In my nine years of youth ministry, I have read and heard repeatedly about the limitations of students, specifically middle schoolers, when it comes to issues of attention spans and what they can understand. It’s been explained to me how middle schoolers can handle only a maximum of 10- 15-minute talks or we will bore and loose them. I’ve been told by a parent that an eighth grade daughter wasn’t intellectually capable of handling a talk in the 30-minute range. Yes, her own parent said that.
To back that view up, I have witnessed many times a speaker or leader wrestle through a 15-minute talk because kids kept talking and giggling and being disruptive. I have seen an attempted small-group discussion fail miserably because all the kids wanted to do was go back to their game of Call of Duty.
On the other hand and despite the recurring theme, I have seen the opposite of this aspect, as well. I have watched a group of middle school students have such an engaged and deep conversation that the group pushes past the hour set aside and parents begin impatiently looking into the room. I have watched students take notes on a 45-minute talk, then have a great conversation afterward. I have watched kids give their lives to Christ at camp once the speaker wrapped up after a 30-minute sermon.
So, what’s the appropriate length of time to engage students, and why does it seem to work in one setting and not another? Based on my experience, I have concluded the answer isn’t so much about our students and their limitations, but has to do with how we treat them and what kind of environment we set.
Almost every time I have seen a leader struggle through a 15-minute talk, it has been in settings where the environment is built around games, entertainment and pleading with kids to just give 10 minutes of their time to listen.
My first thought is that this kind of setting builds and builds the energy in a room while we expect kids to settle down. Sometimes this works; it’s easier with older students. More often than not, I’d say it’s unrealistic to expect kids to go hard for an hour, then just settle down. Our bodies are not wired that way. They are wired either to continue or increase in energy or eventually crash once they are tired. So, we’re leading kids either to disruptive behavior or them falling asleep.
Second, I would argue that simply by pleading with students “just give me 10 minutes” communicates to them that it’s really all they can handle — and that they don’t really want to hear what we have to say. So, they act accordingly. They try to give 10 minutes; but they know they are just kids with too much energy (and Attention Deficit Disorder) so they barely make it through the time.
These are things we have to pay attention to because I think sometimes we set ourselves up, as well as our kids, by creating an environment that tells them, “You can’t handle the truth.”
During the times when students are engaged for longer periods of time, I have seen the environment and settings set up the opposite of what we typically do as youth ministers. The meetings may start with games, but then are designed to diminish in energy, getting the students to a point where they are winding down before it’s actually time for the talk.
Also, there is no apology or plea for time. Instead, the speaker dives into the material. The kids are treated as mature students who have the capabilities to handle things bigger than themselves. More often than not, I have watched students rise to the occasion. They handle it every day for six hours at school. Why can’t they handle that in our churches and ministries? With creative teaching and treating them as the young adults they are instead of as children who need to be handled with care, our students actually can go much farther than we think.
