I am not a bigot or a sexist. I believe that God created males and females equally. Both teenage men and women are important and need to be discipled.
BUT, how your teenage males go is how your group will go. Hands down!
God has created men to be leaders (Ephesians 5). This leadership model starts becoming defined as teenagers reach puberty. This is when the awareness in the differences between sexes becomes apparent and obvious between teenagers. While albeit many times immaturely done teenage males start displaying and experimenting with these leadership roles and qualities. (This can be done through wrestling/horsing around, being overly vocal, flirting, etc.)
The hidden key to youth ministry is to channel and harness this energy. If you get the males in your group to 'buy in' toward your vision than the whole group will move in that direction.
In today's youth ministries to have more teenage boys than girls in your group is abnormal. That has not been the case for me. Within my entire youth ministry career my groups have had at least an equal amount of teenage boys or slightly more compared to the girls in our group.
How do I do it? Here's some ways in which you can attract and motivate young men within your youth groups:
1. Play competitive games (never play 'girly' games): Boys are attracted to competitive, athletic, and physical games so play these games often. In general, the teenage girls in your group will enjoy playing these games because it's cool to mix it up with the guys. On the flip side, for a teenage boy to do something girly it is embarrassing and uncool.
2. Focus on the 'character' boys in your youth group. In every youth group there is always at least one boy or a group of boys that are loud and boisterous. In many cases, they use their leadership to attract attention on themselves instead of on God. These are the boys to go after and win over. If you can win them over the group will follow them. Just a hint, to win them over you must gain their respect and challenge them. Otherwise, they will only create problems for you!
3. Have good men adult leaders. Boys follow men not religion. If you want the teenage boys in your group to grow up into Godly men they must have Godly male examples. Your youth ministry is only as good as the adults that are in it!
4. Have challenges! Teenagers loved to be challenged, but especially the young men. Challenge them with numeric goals in reaching their friends for a particular event. Challenge them to raise a specific amount of money to a para-church organization. Challenge them to lead. Challenge them!
5. Invest and do manly things with them! For example, I love fishing and will take a small group of young men out on a boat to fish and talk about life when I can. Young men love these type of outdoor together activities.
If the boys in your group are on fire for God so will the girls. If the girls in your group are on fire for God it's possible that your boys aren't. Don't put the cart before the horse. Go after the males! In order to guarantee holistic youth group growth and cohesion it starts with the teenage men!
Do you agree with this? What was your youth group experience? Did you have more girls than boys? I'd like to do future research on this so your input is valuable.
I love this concept! I have found these things to be true even in both small and large youth groups. It often happens that if there is not a strong male youth leader, the boys will leave and the girls will stay because they are content to have the relational aspect of youth group, where as boys need more of the wild, crazy, provide space for them to grow and lead kind of arena. I believe wholeheartedly that we can and should pour into the young men in youth groups and encourage them to begin developing into the leaders God has designed them to be. Great post! Though I do wonder how you capture and keep the attention of boys while also pouring into girls? : ) Thanks for the post!
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