It was nearly 17 years ago, but I can still remember the first youth talk I ever gave. I can’t tell you what I said, but I can tell you exactly how I felt delivering the message:

It was exhilarating.

I delivered the talk exactly how I had witnessed countless others teach students. I opened with a personal story, shared a Scripture passage, and then ended it with a challenging life application. This format worked. Speakers at every major youth event I attended were using the same formula, so I adopted it, as well.

After several years of teaching the same format containing a 20- to 30-minute sermon each Sunday morning, I met with two volunteers who each had backgrounds in education. During these meetings, each individually let me know my teaching formula was not necessarily the most effective for our students. If my goal was for students not just to learn Bible stories, but to engage in the Bible, things needed to be handled a little differently.

Here’s a peek into those meetings and what I learned.

Meeting No. 1

The average attention span is 7 minutes, so why are we making them sit quietly for 30 minutes?

I met with a retired middle school principal. We started our conversation with stories of why we each loved working with this age group. Our conversation turned to our Sunday morning services, and we reflected on how incredible it was to watch them participate in the singing time and games. However, as time went on in the service, it became increasingly hard to keep them focused. This was especially difficult during the teaching time at the end of the service.

I always knew it was something of a battle for my volunteers to keep the kids sitting still during the teaching time. At one point, I tried switching the teaching time to the front of the morning for a season, hoping that would help. No matter where the teaching time was in the service, there were still numerous phone confiscations and rearranging of seats during those 30 minutes. I had seen the same attention issues in other ministries and assumed that such behavior came with the territory when working with students.

My volunteer then told me about studies that have shown the average attention span of a student is 7 to 10 minutes. Because of this, he suggested his teachers switch the way they were teaching every 7 minutes.

They were not to switch the subject, just the way the subject was being taught. If they were lecturing, they would switch to a video. After the video, they would switch to a reading exercise or do a demonstration.

That got me thinking about my formulaic way of teaching. Yes, I occasionally would show a video clip or insert a funny story into my talk, but most of the time it would still be lecture style. If I am giving a 20- to 30-minute talk, and those studies are true, then by the time I get to the life application segment, I potentially have lost the attention of everyone in the room.

Meeting No. 2

How well are we preparing these students to think beyond the youth room walls?

My next meeting was with a volunteer who came from a family of educators. She also loved working with this age group, but not because of their rambunctiousness. She appreciated them because they were beginning to move from concrete thinking to abstract thinking. It was no longer enough for them to settle for listening to Bible stories. They wanted to know the whys behind them. She shared about times she had been in her small group and had witnessed the moment on a student’s face when a lesson clicked—that moment when a student not only knew what the Scripture was about, but also was able to grasp for the first time what it meant to him or her personally.

I completely related to this desire. I prayed regularly that each talk I gave would encourage students to live out their faith boldly. This was why I entered youth ministry in the first place. I wanted to help create space for students to know God on a deeper level.

She then shared about a teaching style her sister had been using in the classroom. It involved creating an environment that allowed students to think critically without relying solely on the teacher for the answers. The strategy is called cooperative learning, and it is practiced in schools throughout the country. Using this technique, teachers set up a variety of formats for learning and allow students to work together to figure out the answers to various problems. The result is that students not only learn the answers but also learn from each other the steps needed to arrive at the answers. That became invaluable if they were in a different environment and faced a similar problem. They would have the critical thinking skills needed to come to a correct conclusion.

Her concern for me was that my current teaching style didn’t offer much room for critical thinking. Students were just being told what was in the Bible. If the student was not in a small group, he or she wouldn’t have any real time for discussion or a venue in which to ask questions they had about the Scripture passage being studied. This did not equip the students to take what they had heard on a Sunday morning and use it in their lives outside the service.

What Do I Do Now?

These meetings got my head spinning. These two volunteers had great points and brought up things that were key values of mine, as well. I wanted students to be engaged fully in the morning service. I wanted them to be empowered to think and wrestle with the Bible outside the youth group walls. I desired for their faith to be real and their own.

These conversations forced me to take a very serious look at what I was doing and find a willingness to mix it up rather than adhere to a rigid pattern. The truth is, my talk format had turned into a sacred cow, and it needed to be knocked down.

So, decided the teaching time was not going to be the only teaching time. I intentionally interwove the teaching topic throughout the program. The topic and theme for the morning showed up in all the program elements, cutting down on the amount of setup I needed to provide during my talk. I would give my key verses and morning theme to my worship leader and game leader ahead of time. They would find ways to incorporate those pieces within their elements. The transitions from each element became mini-talking points and ultimately helped create a great segue into discussion time later.

I adapted some of the cooperative learning strategies that schools were using and wove them into my talk. I found several examples online, and after experimenting with a few, I found two that worked really well in our format.

Give One/Take One

This exercise requires each student to be given a sheet of paper and fold it down the middle. After I introduce a topic or read a passage of Scripture, I put several open-ended questions on the screen. Students answer the questions on one side of the paper, and then they have five minutes to get answers from their peers around them. They have to give one answer to a peer and then write down one answer from a peer. After a few minutes, I bring them back to the large group and present the questions to the group. Students can respond with an answer they gave or one they received. This not only broke up the lecture portion of the talk, but also allowed students to get up and talk to each other about the topics. It allowed the lecture feel more like a two-way dialogue within the group.

Round Robin Billboards

Before the service begins, I put up multiple posters around the room, each with a different question related to the Scripture and topic for the morning. I take the number of posters I have and divide students into that many groups. I assign each group to a different poster and give the groups a couple minutes to write as many answers to their one poster question as possible. The groups then rotate to another poster. On this poster, they’re not allowed to add answers, but are allowed to put stars next to the answers they agree with. After they finish, I have the groups come back together as a large group. I was able to walk around to the different boards, address the starred answers, and reference them by saying, “Many of you agreed that…” It’s a great way to see where my group’s coming from and is fun to move around the room while teaching. I personally love this idea so much I requested permanent chalk boards on my youth room walls.

Today…

I look back on those two meetings and am so grateful those volunteers felt compelled to share their wisdom and experience. They didn’t try to fix me by giving me a new formula. Instead, they taught me to hold teaching styles and formats more loosely. In a way, it has shifted how I see my role in the room. I am no longer the one up front giving students my knowledge. I am now more of a guide, walking alongside them on this journey. This approach requires more thought and can be more time-consuming, but I consider it well worth it if, as a result, space is created for students to draw closer to God.