Youth Workin' It

Consultancy and Resources for Youth Workers and Organizations Worldwide

How To Create A Youth Registration Form

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Youth registration form templateA couple of weeks ago, we showed you how to create a youth group permission slip – this week, we’re going to cover how to create a youth registration form, as well as giving you a free template you can use.

To clarify the difference between the two types of forms, the permission slip is for when you plan special events, trips or activities, whereas the registration form is a form that’s to be completed when the young person first joins your youth group or project.

Each youth group will have different requirements as to what information is collected from parents/guardians, but here is a list of details that every registration form will usually need to have included:

  • First & last name of youth
  • DOB
  • Address
  • Email address
  • Phone number
  • Parent/guardian name
  • Relationship to youth
  • Email address
  • Cell phone number
  • Home phone number
  • Other important information (e.g. medical info, allergies, special needs, etc)
  • Parent/guardian signature

Here are some other details that you may wish to collect on the form:

If you just need a basic form requiring information from the first bullet list, please feel free to download and use this free youth registration form template.

Question: What other information do you ask for on the youth registration forms you use for your youth group or project? We’d love to hear in the comments below.

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Family Movie Night And Communication Session

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Being Elmo youth work sessionWe’ve previously talked about how you, as a youth worker, can foster relationship between the youth you work with and their parents.

One way to do this is by holding a family movie night followed by a communication session between parents and their youth. There are many movies that might work depending on what you’re trying to achieve through the session. However, for this post I’m going to recommend you start with ‘Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey’ which is about Kevin Clash – the voice and puppeteer of Elmo from Seasame Street.

Despite the film being about puppets – and a 3 1/2 year old puppet at that – it’s not a film designed for small children. It’s a documentary about Kevin’s early life and the experiences that led him to be a part of one of the most loved and critically-acclaimed children’s shows of all time.

It shares how Kevin grew up with very supportive parents, along with the dreams he accomplished as a result of those early beginnings. It also shares about the other adults in Kevin’s life who took chances on his dreams and gave him the tools and the connections he needed to achieve his goal of being a Muppeteer on Seasame Street.

Use this movie to foster communication between the youth and their parents about their goals and dreams and how they feel their relationship is developing. It may be challenging for some parents and their children to open up, so make sure you that you’re on hand to help facilitate any quiet parent/youth pairs.

Before The Session

  • Make sure you effectively communicate the details of the event to your parents and youth with enough time for them to participate
  • Check if you need to get a movie license before showing the film or order the Educational DVD which includes an audience license
  • Decide if you want to provide food (including what type) and/or if you’d like to also have this meal be a fundraising opportunity for your youth work program.

At The Session

  • Eat (if applicable)
  • Watch the film
  • Break out into parent and youth pairs for a time of discussion about the film. You may want to provide communication information and activities before starting the session to get everyone more comfortable with the process of communicating, as this may be new for some parents and youth.
  • You and your volunteers should move around the room and help facilitate discussions between parents and youth. Don’t jump in and answer on their behalf, but help ask further questions if a pair is feeling stuck.
  • Encourage both youth and parents to be really honest with themselves and each other about their behavior and their feelings. This will only work if everyone is willing to check their ego at the door to discuss some hard truths about how they behave and interact with each other.

Possible Discussion Questions

(P) Questions to parents posed by you or the youth (Y) Questions to youth posed by you or their parents

  • (P) Kevin cut up his father’s coat for his first puppet. How do you feel you would have responded? (Y) How do you feel your parents would have responded? (Both) If your answer was different from your parent’s/child’s, what examples do you have that back up these feelings?
  • (Y) What is one thing that you feel as passionately about as Kevin did about pupeteering? (P) What is one thing you see that your child has a talent for?
  • (Y) What is one thing you’ve tried to do to make that dream a reality? (P) Kevin’s mom picked up the phone and called Kermitt Love for Kevin. What is one thing you have done or can do to help your child make their dream a reality?
  • (P) Kevin missed out on a lot of his own child’s life while ‘Being Elmo’. Do you feel you are spending enough time with your youth while they are still at home? How would you feel if your child wrote you a letter like Kevin’s did? (Y) If you could write a letter to your parents about how much time they spend with you, what would it say? Do you feel like you get enough time (or got enough when you were younger) with your parent(s)? (Both) If your answer was ‘no’, what is one thing that you can do to spend more time together?
  • (Y) Which adults can you identify as dream squishers and dream enablers in your life? Which of these categories do you think your parent(s) fall into and why? (P) How do you feel about being identified as a dream squisher or enabler? What is one thing you can do to keep improving your enabling or reducing your squishing tendancies?
  • (Both) What is one thing you will remember most about this film and this evening and why?

Question: What do you think of holding parent and youth communication sessions? Have you done it before? Were they successful – why or why not? We’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments below.

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How To Create A Youth Group Permission Slip

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Youth group permission slips
Get the green light from parents for special trips and activities

If you’re organizing a youth retreat, lock-in or some other kind of trip, you’ll need to create a youth group permission slip. This should then be completed by the parent or guardian of each young person who’s taking part in the activity or trip.

This completed youth group permission slip gives you, as the name suggests, permission to take their child on the trip and provides you with any important information that you’ll need.

The extensiveness of information gathered on the permission slip will vary depending on what you have planned – if you’re taking young people away for the weekend on a youth retreat, you’ll need more information than if you were to take them ice-skating.

There are three steps to creating a youth group permission slip:

1) Youth information

Here are 12 pieces of information you may need about each young person

  • Young person’s name
  • Date of birth
  • Address
  • Parent’s name
  • Phone number for parent(s)
  • Other emergency contact name and phone number
  • Medical information (e.g. any medications they’re on, allergies, whether they have epilepsy, etc)
  • Dietary requirements (vegetarian, gluten free, lactose intolerant, etc)
  • Health insurance company they’re covered with
  • Policy number
  • Family physician
  • Family physician phone number

This list covers important information you need to know, but there’s another element you need on the youth group permission slip……..

2) Parental Permission

At the bottom of the slip, include some further wording such as the following:

I give permission for my child to take part in (whatever the activity or trip is) and agree that the leadership team (or youth work organization) will not be held responsible for any injuries or illnesses that my child sustains during the (activity or trip).

I hereby authorize an adult leader of the (activity or trip), as an agent of myself, to provide routine health care (including over-the-counter medication such as ibuprofen), administer prescribed medications and seek emergency medical treatment, if deemed necessary by said adult leader.

In the event that I cannot be contacted in an emergency, I authorize the physician or hospital selected by the leader to provide treatment, including hospitalization, for my child.

3) Signature

Finally, the permission slip needs to have a section at the bottom that the parent signs, states their name and provides the date they did this.

If you’re planning a youth retreat, we have a youth retreat permission slip template to download (along with more than a dozen other documents) with a copy of our book. Find out more about How To Plan A Youth Retreat or buy from Amazon using the link to the right.

Question: What other information do you include on a youth group permission slip? Share your ideas in the comments below.

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5 Top Tips For Safe Youth Trips

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Safe youth trips
Dave took safety seriously when it came to putting up the tent

When you’re planning a youth trip, the safety of your young people is of utmost importance. You can’t guarantee that there will never be any problems when organizing off-site activities, but there are a number of things you can do to help mitigate risk.

Here are Youth Workin’ It’s 5 Top Tips For Safe Youth Trips:

1) Perform A Risk Assessment

If you’re planning a trip to the beach, a hike in the mountains or any number of other activities, there are different hazards that you’ll need to be aware of. Performing a risk assessment will help you identify those hazards and put in place any necessary precautions.

Check out our guide on how to do a risk assessment – this includes a free and downloadable risk assessment template for you to use.

2) Take photos

No matter what kind of youth trip you’re organizing, there’s always the possibility that a young person could go wandering off by themselves and be separated from your group.

Before you go on the trip, we recommend taking photos of all the young people with your cellphone. That way if someone does get lost, you can easily show the police, theme park staff or whoever a picture of the missing person.

3) Get Permission Slips

If you’re organizing any kind of activity that’s different to what you normally do at your youth group or youth project – especially if it’s off-site – ensure that you have parents sign a permission slip for the activity. That way you’re covered if someone gets hurt or anything else happens.

These slips should also have space for any necessary medical information about the young people. If you want to organize a safe youth trip, you’ll need to be aware of some of the following things:

  • Do they have any allergies?
  • Do they have epilepsy?
  • Are they on any medication?
  • Are they diabetic?

4) Collate Contact Information

Having the right contact details for everybody is vital, especially in the case of a medical emergency on the youth trip. Here are a few safeguards to put in place:

  • If youth have cellphones with them, save their numbers in your phone or make a note of them
  • Provide parents with contact details for someone in charge. This doesn’t necessarily have to be you – it could be a central contact point for somebody at your organization who can relay any messages on to you or vice versa
  • If you do have a central contact point other than yourself, make sure that person has all necessary phone numbers as well

5) Provide Leadership Packs

If you’re planning a youth trip, it’s unlikely that you’ll be the only leader going. You should therefore put together packs for all your leaders/volunteers with the following information:

  • Any information from the risk assessment that they should be explicitly aware of, along with any precautions they should take
  • If you’ll be splitting into separate groups, provide photos of the young people they’re in charge of (or have them take photos on their own cell phone)
  • Any important health information relating to the young people. If splitting into groups, you only need to provide information for the young people they’ll have with them
  • Details of who they should contact in an emergency, along with their phone numbers
  • Details of a meeting point in case you get separated

Following all 5 of these safety tips will minimize risk and keep you and your young people safe, helping all of you to enjoy whatever you have planned for your youth trip.

Question: What other tips would you give to have a safe youth trip? Share your ideas in the comments below.

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Who Should ‘Train Up A Child’?

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Train up a child Divided movieI recently had the documentary Divided brought to my attention. I know, I’m so far behind it all since MarkO was talking about it last summer.

The main purpose of the documentary, using a study done by the Barna Group, was to show that age-segregated ministry (i.e. youth and children’s ministry) was unbiblical. While I don’t agree with the premise – that youth ministry is ‘unbiblical’ simply because it isn’t found in the Bible – it raised some interesting questions for the way in which we ‘do’ youth ministry, particularly with respect to parental involvement in the education process of our youth.

Like the other critiques alongside MarkO’s, I agree that the film is very biased and has an obvious agenda. I also don’t care for the filmmaker’s use of a lot of emotive language throughout like ‘damaging, destructive, danger’, all playing on the fear experienced regularly by parents and in our wider culture.

Fear is endemic in our culture. The media plays on these fears because it hooks people in and causes them to keep turning on the TV or the radio for answers. I definitely would have preferred the documentary to use facts and personal experiences, rather than relying on ‘fear of the alternative’ to guide their views.

The filmmaker only showed one side of the argument. He doesn’t have any real discourse between the two sides. He just shared the one side and set it up that you either believe this or you’re not on God’s side because the Bible says ‘(insert interpretation here)’ and their personal opinion is the definitive word on the subject.

That’s not to say there isn’t absolute truth to be found in the Word of God without room for interpretation on many subjects, but I don’t believe that’s the case on this issue. I have a big issue with this practice, not just within this documentary but in life in general, and especially when it’s a ‘skill’ we pass on to the youth in our care. We can easily teach that one side is right (ours), the other side is wrong (anything else that differs from our view) and we’re unwilling to explore the tension in between the two viewpoints by asking questions and seeking answers, even if they aren’t the answers we want to hear.

The importance of differing viewpoints

When I moved to England, I had a long and painful process of deconstructing and reconstructing my worldview. I’ve received some criticism for straying from my traditional, Southern Baptist theological upbringing (as have many others I know who grew up in the same environment), whereas I see it as an opportunity to get to God’s heart and not just accept what I was taught growing up.

I only saw things one way – the way I’d been taught – from an American middle-class / working-class cultural context. During the time I lived in England I had to decide in my Christian walk, what is truth, not just what is American.

It was really hard and a process that I’m still working through. Filtering information as it comes to me. We often hold the Bereans up as the example for how we need to research what we’re taught in scripture, and yet we only tend to research that which supports our point – at least that has been my experience.

Even in this subject, my notes while watching the documentary, Stephen’s thoughts as I shared about what the documentary covered, even before watching it, and even hearing what our friends had to say, we’ve all tried to defend why our side is the right one. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Maybe there’s a different way that is an amalgamation of the two sides.

I’m really passionate about everyone, and particularly young people, taking the time to think what they believe about something, not just taking others’ word for it and I think that’s reflected in this documentary. They are sharing only one side and we are quick to defend the other.

The ‘Biblicalness’ of Youth Ministry

As far as youth ministry being biblical or not, I think that there are a lot of things that are cultural to the Bible and cultural to us now. The Bible talks about head-coverings for women, etc. and many don’t encourage or practice this now.

There are also a myraid of topics not covered in the Bible and we have to best determine God’s direction for that in our life with what we have from His Word. I don’t think God is okay with anything that causes harm to our children and youth, but I also don’t think that percentages of children and youth dropping out of church creates the direct link between age-segregated youth ministry and ‘long term damage’ as the film suggests.

I don’t see anything in the scripture that says, ‘yes, separate your children out for ministry’. I think there is something to be said for including youth and children in the teaching / work of the entire church. I feel like many churches find a good balance in this by sending home the worksheets for parents about what the children learned and talked about. This does work off the assumption though that parents are reading the scriptures and know about the story enough to sit down and have a conversation with their children about it, thereby ‘training them in the way they should go’.

Unfortunately, many parents are not in this place, spiritually, educationally or physically and therefore there’s an important gap that the church needs to find a way to fill. I would suggest that this needs to be in the form of ‘parenting’ classes, maybe something around the idea of parents taking lessons not only on reading the scriptures, but how to teach those principles to their children.

My experience is that parents often feel ill-equipped. They don’t know how to make a crying baby stop, they don’t know how to handle tantrums in toddlers, they don’t know how to explain death and sex to small children, they don’t know how to talk about puberty, peer relationships and drugs with 9-13 year olds. They don’t know how to provide boundaries and teach independence to youth as they reach adulthood.

The church could provide such a valuable minstry to parents by helping provide some of those answers in the form of experienced educators coming in and teaching. We’re so quick to only want to teach our children in church about Daniel and the Lion’s Den and Jesus feeding the 5,000 that we miss the opportunity to support healthy family and childhood development through other topics, discussions and lessons. In our current generation, there are a lot of adults who need to be ‘trained up in the way they should go’ so that they can in turn teach their children.

The documentary goes into the fact that this generation is looking for answers, honesty and authenticity. I do have to agree with one point made by one of the interviewees that authenticity is often ‘just being us’ rather than about authenticity being about truth. The church, and youth ministry in particular that is trying so desperately to get the youth through the door – especially skeptical youth that have access to any kind of information they want just by googling it – is in danger of just being a place to come and be entertained. They can be afraid of losing the ‘butts on seats’ that they need to keep the value for money for their salary and justify their ministry. This does our youth a great disservice, as in many cases youth pastors are their only connection with the Word of God and it therefore needs to be communicated in a way that is transformational.

Youth and children’s ministry would be better served by partnering more with parents and I don’t mean just trying to get them to volunteer more. But it will be a long painful process, just like the one I experienced when moving abroad, to ‘undo’ the socially and culturally inbuilt emphasis on the youth pastor and Sunday School providing the biblical teaching for the children and youth.

Youth ministry plays an important function in allowing youth a place to be and something positive to be involved with, which is really important. But it also needs to be a safe place to explore issues, ideas and questions, both with each other, with the youth pastor and with their parents.

It might take more youth pastors sitting down with parents and youth to facilitate conversations. Youth pastors often have a natural rapport with youth that allows them the platform to speak into a young person’s life, particularly because they aren’t responsible for the discipline of a youth at home. Youth pastors can take this rapport and use it to strengthen the family unit, rather than break it down.

Dialogical Youth Ministry

Paulo Friere is one of my favorite authors on the topic of education, because he does speak to the way in which we educate children and youth, rather than on the age-specificity of it. He calls what we currently use in most schools as a ‘banking system’ of education: we put information in and expect information out on tests and quizzes, or in the case of youth ministry, in real life situations.

We input scripture memory and stories and expect youth to just regurgitate that when they’re faced with a hard choice. However, Friere explores the idea of ‘dialogical education’, of asking questions and discussing the answers. Teachers and students having a dialogue, and THIS in my opinion is very biblical.

Jesus didn’t answer close ended questions with close ended answers. He reframed the question and created dialogue. He answered questions with questions. This created mutual respect between him and his questioner, not just ‘my way or the highway’ kind of answers. However, he spoke with authority that amazed everyone who heard and they knew that what they were hearing was truth.

I think our youth ministries would do better to work on a more dialogical footing rather than game, music, 20 minute banking session on biblical principle, music, prayer which is the concept of most youth and children’s ministries today. Small groups do serve as a very good place for this kind of educational method.

Conclusion

I think the main thing I came away with after watching Undivided, is that simply because it’s not found it the Bible, I wouldn’t say that modern youth ministry is ‘unbiblical’. However, there are ways it can be improved to better meet the needs of youth, children and families in the context of the Godly family and church body as a whole.

Youth ministry has an opportunity to improve and better meet the changing needs of youth culture in an information age. One way to do this might be to improve dialogue between youth pastors, youth and parents on a variety of subjects previously considered taboo. Barna also recently released another study about the importance that some youth pastors place on emphasizing a healthy family relationship which youth pastors might find interesting.

Question: How can youth ministry improve to help youth develop a long-term relationship with God that goes beyond just attending youth group? We’d love to hear all your ideas in the comments below.

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