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March 8, 2010 Posted by DC in Blog, GSM, Youth Culture/Student Ministry

10 reasons our Dating/Sex series worked

Just finished our dating/sex series at GSM High School last night and here's a few tips that helped make the series a huge success for us.
  1. Do the series. Don't dodge the topic. Simple.
  2. Do the series for the right reasons. Do the series because you love students enough to want them to know the truth about dating/sex.  Don't do it just because you want attendance to jump, or to push buttons, or for the shock value.
  3. Be honest. If students sniff that you're not being real with them, they'll shut down and assume you don't believe what you're teaching.
  4. Don't beat around the bush. Student gave lots of feedback that they were glad and it was "helpful" that we "went there".  If you're going to bring up the topic, give them something of substance. Truth: most of them already know more than you can ever appropriately share from the platform anyway.
  5. Get good research and a variety of resources to bring diversity to the platform. We can only share what we know, so the more we know the more we can share.
  6. Don't give-in to "humor first". It's great to be funny (and you should be, students love it) but if that's the #1 method for teaching this topic students leave only knowing your jokes, not the Truth that will really help them in this area.
  7. Encourage deeper conversation and processing in small groups. Students need a safe, Godly place to dialog about these things...they're talking about them already so
  8. Awkwardness. I don't really know how...but it helped, haha.  (Got lots of these comment, "like, oh my gosh, like, THAT, like, was the most awkward GSM ever, like, wow, but, like, it was, like, a-mazing!")
  9. Push the envelope. Standard/normal is boring so find ways to change things up.
  10. Think like a high schooler and a shepherd.  Both matter.

I don't want your sex videoHow to engage this 2010 version of teenagers
Tags: GSM, Student Ministry
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