lifelong followers of Jesus will fall short.

Jesus told His disciples they would do even greater works than He did. What about us? How do we tap that power for our lives and ministries? Ten years ago, a team of us in Youth for Christ determined this question required us to engage ancient practices rather than create new ones. Our innovative programs should submit to—and not overshadow—timeless biblical principles.

After some lovely haggling and prayer, we landed on five essential practices that we believe are universally necessary in ministry. Their elevated emphasis in YFC is helping us become more faithful, attentive and responsive to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of young people. I invite you to apply these principles in your ministry.

1) Prayer
This is such a familiar truth that its strategic necessity can be neglected in how we accomplish our mission.

We work with kids whose relational world is in shambles. Estranged from God, alienated from their parents and even strained in their friendships, young people need…what? Dr. Phil’s best advice? Or yours? With all due respect, it’s not enough.

The challenges of low self-esteem, sexual confusion, identity formation and deep hurt are beyond human care-giving competencies. Kids need healing in ways too profound for them to articulate. We desperately need God to act in the lives of young people because the goals we seek cannot be accomplished without His transformational power.

Paul’s life reveals that his work of forming Christ’s life in others was advanced significantly through prayer (Galatians 4:19; Ephesians 1:17-19; Ephesians 3:14-19; Colossians 1:24-29—Philippians 2:1-8). Jesus taught the disciples they could not meet the needs of some people without prayer (Mark 9:28-29). Simply put, some breakthroughs in understanding can only be accomplished by God. There is work we need to do on behalf of kids and their families that requires prayer as a first strategy rather than a good supporting idea.

Consider our need to secure more adult mentors to join us with kids. Jesus said the challenge of an under-worked harvest field is met when we “ask the Lord of the harvest” to supply the need for workers (Luke 10:2). Many of us place more faith in our recruitment practices and four-color brochures than bathing our leadership needs in prayer.

I hate the powerlessness I sometimes experience as I move woodenly throughout a day I planned so carefully, oblivious to what God may want to be accomplishing through me in the midst of each task or conversation. What I really need is to move with the precision, pacing and personal renewal that happens when God directs my path. In-the-moment discernment, wisdom and grace are ministry assets I can’t live without; I covet the prayers of others to secure these treasures.

Prayer—and the frequent practice of asking others to pray—ensures that we cultivate childlike faith which depends on God to accomplish what is most important and believes that He alone endows ordinary moments with eternal potential.

2) Love
This active verb is the propelling ingredient to our ministries, moving us from comfortable distances into up-close-and-personal relationships in which the fragrance of Jesus actually invades the atmospheric space of others (Romans 13:8; 2 Corinthians 2:14-16; James 2:5-10; 1 John 3:11-18). By the way, when we live among those for whom we seek God’s renewal, our prayers are infused with specific detail. Love always has been found in the details.

God’s love is a sport of pursuit. It is a transformational powerhouse for all who come into contact with it, especially those—such as teens—who hunger for meaningful relationships. We get the privilege of embodying a love that is undeserved and inescapable (John 3:16; Romans 5:8; Acts 8:31-39). Jesus punctuated His encounter with Zaccheus by reminding those who questioned His actions that He came to “seek and save” the lost (Luke 19:1-9). He wants us to follow His pattern (John 20:21). Catching kids on location at the moment of an immediate need has much greater potential than orchestrating good youth group experiences every Wednesday night.

It’s what we do in their world, not ours, that most reveals the depth of our love for kids. Where do they live and hang out? Schools, athletic events, coffee shops, fast-food places, malls, social networks on the Web…the possibilities are endless. Meeting them on their turf, showing interest in what’s important to them, and discovering their stories is how God’s love can break through to teens.

In the incarnation, Jesus showed up in the flesh and on location with a love that rescues (Philippians 2:5-8). We get to do the same. The challenge beyond taking that initiative is to make sure we help forge a warmly loving home base that Christ’s new followers can live into once they join the family (John 13:34-35). Thoroughly nurturing, the more diverse these love huddles can be—including differences in age, gender, ethnicity, economic backgrounds, musical interests, social status—the more powerfully they point to a supernatural love that smashes barriers and shouts out the glory of God (Acts 2:42-47; Galatians 5:2-15; Ephesians 3:16-19; Philippians 1:9-11; 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12).

3) God’s Word: Teaching and Submitting
As deeply as our society believes in our right to choose the morality that works best, it’s a bodacious notion to assert that there is authoritative truth beyond ourselves that needs to be learned and practiced. This is clear counter-cultural territory.

This upstream swim should not surprise us. Jesus taught that His followers would travel a narrow road and squeeze through a small gate to benefit from the life He offers. He warned of teachers who would lead us away from the ultimate goal of knowing and doing the will of God. He summarized His most famous sermon with a parable to dramatize that while difficulties are a certainty in life, people who build their lives around hearing and practicing Jesus’ words will be able to withstand whatever may come (Matthew 7:13-27). The Bible must be taught—and learned—for obedience, not just knowledge (Matthew 27:20; Mark 7:11-13; Luke 8:11-15; Luke 11:28; John 5:36-40; John 15:1-11; Philippians 3:15-17; 2 Timothy 3:14-17; Hebrews 5:11-14; James 1:22-25; 1 Peter 1:22-25; 2 Peter 1:3-4).

Many of us mistakenly think Bible teaching must be a tedious content dump on half-interested teens. Such a picture is nothing like the picture we get of Jesus as a teacher. He managed to reveal the transformational power of God’s Word in people by making real-life, real-time and real-context connections. When used in this way, the Bible is an irreplaceable force—an essential transformational practice—for shaping students into dedicated followers of Jesus.

Real change is a two-way street. Sometimes the exploration begins when the Bible is opened. Other times, teens infuse their daily lives with meaning and direction after they review their experiences in the light of God’s Word with the personal coaching of the Holy Spirit. Either way, growth happens when young people increase the traffic going back and forth between their experiences and God’s Word. They’ll learn how to do this as we coach them and model our own patterns of submission to biblical truth.

4) Unity
Many youth workers, hired by particular churches or ministry organizations, feel the weight of their first allegiance is to those who sign their paychecks. Understandable…but at some point in eternity’s history, the explanations we offer the Lord for putting our thing ahead of His thing will be exposed for the unacceptable excuses they are.

The one prayer of Jesus that was explicitly targeted toward those of us who live today shows that unity actually reveals or glorifies God in our world (John 17:20-23). When God’s love gathers God’s people into otherwise unexplainable communities, God’s power is released. Nowhere is this power as clearly evidenced as in the days of the early church, when being together was a normal precipitator for unleashing the power of God (Acts 1:12-14; Acts 2:1-4, Acts 2:42-47; Acts 5:12-15). It is safe to say that when we focus on unity our young people will benefit from a powerful force of transformation.

Let’s not mistake youth ministry program unity for the more radical and essential biblical unity. The first makes our group activities run smoothly; the second is the subject of a pile of admonishments and instructions in letters to the early church (1 Corinthians 1:13-15; 1 Corinthians 3:16-17; Ephesians 2:19-22; Ephesians 4:1-6, Ephesians 4:11-16; Colossians 1:15-20; Colossians 2:1-3; Colossians 3:11-17; 3 John 1).

When we don’t practice oneness in our communities, it’s not because we don’t have the skills; it’s because we don’t value forging unity enough to make it a priority. Unity pops up when humble people persist in their love of others so they can serve a common cause (Ephesians 2:1-4).

Unity is far more than a descriptor of internal group health. Working for true unity forces us beyond ourselves in order to practice oneness with our local brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s essential for all of us who want our young people to catch a vision of the kingdom of God and appreciate that they are part of something that’s compelling and worthy of sacrifice—a far more fruitful outcome than might be expected from lesser versions of unity.

5) Modeling for Empowerment
To model a mature faith well requires awareness, intentionality and ever-growing skills built on the reality of non-formal socialization. Very few socialization factors have as much impact on adolescents as does the principle of modeling—a powerful formational force that explains a lot about how we learn and grow.

The bottom line is that kids, as do all of us, need to be shown how to follow Christ. They need to be shown how to pray, love, live together in unity with all believers, and conform their lives to biblical teachings.

Jesus invested in His disciples, and Paul offered himself as an example of faith. Both cases testify to the timelessness of this transformational principle (Mark 3:14; Luke 11:1; 1 Corinthians 11:1; Philippians 1:27-30; Philippians 2:5; Philippians 3:17; Philippians 4:9; 1 Thessalonians 1:4-9; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-12; 1 Peter 2:18-21). While modeling is not the only factor in empowering others, it represents a gravity-like power that is so pervasive it must always be considered in the equation.

Recognizing this reality, those who empower others well ask a diagnostic question about the young people they serve: Who is showing them how to live? This leads to a follow up intervention question: Who is already in their world who can be developed to show them how to live for Christ?

If young people learn by imitation, then we adults who work with youth always must be aware of the impact our own modeling has. We also have to be intentional about developing other leaders who—because of age, ethnicity, gender or interests—will be more effective than we can be.

It’s obviously more complicated than simply showing the way. As Jesus said, “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). This full training is targeted first and foremost at the heart, the place where character resides and from which it is expressed (Proverbs 4:23; Luke 6:45).

Faithfulness in the Essentials
Justin is a young YFC leader who is figuring out how to anchor his ministry in these five essential practices. He sends out an attractive picture-based prayer note each week, alerting a team of supporters to what they can focus on as they intercede.

Recently, this spiritual infrastructure supported him when a tragic suicide hit his school. His prior relationships positioned him to show up wherever kids gathered. He did so as a familiar, welcome and caring friend, ready to love kids who were hurting. A team of willing pray-ers (I was one) was activated to engage with him in the crisis so his ministry might benefit from the Spirit’s leading, wisdom and power.

Sure enough, there were numerous opportunities for him to open the Bible to young people, helping them gain a peace that defies understanding…because it comes from God Himself. Alert to the value of unity, he teamed up well with other adults who were ministering to kids in the community.

Sometimes when life blows up around us, we meet great new friends in the foxhole we’re in together. Justin’s foundation in these essential practices served him well throughout this experience. He was able to demonstrate what it means to put his trust in Jesus while helping him to identify those who were ready for more leadership development because of how they got involved to assist others.

We all want powerful change to take place in kids’ lives. When loving adults, united in their desire to see kids reach their greatest potential in Christ, model prayer and obedience to God’s Word, God’s Spirit moves to bring about supernatural transformation. By faithfully practicing these essentials, we will be well-positioned to be used by God to bring about results that He alone can deliver.