There are a lot of wonderful things about youth ministry: free pizza; unclaimed lost-and-found items (I haven’t bought a towel in years); all-expense-paid trips to some of the finest retreat centers in the country (with slogans such as “No one does creaky bunk beds like us—we’re the creakiest!”) But one of the most wonderful is the yearly repetition of events.
You’ve got your New Year’s Eve party—or for some, God bless you, the New Year’s Eve lock-in—followed quickly by the Super Bowl party, the winter retreat, the mission trip fundraisers, the senior banquet, the mission trip, summer camp and so on. While this kind of familiarity can sometimes breed contempt, for the most part, students love these things and look forward to them year after year. Done correctly, our big events can provide the perfect environment for God to take students to greater spiritual depth.
Our goal should be to make these events better, not just replicate them year after year. Along with successes naturally come mistakes. You’ve got to be able to learn from your mistakes, not simply repeat them.
If you’re like me, you’ll be convinced that you’ll never forget all of the things you’ll do differently next time; but there are so many things in a year that will make you forget. Taking the time to record them now will save you the frustration of trying to remember them later.
Gather the Data
Seeking event feedback from your entire group of students is a must. With all of the other things for which you’ll be responsible, find a leader to be in charge of making sure this happens. Ask him or her to rate the food, the small groups, the talks, the facilities and so on, on a scale of 1 to 5—lame to awesome. Ask them their most and least favorite parts of the event. You also can include questions to determine their interest in finding out more about small groups or in meeting with someone to talk more about a relationship with God.
If so, ask for their names, and make sure you or another leader actually follows up. Once you’ve gotten all of the evaluations in, tabulate the results, summarize the key points and bring it with you to a leaders’ meeting.
After-Action Report Summary
After you’ve gathered the data from your evaluations, meet with your adult and/or student leaders and get their feedback. What worked? What didn’t? How could we have done things better? What new things did we do this year that we liked? Write it all down, then summarize it into some bullet points. This is the beginning of your After-Action Report. AARs are often used in the military world to provide a summary after a battle. Similarly, the youth group AAR provides a summary, plus recommendations on how to make next year’s event better.
What to Include
Don’t list every comment, but be detailed. Next year, you may not remember what you were referring to by, “Bob’s idea ruled.” Be as specific as you can with information, such as: reservation deadlines for T-shirts, buses and camps; contact information for companies worked with (so you don’t have to look them up each year); all of the costs (so they can’t sneak a rate increase past you). Also, put a copy of last year’s evaluation as the final page of your AAR, so that it’s handy and ready to go for next year.
Your AAR will contain everything you need to know when you plan this event next year. Put one in a file for this year’s event, and put one in a new file for next year. Likely, you’ll forget that you ever performed such a task, and when next year rolls around and you reach for your files, it’ll be just like finding money in your pocket: “Hey! Where did this come from? Yes!” Incidentally, if you don’t have a file cabinet or files, buy those, too.
The Next Time
At the end of next year’s trip, have a copy of the previous year’s AAR handy. See if you actually followed last year’s suggestions, decide whether your new ideas worked better than your old ones, and include that data in the new AAR. Because we always should strive to reach a place where our ministries could run even if we dropped dead tomorrow, all of this information in one organized location greatly will help someone else, in case you aren’t around the next time.
For those card-carrying members of the National Association of Procrastinators (maybe I’ll join next month), it’ll be a battle to make this happen; but just look at it as the price you pay for your marvelously varied towel collection.
