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I have the great privilege to work with the youth and adult volunteers at Celebrate Community Church. I look forward to Wednesday nights each week because of the great opportunity that we have to impact the next generation.

As I work with the adult volunteers, I continually am trying to teach and model a relationship-building concept that I call the “30 second and 3 minute conversations.” Over the course of the next couple of Wednesdays, I’m going to completely explain this very important concept and how it has been implemented in our youth ministry.

Allow me to explain the thinking behind the 30-second and 3-minute conversation concept. Celebrate Youth has anywhere between 200 and 250 youth that attend each week. We have about 25-50 adult volunteers each week. You can see the problem already.

In order for each youth to be personally greeted and engaged, it’s absolutely imperative that our adult volunteers are extremely intentional about our conversations with the youth.

The adults are simply unable to engage in long conversations with each youth on Wednesday Nights, so we’ve put into practice the 30 second and 3 minute conversation concept.

In a nutshell, here is the concept:

When each youth walks into the church, they are greeted and engaged with at least one 30-second conversation. This 30-second conversation is designed to be an open-ended conversation with the youth. The adults ask questions like, “How is your week going?” or “How has your summer been?” or “What have you been doing for fun lately?” The questions are designed to let the youth talk about themselves and give the adults the opportunity to learn about the youth.

The 3-minute conversation is essentially taking the time to learn one story from the youth. The conversation may be longer or shorter than 3-minutes and that’s okay. The intent is to learn one story so that our adults can begin developing a relationship with our youth.

The final piece of this concept is this. If during the course of the 30-second and the 3-minute conversations the adult discovers that a longer conversation needs to take place, the next step is to invite and engage the youth in a Coke or Coffee date sometime later in the week. This allows the adult to continue to engage the other youth that are attending and allows the youth to be valued outside of the Wednesday Night worship experience.

This is the first stage of the 30-second and 3-minute conversation concept. If your adult volunteers can grasp this concept, then I believe meaningful relationships between the adults and youth can be developed. I’ll write more about this concept next Wednesday!

What do you think about the 30-second and 3-minute conversation concept? Would this work in your youth ministry?