We felt like we were stuck in a rut. We had our usual weekly youth meetings, which are a must; and we always try to provide some special trips during the year, such as a winter skiing retreat to Lake Placid or a summer Christian music festival. Still, we felt like our youth were not connecting, not becoming the cohesive group about which we always had dreamed. Many were not growing spiritually, and our trips had become just fun trips to them.

We wanted to provide a deeper Christian experience for our youth. We felt God leading us to give our group real hands-on service experiences—such as a mission trip; but mission trips take a lot of advanced planning and are expensive. We’re a relatively small church and have to be sensitive about the cost of any activity. We decided to stay at home, which substantially reduced the cost; at the same time it showed our teens that God’s work is all around us, right in our community. We thought this would give our kids a taste of a service or missions experience from which they, and we, could build.

How We Served at Home
We designed our first “Teen Work & Witness Week.” We devoted three days to service: One day was for community service; one for ministering to those in substance abuse and recovery; the third for showing love to senior citizens. The service themes had projects associated with them. Community service included picking up trash along a busy highway on a 90-plus-degree day. For those in substance abuse and recovery, we painted an inner-city homeless shelter and invited speakers from Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous to speak. (They had amazing stories and really connected with the teens.) We showed love to our senior citizens by making them lunch (sandwiches, pasta salad, chips, cookies), delivering them to their homes and having a brief prayer with them.

We added a few desperately needed church projects to fill in the gaps. The local church projects included rebuilding some picnic tables, weeding the gardens and cleaning out the storage garage.

Those of us on the planning committee agreed none of the activities would last more than three hours. Our experiences with youth groups told us two to three hours was about the limit of their attention span—and ours, too. We decided to camp out at the church. We were hoping this would build community and bonds among our group, which it did. The adults in the group were not wild about “camping out” so long, but it was worth it. It separated us from our normal lives, and we really pulled together.

We made and ate our meals together. The teens were asked to help—and they did! We always were hungry. We started the day with morning devotionals immediately following breakfast. Afterward, we began working on our projects.

Sitting around bonfires, we conducted team-building activities and played games in the evenings. (“Sardines” was a favorite game—a reverse hide-and-seek where everyone separately seeks the hider and crams into the hiding place when they find him or her until everyone is there.) We did other things, too, such as tie-dying shirts and watching a movie. (We watched The Bucket List, thinking this movie would challenge the kids concerning life and priorities.)

One of the surprises, and great blessings, of the week was finding the teens would pull the adults aside to talk and share their lives and feelings. However, we found we had to be patient, attentive and available; the times they chose to talk often were very late at night and came by surprise.

We invited some excellent musician friends to lead us in worship. The church secretary kept the general church community informed of what was happening and made sure the congregation knew they were invited to the worship services. In the course of the three nights, the number of people joining us in the evening just for the worship services increased threefold.

We were blessed to have had this opportunity with our youth group. We believe major steps were taken in connecting our youth with the community, to each other and with God. His presence was felt during our event, and we saw Him move during this service experiment. The teens truly demonstrated God’s love through their work. Incredibly, we even saw them smile during the hard work. Those of us who had the privilege of hanging out with the kids and talking with them during those late, late nights (with very little sleep) know without a doubt God moved in all our lives, especially the teens’.

We think anyone with a passion to reach out to youth need only provide simple opportunities like this event. Keep your eyes open and look for ideas that are available in your community. It doesn’t need to be expensive to be a powerful, Spirit-filled event. Just use a little elbow grease and a bunch of borrowed tents!