The Four Spiritual Habits for Kids

The Four Spiritual Habits for Kids
The Four Spiritual Habits for Kids

 

If you’re an adult (or even a “professional” Christian), then the idea of spiritual habits is probably pretty familiar to you. Spiritual disciplines, quiet time, devotions… whatever you call it, you’ve probably established a few rhythms in your life to help you grow spiritually.

Or, at least, you’re working on it.

Maybe you…

  • Start your day with a quiet time.
  • Follow a Bible reading plan.
  • Listen to worship music while you drive.
  • Subscribe to sermon podcasts.
  • Go to church, attend a small group, or serve somewhere.

If you’ve been following Jesus for a while, you’ve probably figured out a few ways to grow spiritually. Since you’re a grown-up, you’ve had a little time to figure out this whole “spiritual growth” thing.

The kids in your ministry, on the other hand, aren’t grown-ups, so they might need a little help from you to figure out how, exactly, to grow spiritually.

So, what should spiritual growth look like for kids?
And how can you help them develop spiritual habits?

When I (Elle) oversaw small groups in the middle school ministry at my church, this question came up pretty often—like the time I was meeting with one of my brand new small group leaders, Peter. Peter was a college-aged guy, brand new to leading small groups, and was really, really, excited to start serving. During our first orientation meeting, while I was showing him the ropes of being a small group leader, he stopped me and asked this question:

“Okay, but… how do I help my small group grow spiritually? What’s my goal?”

It was a pretty good question. And since Jesus always answered questions by asking another question (but mostly because I needed a second to figure out what to say next) I asked Peter, “Well, what do you think your goal should be?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe my goal could be to get every guy in my small group to read the Bible seven times a week?”

Considering Peter was leading a small group of sixth graders, that was a pretty big goal. And when I say “big,” I actually mean “definitely not going to happen.” So, although I kind of loved that he was dreaming big, I said, “No, getting twenty eleven-year-olds to read the Bible seven days a week was maybe not the right goal.”

But it was a great question.

How do we help kids grow spiritually? What should our goals be?

Before we can answer that question, we should probably start by agreeing on how anyone grows spiritually.

This is where spiritual habits come in. Spiritual habits are the decisions, behaviors, and rhythms that help us grow spiritually over time. If you’re like most people, the first things that pop into your head when you hear “spiritual habits” are probably…

  • Reading the Bible.
  • Praying.
  • Going to church.

Sure, reading, praying, and going to church are important spiritual habits. But they’re not the only spiritual habits that matter.

So what is the complete, final, definitive list of spiritual habits? Well, there isn’t one. Not officially. You can organize, categorize, and define spiritual habits in a number of ways, but feel free to steal our list if you think it’s helpful. It’s a list of the four spiritual habits we use inside Grow Curriculum to help kids, teenagers, and their leaders grow spiritually. Here they are …

1. SPEND TIME WITH GOD

This is an obvious one, right? It’s so obvious, in fact, that sometimes it’s the only spiritual habit we can name. After all, isn’t “growing spiritually” synonymous with “spending time with God”? Well, not exactly. Spending time with God is a big part of growing spiritually, but it’s not the whole picture. That’s why it’s just the first of four spiritual habits.

Spending time with God may not be the only spiritual habit, but it’s still a pretty important one. After all, if kids are ever going to make their faith their own, they’ve got to start spending time with God on their own. It means opening the Bible on their own, having conversations with God on their own, and discovering how they best connect with God through worship on their own.

HOW CAN WE HELP KIDS SPEND TIME WITH GOD?

I’m so glad you asked. Here are a few ideas …

  • Give them a Bible. Preferably one with words they can understand… and written in ways they would actually say. Personally, I love the NLT, the NIV, The Message, and The Voice translations. They’re all written in language that’s easy to read, easy to understand, and easy to remember.
  • Help them memorize Scripture. Your kids might be good at memorizing movie quotes, song lyrics, and whatever viral quote is happening now, but memorizing Scripture probably doesn’t come quite as naturally. That’s why it’s so helpful for us to give kids simple, practical tools for memorizing Scripture. That might look like creating songs, mixing up the words, or making it a competition.
  • Teach them to pray. If you’ve been talking to God for a while, it’s easy to forget how strange prayer can seem to someone who hasn’t been talking to God for an entire lifetime. No matter their age, kids need us to model conversations with God and teach them how to have conversations of their own. So, regularly pray out loud with your group, teach them about prayer, and give them opportunities to talk to God alongside you. You might even give them simple strategies to pray, like my four favorite prayer prompts: Please, Thanks, Sorry, Wow.
  • Help them discover their spiritual wiring. Gary Thomas’ book Sacred Pathways is one of the best resources I’ve found for helping people identify the unique ways they are wired to connect with God. Some of your kids will connect with God by going outside. Others will love to worship through music, or dance, or the arts. Some will love to learn, some will love to serve, and some will love to sit quietly with God in solitude. If we want to help our groups grow spiritually, it’s so important that we teach them to connect with God in the many ways they are uniquely wired to connect with God—not just in the ways we prefer to connect.

So, spending time with God is the first of four spiritual habits. This habit is all about developing a personal friendship with God. Because, just like any friendship, we can only grow closer if we’re spending time together. But if we want to grow spiritually, spending time with God isn’t the only spiritual habit we need to develop.

2. SPEND TIME WITH OTHERS

Yep, engaging in healthy community can—and should—be a spiritual habit we help our kids develop. But “healthy community” doesn’t just mean hanging out with Christians. This spiritual habit is about growing in Christlike relationships with… well, everyone. Christians and non-Christians, too. Because sometimes, it won’t be another church potluck or Bible study with our fellow Christians that will grow us the most. It might be a friendship, an investment, or a challenging conversation with a non-Christian that makes the biggest difference in our faith.

We see this most clearly in Jesus, of course. When he discipled his followers, he didn’t disciple them in one-on-one conversations in the privacy of their homes or the nearest Starbucks. He discipled them in real life, in the context of relationships that were real, and messy, and challenging, and imperfect.

In Jesus’ ministry, it was often his disciples’ interactions with each other, or with people who didn’t follow him, that prompted some of his most significant teaching opportunities.

SO HOW CAN WE HELP KIDS SPEND TIME WITH OTHERS?

Here are a few ideas…

  • Create consistent small groups. If you know anything about me, you know that I’m pretty convinced small groups are the answer to just about everything. But when it comes to helping kids develop community … well, small groups are a pretty obvious first step. In small groups, kids are given opportunities to grow closer to their peers, to an adult who cares about them, and grow in community with people who believe like they do and with people who don’t.
  • Offer opportunities for connection. I get it—when it comes to your weekly environment, you’ve got a lot to do and probably not enough time to do it. When you’ve got to pull off worship and small groups and announcements and your sermon, letting kids “hang out” might seem like a waste of time. But it’s not. It’s really not. If spending time with others is a spiritual habit, then creating opportunities for kids to connect with each other—and with the adults who lead them—should be a priority. So, whether it’s before your service, after your service, during the week, or at your events, prioritize relationships. Create space, through unstructured time, for kids to hang out, play, talk, and connect.
  • Make your environments visitor-friendly. Sure, we all say we want visitors to show up to our programs. We all tell our groups to bring their friends to church, but if we’re not working behind the scenes to create environments that are welcoming to and mindful of, first-time guests… well, we can’t really expect those guests to show up (or come back). If you’re not sure if your environments are visitor-friendly, ask your group this question: “Is there anything about our church that makes you not want to invite your friends?”
  • Encourage kids to engage in their communities. Sometimes, we make the mistake of believing our community is the only community that can help kids grow spiritually. But that’s not true, is it? We might be ministry leaders, but we don’t own the market when it comes to healthy communities. In fact, if the only community our groups see as “healthy” community are the ones our churches offer, then we’ve actually done them a pretty big disservice. If we really want our groups to grow spiritually, we should probably think of creative ways to help them build relationships (with both Christians and non-Christians) in places outside our church—like their schools, their neighborhoods, and their sports teams.

So, we’ve got to help our kids practice the habit of spending time with others, both inside the walls of our churches and outside those walls, too. Because when we engage in community, listen to different perspectives, and process our faith with others, we get a bigger picture of who God is… and that helps us grow.

3. SHARE YOUR STORY

Our kids need to learn how to talk about God. But this spiritual habit is way bigger than just knowing how to share the story of your salvation—although that’s part of it. Sharing your story is the spiritual habit of making faith a regular, everyday, go-to topic of conversation in our lives.

It’s about discovering God in every aspect of your story…

Your past, your present, and your future –
The good times, the bad times, and the in-between times –
And then sharing what you’ve found with other people.

Because when we talk about God and God’s place in our story (or, more accurately, our place in God’s story), it helps us believe, understand, and take ownership of our own faith. That’s why sharing our stories is such an important part of growing spiritually.

SO HOW CAN WE HELP KIDS SHARE THEIR STORIES?

Here are a few ideas…

  • Create consistent small groups. I know, I know, I already said this. But I also said that small groups are the answer to pretty much everything. So, yes, they’re an answer to helping kids develop healthy community, but they’re also an answer for helping kids have healthy conversations about their faith. When small groups are done well, they become safe places for kids to process their beliefs, their questions, and their experiences.
  • Share your stories. When you teach, be intentional about sharing stories from your own life and faith journey. In fact, you probably want to tell one personal story in every message you ever teach. When you share your stories and how God used those stories to help you grow spiritually, you give your group a model for what it looks like to find God in their stories. And when you share your stories of failure, disappointment, or mistakes, you let them know that God can work even in the toughest situations—and that they’re not alone.
  • Invite kids and volunteers to share their stories. Your stories, dear ministry leader, are really important, but they’re not the only stories that matter. When you invite kids, and volunteers to share their stories regularly (maybe on stage, in a video, or on social media), you help your group connect with even more people and even more stories.
  • Create space for hard questions. If you want kids to get comfortable having conversations about their faith, it is absolutely essential that you help them have healthy conversations about their doubts, fears, and questions. The truth is, your kids have (or will have) doubts. So, if you want them to have a healthy faith, help them learn to talk about those things openly.

Help your kids share their stories because they’ll grow spiritually when they make it a habit of talking about their faith.

4. USE YOUR GIFTS

Here’s the fourth and final spiritual habit: your group needs to know that God made them unique and special with really specific gifts, talents, passions, and resources. Then, they need to use those gifts to love God, love others, and influence the world around them.

When we use our gifts, we acknowledge that the things we’ve been given weren’t given to us by chance. They were part of God’s design. Using those gifts really can be a spiritual habit because when kids begin to discover who God made them to be, they grow. And when they use their unique identity to make a difference in the world, they serve others and give back to God who made them.

SO HOW CAN WE HELP KIDS USE THEIR GIFTS?

Here are a few ideas…

  • Create opportunities to serve. It’s one thing to tell kids to serve others and to use their gifts. But it’s another thing entirely to actually create opportunities where they do that. Maybe you need to restructure some things in your church so that it’s easier for your groups to serve. Maybe you need to move away from an adult-led worship band so more kids and students can help lead. Maybe you even need to let go of some of your desire for “excellence” in your programming so your group can take ownership and help create your weekly environments. This might look like having them lead a craft, a game, or your memory verse hand motions.
  • Showcase their unique talents. In ministry, we often accidentally communicate that the only way to serve God in ministry is from a platform. Speaking and leading worship are great ways to help kids serve, but they’re not the only gifts they can use to serve God and others. Whether it’s art, or science, or baking, or sports, your groups are overflowing with talents. They may just need your help to discover how those talents can be used to love others in new and creative ways.

So those are the four spiritual habits that help kids grow spiritually.

  • Help them spend time with God.
  • Help them spend time with others.
  • Help them share their stories.
  • And help them use their gifts.

But before we wrap up, a few things to remember…

  • Your kids won’t all grow in the same way. God made them unique, after all.
  • They won’t grow at the same pace. They’re all on a unique journey.
  • But they can all grow just a little bit more. You can’t force spiritual growth, but you can help them take one more step toward a faith that’s growing.

And hey, thank you for the investment you’re making in the spiritual growth of the kids in your ministry. I know it’s not always easy. Actually, it’s really hard sometimes. But as you get ready for another day, or another week, or another year of youth ministry, we really hope you remember this: what you are doing is making a difference.

I know that’s hard to remember when the seeds you’ve been planting seem to be taking so long to grow, and you know there’s a pretty good chance you may never even see the end result. But keep going.

-Elle Campbell

The Four Spiritual Habits for Kids
The Four Spiritual Habits for Kids

The Four Spiritual Habits for Teenagers

The Four Spiritual Habits for Teenagers
The Four Spiritual Habits for Teenagers

If you’re an adult (or even a “professional” Christian), then the idea of spiritual habits is probably pretty familiar to you. Spiritual disciplines, quiet time, devotions… whatever you call it, you’ve probably established a few rhythms in your life to help you grow spiritually.

Or, at least, you’re working on it.

Maybe you…

  • Start your day with a quiet time.
  • Follow a Bible reading plan.
  • Listen to worship music while you drive.
  • Subscribe to sermon podcasts.
  • Go to church, attend a small group, or serve somewhere.

If you’ve been following Jesus for a while, you’ve probably figured out a few ways to grow spiritually. Since you’re a grown-up, you’ve had a little time to figure out this whole “spiritual growth” thing.

The teenagers in your ministry, on the other hand, aren’t grown-ups, so they might need a little help from you to figure out how, exactly, to grow spiritually.

So, what should spiritual growth look like for teenagers?
And how can you help them develop spiritual habits?

When I (Elle) oversaw small groups in the middle school ministry at my church, this question came up pretty often—like the time I was meeting with one of my brand new small group leaders, Peter. Peter was a college-aged guy, brand new to leading small groups, and was really, really, excited to start serving. During our first orientation meeting, while I was showing him the ropes of being a small group leader, he stopped me and asked this question:

“Okay, but… how do I help my small group grow spiritually? What’s my goal?”

It was a pretty good question. And since Jesus always answered questions by asking another question (but mostly because I needed a second to figure out what to say next) I asked Peter, “Well, what do you think your goal should be?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe my goal could be to get every guy in my small group to read the Bible seven times a week?”

Considering Peter was leading a small group of sixth graders, that was a pretty big goal. And when I say “big,” I actually mean “definitely not going to happen.” So, although I kind of loved that he was dreaming big, I said, “No, getting twenty eleven-year-olds to read the Bible seven days a week was maybe not the right goal.”

But it was a great question.

How do we help teenagers grow spiritually? What should our goals be?

Before we can answer that question, we should probably start by agreeing on how anyone grows spiritually.

This is where spiritual habits come in. Spiritual habits are the decisions, behaviors, and rhythms that help us grow spiritually over time. If you’re like most people, the first things that pop into your head when you hear “spiritual habits” are probably…

  • Reading the Bible.
  • Praying.
  • Going to church.

Sure, reading, praying, and going to church are important spiritual habits. But they’re not the only spiritual habits that matter.

So what is the complete, final, definitive list of spiritual habits? Well, there isn’t one. Not officially. You can organize, categorize, and define spiritual habits in a number of ways, but feel free to steal our list if you think it’s helpful. It’s a list of the four spiritual habits we use inside Grow Curriculum to help teenagers, and their leaders grow spiritually. Here they are…

1. SPEND TIME WITH GOD

This is an obvious one, right? It’s so obvious, in fact, that sometimes it’s the only spiritual habit we can name. After all, isn’t “growing spiritually” synonymous with “spending time with God”? Well, not exactly. Spending time with God is a big part of growing spiritually, but it’s not the whole picture. That’s why it’s just the first of four spiritual habits.

Spending time with God may not be the only spiritual habit, but it’s still a pretty important one. After all, if teenagers are ever going to make their faith their own, they’ve got to start spending time with God on their own. It means opening the Bible on their own, having conversations with God on their own, and discovering how they best connect with God through worship on their own.

HOW CAN WE HELP TEENAGERS SPEND TIME WITH GOD?

I’m so glad you asked. Here are a few ideas…

  • Give them a Bible. Preferably one with words they can understand… and written in ways they would actually say. Personally, I love the NLT, the NIV, The Message, and The Voice translations. They’re all written in language that’s easy to read, easy to understand, and easy to remember.
  • Help them memorize Scripture. Your students might be good at memorizing movie quotes, song lyrics, and whatever viral quote is happening now, but memorizing Scripture probably doesn’t come quite as naturally. That’s why it’s so helpful for us to give teenagers simple, practical tools for memorizing Scripture. For teenagers, maybe that means starting a texting or social media campaign, creating wallpaper for their phones, or even handing out a good old-fashioned note card.
  • Teach them to pray. If you’ve been talking to God for a while, it’s easy to forget how strange prayer can seem to someone who hasn’t been talking to God for an entire lifetime. No matter their age, teenagers need us to model conversations with God and teach them how to have conversations of their own. So, regularly pray out loud with your group, teach them about prayer, and give them opportunities to talk to God alongside you. You might even give them simple strategies to pray, like my four favorite prayer prompts: Please, Thanks, Sorry, Wow.
  • Help them discover their spiritual wiring. Gary Thomas’ book Sacred Pathways is one of the best resources I’ve found for helping people identify the unique ways they are wired to connect with God. Some of your students will connect with God by going outside. Others will love to worship through music, or dance, or the arts. Some will love to learn, some will love to serve, and some will love to sit quietly with God in solitude. If we want to help our groups grow spiritually, it’s so important that we teach them to connect with God in the many ways they are uniquely wired to connect with God — not just in the ways we prefer to connect.

So, spending time with God is the first of four spiritual habits. This habit is all about developing a personal friendship with God. Because, just like any friendship, we can only grow closer if we’re spending time together. But if we want to grow spiritually, spending time with God isn’t the only spiritual habit we need to develop.

2. SPEND TIME WITH OTHERS

Yep, engaging in healthy community can—and should—be a spiritual habit we help our teenagers develop. But “healthy community” doesn’t just mean hanging out with Christians. This spiritual habit is about growing in Christlike relationships with … well, everyone. Christians and non-Christians, too. Because sometimes, it won’t be another church potluck or Bible study with our fellow Christians that will grow us the most. It might be a friendship, an investment, or a challenging conversation with a non-Christian that makes the biggest difference in our faith.

We see this most clearly in Jesus, of course. When he discipled his followers, he didn’t disciple them in one-on-one conversations in the privacy of their homes or the nearest Starbucks. He discipled them in real life, in the context of relationships that were real, and messy, and challenging, and imperfect.

In Jesus’ ministry, it was often his disciples’ interactions with each other, or with people who didn’t follow him, that prompted some of his most significant teaching opportunities.

SO HOW CAN WE HELP TEENAGERS SPEND TIME WITH OTHERS?

Here are a few ideas …

  • Create consistent small groups. If you know anything about me, you know that I’m pretty convinced small groups are the answer to just about everything. But when it comes to helping teenagers develop community … well, small groups are a pretty obvious first step. In small groups, students are given opportunities to grow closer to their peers, to an adult who cares about them, and grow in community with people who believe like they do and with people who don’t.
  • Offer opportunities for connection. I get it—when it comes to your weekly environment, you’ve got a lot to do and probably not enough time to do it. When you’ve got to pull off worship and small groups and announcements and your sermon, letting students “hang out” might seem like a waste of time. But it’s not. It’s really not. If spending time with others is a spiritual habit, then creating opportunities for teenagers to connect with each other—and with the adults who lead them—should be a priority. So, whether it’s before your service, after your service, during the week, or at your events, prioritize relationships. Create space, through unstructured time, for students to hang out, play, talk, and connect.
  • Make your environments visitor-friendly. Sure, we all say we want visitors to show up to our programs. We all tell our groups to bring their friends to church, but if we’re not working behind the scenes to create environments that are welcoming to and mindful of, first-time guests… well, we can’t really expect those guests to show up (or come back). If you’re not sure if your environments are visitor-friendly, ask your group this question: “What is it about our church that makes you not want to invite your friends?”
  • Encourage students to engage in their communities. Sometimes, we make the mistake of believing our community is the only community that can help teenagers grow spiritually. But that’s not true, is it? We might be ministry leaders, but we don’t own the market when it comes to healthy community. In fact, if the only community our groups see as “healthy” community are the ones our churches offer, then we’ve actually done them a pretty big disservice. If we really want our groups to grow spiritually, we should probably think of creative ways to help them build relationships (with both Christians and non-Christians) in places outside our church—like their schools, their neighborhoods, and their sports teams.

So, we’ve got to help our students practice the habit of spending time with others, both inside the walls of our churches and outside those walls, too. Because when we engage in community, listen to different perspectives, and process our faith with others, we get a bigger picture of who God is… and that helps us grow.

3. SHARE YOUR STORY

Our students need to learn how to talk about God. But this spiritual habit is way bigger than just knowing how to share the story of your salvation—although that’s part of it. Sharing your story is the spiritual habit of making faith a regular, everyday, go-to topic of conversation in our lives.

It’s about discovering God in every aspect of your story…

Your past, your present, and your future –
The good times, the bad times, and the in-between times –
And then sharing what you’ve found with other people.

Because when we talk about God and God’s place in our story (or, more accurately, our place in God’s story), it helps us believe, understand, and take ownership of our own faith. That’s why sharing our stories is such an important part of growing spiritually.

SO HOW CAN WE HELP TEENAGERS SHARE THEIR STORIES?

Here are a few ideas…

  • Create consistent small groups. I know, I know, I already said this. But I also said that small groups are the answer to pretty much everything. So, yes, they’re an answer to helping teenagers develop healthy community, but they’re also an answer for helping teenagers have healthy conversations about their faith. When small groups are done well, they become safe places for teenagers to process their beliefs, their questions, and their experiences.
  • Share your stories. When you teach, be intentional about sharing stories from your own life and faith journey. In fact, you probably want to tell one personal story in every message you ever teach. When you share your stories and how God used those stories to help you grow spiritually, you give your group a model for what it looks like to find God in their stories. And when you share your stories of failure, disappointment, or mistakes, you let them know that God can work even in the toughest situations—and that they’re not alone.
  • Invite students, and volunteers to share their stories. Your stories, dear ministry leader, are really important, but they’re not the only stories that matter. When you invite students, and volunteers to share their stories regularly (maybe on stage, in a video, or on social media), you help your group connect with even more people and even more stories.
  • Create space for hard questions. If you want teenagers to get comfortable having conversations about their faith, it is absolutely essential that you help them have healthy conversations about their doubts, fears, and questions. The truth is, your students do have doubts, even if they’re not expressing them. So, if you want them to have a healthy faith, give them the opportunity to talk about those things openly.

Help your students share their stories because they’ll grow spiritually when they make it a habit of talking about their faith.

4. USE YOUR GIFTS

Here’s the fourth and final spiritual habit: your group needs to know that God made them unique and special with really specific gifts, talents, passions, and resources. Then, they need to use those gifts to love God, love others, and influence the world around them.

When we use our gifts, we acknowledge that the things we’ve been given weren’t given to us by chance. They were part of God’s design. Using those gifts really can be a spiritual habit because when students begin to discover who God made them to be, they grow. And when they use their unique identity to make a difference in the world, they serve others and give back to God who made them.

SO HOW CAN WE HELP TEENAGERS USE THEIR GIFTS?

Here are a few ideas…

  • Create opportunities to serve. It’s one thing to tell students to serve others and to use their gifts. But it’s another thing entirely to actually create opportunities where they do that. Maybe you need to restructure some things in your church so that it’s easier for your groups to serve. Maybe you need to move away from an adult-led worship band, so more students can help lead. Maybe you even need to let go of some of your desire for “excellence” in your programming so your group can take ownership and help create your weekly environments. Mission trips are a great solution, too… but if mission trips are your only avenue for them to serve, you may want to rethink your serving strategy.
  • Showcase their unique talents. In ministry, we often accidentally communicate that the only way to serve God in ministry is from a platform. Speaking and leading worship are great ways to help students serve, but they’re not the only gifts they can use to serve God and others. Whether it’s art, or science, or baking, or sports, your groups are overflowing with talents. They may just need your help to discover how those talents can be used to love others in new and creative ways.

So those are the four spiritual habits that help teenagers grow spiritually.

  • Help them spend time with God.
  • Help them spend time with others.
  • Help them share their stories.
  • And help them use their gifts.

But before we wrap up, a few things to remember…

  • Your students won’t all grow in the same way. God made them unique, after all.
  • They won’t grow at the same pace. They’re all on a unique journey.
  • But they can all grow just a little bit more. You can’t force spiritual growth, but you can help them take one more step toward a faith that’s growing.

And hey, thank you for the investment you’re making in the spiritual growth of the students in your ministry. I know it’s not always easy. Actually, it’s really hard sometimes. But as you get ready for another day, or another week, or another year of youth ministry, we really hope you remember this: what you are doing is making a difference.

I know that’s hard to remember when the seeds you’ve been planting seem to be taking so long to grow, and you know there’s a pretty good chance you may never even see the end result. But keep going.

-Elle Campbell

The Four Spiritual Habits for Teenagers
The Four Spiritual Habits for Teenagers

An Annual Discipleship Strategy for Youth Ministry from Grow Curriculum

When planning your year, we always recommend you start with your discipleship strategy. That’s because spiritual growth should be the lens through which we see everything else we do in our ministries. We believe there are four spiritual habits that help teenagers (and adults, too) grow closer to God. These four habits aren’t anything new. They’ve been talked about countless ways, by countless numbers of people. Your church is probably already talking about them in your own unique way, so feel free to change the language to fit your context if you need to. The words aren’t important, but here’s what is: if these four spiritual habits are the behaviors that help teenagers grow closer to God, we need a strategy to help students engage in these four spiritual habits on a regular basis, year after year. If you’re an adult (or maybe even a “professional” Christian) the idea of spiritual habits is probably pretty familiar to you. Through spiritual disciplines, quiet time, devotions — whatever you call it — you’ve probably established a few rhythms in your life that help you grow spiritually. Maybe you …

  • Start your day with a quiet time.
  • Follow a Bible reading plan.
  • Listen to worship music while you drive.
  • Subscribe to sermon podcasts.
  • Go to church, attend a small group, or serve somewhere.

Since you’re a grown-up, you’ve had a little time to figure out this whole “spiritual growth” thing. The teenagers in your ministry, on the other hand, aren’t grown-ups, so they might need a little help from you to figure out how to grow spiritually. This is where spiritual habits come in. Spiritual habits are the decisions, behaviors, and rhythms that help us grow spiritually over time. If you’re like most people, the first things that pop into your head when you hear “spiritual habits” are probably reading the Bible, praying, or going to church. Sure, reading, praying, and going to church are important spiritual habits, but they’re not the only spiritual habits that matter. So what’s the complete, final, definitive list of spiritual habits? Well, there isn’t one. You can organize and categorize and define spiritual habits in a number of ways, and feel free to steal our list if you think it’s helpful. It’s a list of the four spiritual habits to help kids, teenagers, and adults all grow spiritually. But just knowing what helps teenagers grow spiritually doesn’t guarantee they will grow spiritually. If we want to give teenagers as many chances as possible to grow, it’s so important we have a discipleship strategy that is based on these four spiritual habits. But how? That’s what this post is all about! We hope this strategy we’re about to unpack will give you a framework for discipling teenagers that you can replicate and improve year after year. With this Annual Discipleship Strategy, you’ll learn a system for helping students grow spiritually all year long. If you’re familiar with Grow Curriculum & Annual Strategy, some things in this post might sound familiar to you. That’s because everything we do in Grow Students Curriculum is based on the strategy we’re about to break down for you! But don’t worry if you’ve never used Grow Students in your ministry before. You can still steal our strategy! Take the ideas you find helpful, ignore the parts that don’t quite fit your context, and combine them with the unique language, vision, and strategy of your church. Okay, are we ready? Let’s get started!

Free PDF Resource
An Annual Discipleship Strategy for Youth Ministry from Grow Curriculum

THE 4 SPIRITUAL HABITS

Before we talk about our discipleship strategy, we have to define the spiritual habits that are the foundation of that strategy.

1. SPEND TIME WITH GOD

This is an obvious one, right? It’s so obvious, in fact, that sometimes it’s the only spiritual habit we can name. After all, isn’t “growing spiritually” synonymous with “spending time with God”? Well, not exactly. Spending time with God is a big part of growing spiritually, but it’s not the whole picture. That’s why it’s just the first of four spiritual habits. Spending time with God may not be the only spiritual habit that exists, but it’s still a pretty important one. After all, if teenagers are ever going to learn to live out their faith, they’ve got to start spending time with God on their own. It means opening the Bible, having conversations with God, and discovering how they best connect with God through worship on their own.

2. SPEND TIME WITH OTHERS

Engaging in healthy community can, and should, be a spiritual habit we help teenagers develop. But “healthy community” doesn’t just mean hanging out with Christians. This spiritual habit is about growing in Christlike relationships with — well, everyone. Christians and non-Christians, too. Because, sometimes, it isn’t another church potluck or Bible study with our fellow Christians that will grow us the most. It might be a friendship, an investment, or a challenging conversation with someone who doesn’t believe the same things you do that makes the biggest difference in our faith. We see this most clearly in Jesus, of course. When he discipled his followers, he didn’t disciple them in one-on-one conversations in the privacy of their homes or the nearest Starbucks. He discipled them in real life, in the context of relationships that were real, challenging, and imperfect. In Jesus’ ministry, it was often his disciples’ interactions with each other, or with people who didn’t follow him, that prompted some of his most significant teaching opportunities.

3. USE YOUR GIFTS

Teenagers need to know that God made them unique, special, and with really specific gifts, talents, passions, and resources. They also need to use those gifts to love God, love others, and make a difference in the world around them. When we use our gifts, we acknowledge that the things we’ve been given weren’t by chance. Everything is a part of God’s design. Using those gifts can become a spiritual habit. When students begin to discover who God made them to be, and then use their unique identity to make a difference in the world, to serve others, and to give back to the God who made them, they grow.

4. SHARE YOUR STORY

Here’s the fourth and final spiritual habit: teenagers need to learn how to talk about God and who God is to them. But this spiritual habit is way bigger than just knowing how to talk about your relationship with God or why they made a decision to follow Jesus – although that’s part of it. Sharing your story is the spiritual habit of making faith a regular, everyday, go-to topic of conversation in our lives. It’s about discovering God in every aspect of your story and then sharing what you’ve found with other people. When we talk about God and our place in God’s story, it helps us believe, understand, and share about how we live out our faith. That’s why sharing our stories is such an important part of growing spiritually.

HOW DO I TURN THESE HABITS INTO AN ANNUAL STRATEGY?

When planning your year of ministry, we always recommend you begin by planning your discipleship strategy. That’s because we believe spiritual growth should be the lens through which we see everything else we do in our ministries. Here’s how we approach it …

  • Divide the year into quarters.
  • Assign one spiritual habit per quarter.
  • Create one experience or activity each quarter that will help teenagers put that spiritual habit into practice.
  • But before you do any of that, if you want to make sure your discipleship efforts actually stick, make sure your ministry is set up in a way where you can connect every teenager in your ministry to:
    • More than one caring adult who can invest in them (like you or their small group leaders).
    • A community of peers who can grow alongside them (like a small group).

If you’re using the Grow Annual Strategy to plan your year, here’s how that could look …

FALL: Spend Time with Others

Every fall, we focus on the spiritual habit of spending time with others because it’s so important for teenagers to build strong relationships and community at the beginning of the school year. These relationships will help them stay connected throughout the year and will help them feel safe enough to be honest and open during discussion times. To help teenagers practice this spiritual habit, you might …

  • Create small group party kits to help small group leaders have fun and build deeper relationships with the students they lead.
  • Hand out fun and meaningful conversation starters to help teenagers have easier and deeper conversations with each other in small groups or at school.
  • Give a challenge for teenagers to make a new friend, have a specific conversation with a friend, or reach out to someone who might need a friend.

WINTER: Use Your Gifts

Every winter, we focus on the spiritual habit of using your gifts because the holidays are a perfect opportunity for teenagers to serve others in a meaningful way. To help students practice this spiritual habit, you might …

  • Create a fundraiser or collection to help teenagers make a difference in someone’s life.
  • Hand out gift assessments to help teenagers figure out how God has made them and how they can use their gifts to make a difference.
  • Give a challenge for teenagers to serve somewhere alongside their friends, families, or small groups.

SPRING: Spend Time with God

Every spring, we focus on the spiritual habit of spending time with God because after half a year of building relationships and trust with teenagers, it’s a great time to challenge them to go deeper in their faith. Plus, it’s Easter! And Lent is a great time to encourage students to try new spiritual habits over the 40 days leading up to Easter Sunday. To help students practice this spiritual habit, you might …

  • Create a special prayer or worship event for teenagers to participate in.
  • Hand out devotionals or Bible reading plans for teenagers to do on their own or with their small groups.
  • Give a challenge for teenagers to practice a new spiritual habit with their friends or families.

SUMMER: Share Your Story

Every summer, we focus on the spiritual habit of sharing your story because many churches are already thinking about mission experiences and, with the new school year about to begin, it’s a great time to challenge teenagers to think about the difference they can make in their schools and communities. To help teenagers practice this spiritual habit, you might …

  • Create a storytelling segment in your weekly program to give teenagers, student leaders, or adult leaders a chance to share their stories of faith.
  • Hand out faith conversation starters to help teenagers talk about who God is to them in small groups, at home, or with friends.
  • Give a challenge for teenagers to write and then share with someone their faith story so far.

Plus, once every quarter, we recommend giving students a spiritual growth survey to help them (and you) evaluate and track their spiritual growth. Okay, maybe this seems like a lot to do, but it doesn’t have to be! Like you, we know that our time each week is limited, and no one has endless hours to spare — not even on something as important as discipleship. That’s why, if you’re using Grow Curriculum, you know we’ve already done a ton of this work for you! For every quarter of every year, we provide an activity or experience that corresponds with that quarter’s spiritual habit, and we include everything you need to make it happen — supply lists (with links to purchase the supplies), instructions, graphics, handouts, and more! And here’s the good news: there is a way to structure your discipleship strategy so that you do the least amount of work for the biggest impact. That’s what the Grow strategy is all about. In case you missed it, check out this article about planning an entire year of ministry. It’ll show you how all seven of these methods for investing in parents might look on your annual calendar, alongside an annual strategy for your:

We’ve said this before, but we’ve got to say it again! These ideas we’ve talked about are nice … but these ideas only become a strategy when you put them on your calendar and turn them into actions. When you have an annual plan to turn your ideas and goals into a strategy, you’ll make a much bigger impact. So whether you use Grow Curriculum or not, we hope you’ll steal our strategy! We developed it over lots of years of ministry, with input from lots of church leaders and lots of trial and error. Take it, tweak it, and make it your own. We really hope it helps you be just a little more awesome at what you do this year!

Free PDF Resource
An Annual Discipleship Strategy for Youth Ministry from Grow Curriculum

4 Fresh New Teen Discipleship Activities from Grow Students Volume 7

When it comes to helping teenagers grow in their faith, we believe there are four spiritual habits to target. These habits are the decisions, behaviors, and rhythms that help us grow spiritually over time. If you’re like most people, when you hear “spiritual habit” you start to think about reading the Bible, praying, or going to church. Sure, these are important spiritual habits, but they’re not the only spiritual habits that matter.

While there’s no definitive list of spiritual habits, we think these four are worth targeting to help your students grow:

  1. Spending time with God
  2. Spending time with others
  3. Using your gifts
  4. Sharing your story

These four habits sit at the core of our discipleship strategy (and if you don’t have a discipleship strategy yet, steal ours!). We believe spiritual growth should be the lens through which we see everything else we do in our ministries. So, each quarter, we focus on one of these four spiritual habits with a specific discipleship activity.

Here’s each of the quarterly discipleship activities you’ll find in Volume 7 of Grow Students Curriculum.

THE BIGGER BETTER BEST CHALLENGE

The Bigger Better Best Challenge is a new spin on the classic youth group game, where you trade something small for something bigger and better, alongside friends. In this friendly competition, small groups will spend multiple weeks (or months) working together to trade up, win prizes for their group, and get to know each other better along the way.

THE OVER THE TOP CHALLENGE

With this discipleship activity, we’re providing everything you need to help students support local organizations dedicated to meeting the needs of your community. In this month-long activity, small groups will work together to develop creative ways to express “over-the-top” generosity. They will collect and donate needed items to benefit local community organizations and use their unique gifts to support and make a difference in what those organizations do in your community.

IN THE RHYTHM PRAYER PROMPTS

Prayer can often seem hard to understand and even harder to build into our lives as a daily habit. To help teenagers spend time with God, we’ve created these In The Rhythm Prayer Prompts to encourage teenagers to practice a brand new pattern of prayer this season. We’ve built a deck of 40 prayer prompts that teenagers can take home with them, draw from, and use to talk with God in a new way each day. You can print out these prompts for teenagers to use at home, have a small group leader text them to their teenagers, or post them on your ministry’s social media accounts.

LONG STORY SHORT POP UP

When it comes to sharing their stories of faith, it can sometimes be hard for teenagers to put their stories into words. Long Story Short: The Pop-Up is a one-day event that will give students opportunities to craft their stories through tons of creative outlets! From art, poetry, and music, to videos, photography, technology, and even a little gardening, this event will guide students through a variety of activities, each designed to help teenagers understand and communicate their faith stories in new, powerful, creative, and unique ways. While this event can be done anytime during the year, we suggest pairing it with the teaching series Worth Sharing, which is all about sharing your story of faith with others!

4 Fresh New Teen Discipleship Activities from Grow Students Volume 7
Free PDF Resource
4 Fresh New Teen Discipleship Activities from Grow Students Volume 7

Those are each of the four quarterly discipleship activities you can find inside of Volume 7 of Grow Students Curriculum. And if you’re already using Grow Students, we’ve given you everything you need for each of these activities — instructions for each discipleship activity, editable graphics, shopping lists, flyers, debrief guides, handouts, and more!

4 Fresh New Kids’ Discipleship Activities from Grow Kids Volume 7

When it comes to helping kids grow in their faith, we believe there are four spiritual habits to target. These habits are the decisions, behaviors, and rhythms that help us grow spiritually over time. If you’re like most people, when you hear “spiritual habit” you start to think about reading the Bible, praying, or going to church. Sure, these are important spiritual habits, but they’re not the only spiritual habits that matter.

While there’s no definitive list of spiritual habits, we think these four are worth targeting to help your kids grow:

  1. Spending time with God
  2. Spending time with others
  3. Using your gifts
  4. Sharing your story

These four habits sit at the core of our discipleship strategy (and if you don’t have a discipleship strategy yet, steal ours!). We believe spiritual growth should be the lens through which we see everything else we do in our ministries. So, each quarter, we focus on one of these four spiritual habits with a specific discipleship activity.

Here’s each of the quarterly discipleship activities you’ll find in Volume 7 of Grow Kids Curriculum.

THE GET-TO-KNOW-YOU CARD GAME

The Get-to-Know-You Card Game is a printable, playable card game that will give kids the chance to share more about themselves and learn more about others too. It can be played in small groups at church, or even at home for family game nights. In this game, every player will get to know each other by guessing each other’s favorite things and sharing more about themselves in the process. Kids can keep track of their cards to determine who knows their friends the best, but in the end, everybody wins when kids feel known!

THE WHAT CAN I DO CHALLENGE

We have a big God who has given each of us special talents and skills. They can help us discover what we want to do and how we can make a difference. It’s fun to dream about the impact kids will make on the world when they grow up, but we also believe kids have what it takes to do some amazing things right now. In The What Can I Do Challenge, kids will have the chance to talk about the problems they see all around them and propose their own plans to make a difference. Through a simple worksheet, kids will get to brainstorm in their small groups and with their families about the ways God has equipped them to use their gifts to help others right now.

THE BIBLE BUDDY READING PLAN

We want to encourage kids to practice the spiritual habit of spending time with God by diving into the Bible on their own. Well…not entirely on their own. With The Bible Buddy Reading Plan kids will adopt a stuffed animal buddy for the week and journal about their experiences reading, learning, and growing through the Bible with their new friend. This reading plan comes with daily reading suggestions, prompts to reflect, and a journal to help kids remember what they’ve discovered and share it with their friends.

THE SHOW YOUR STORY CHALLENGE

When we talk about the spiritual habit of sharing our stories, we often think only about using our words to explain the key moments of our lives to someone new. But for many of us, we learn better and remember more details when we get creative and bring visual components to our storytelling. In The Show Your Story Challenge kids will be given a series of prompts and encouraged to find physical representations of the moments, memories, and stories they want to share with others.

Free PDF Resource
4 Fresh New Kids' Discipleship Activities from Grow Kids Volume 7

Those are each of the four quarterly discipleship activities you can find inside of Volume 7 of Grow Kids Curriculum. And if you’re already using Grow Kids, we’ve given you everything you need for each of these activities — instructions for each discipleship activity, editable graphics, shopping lists, flyers, debrief guides, handouts, and more!

An Annual Discipleship Strategy for Children’s Ministry from Grow Curriculum

When planning your year, we always recommend you start with your discipleship strategy. That’s because spiritual growth should be the lens through which we see everything else we do in our ministries. We believe there are four spiritual habits that help kids (and adults, too) grow closer to God. These four habits aren’t anything new. They’ve been talked about countless ways, by countless numbers of people. Your church is probably already talking about them in your own unique way, so feel free to change the language to fit your context if you need to. The words aren’t important, but here’s what is: if these four spiritual habits are the behaviors that help kids grow closer to God, we need a strategy to help kids engage in these four spiritual habits on a regular basis, year after year.

If you’re an adult (or maybe even a “professional” Christian) the idea of spiritual habits is probably pretty familiar to you. Through spiritual disciplines, quiet time, devotions — whatever you call it — you’ve probably established a few rhythms in your life that help you grow spiritually. Maybe you …

  • Start your day with a quiet time.
  • Follow a Bible reading plan.
  • Listen to worship music while you drive.
  • Subscribe to sermon podcasts.
  • Go to church, attend a small group, or serve somewhere.

Since you’re a grown-up, you’ve had a little time to figure out this whole “spiritual growth” thing. The kids in your ministry, on the other hand, aren’t grown-ups, so they might need a little help from you to figure out how to grow spiritually.

This is where spiritual habits come in. Spiritual habits are the decisions, behaviors, and rhythms that help us grow spiritually over time. If you’re like most people, the first things that pop into your head when you hear “spiritual habits” are probably reading the Bible, praying, or going to church. Sure, reading, praying, and going to church are important spiritual habits, but they’re not the only spiritual habits that matter.

So what’s the complete, final, definitive list of spiritual habits? Well, there isn’t one. You can organize and categorize and define spiritual habits in a number of ways, and feel free to steal our list if you think it’s helpful. It’s a list of the four spiritual habits to help kids, teenagers, and adults all grow spiritually.

But just knowing what helps kids grow spiritually doesn’t guarantee they will grow spiritually. If we want to give kids as many chances as possible to grow, it’s so important we have a discipleship strategy that is based on these four spiritual habits.

But how? That’s what this post is all about! We hope this strategy we’re about to unpack will give you a framework for discipling kids that you can replicate and improve year after year. With this Annual Discipleship Strategy, you’ll learn a system for helping kids grow spiritually all year long.

If you’re familiar with Grow Curriculum & Annual Strategy, some things in this post might sound familiar to you. That’s because everything we do in Grow Kids Curriculum is based on the strategy we’re about to break down for you! But don’t worry if you’ve never used Grow Kids in your ministry before. You can still steal our strategy! Take the ideas you find helpful, ignore the parts that don’t quite fit your context, and combine them with the unique language, vision, and strategy of your church.

Okay, are we ready? Let’s get started!

Free PDF Resource
An Annual Discipleship Strategy for Children's Ministry from Grow Curriculum
Explore Grow Curriculum's annual discipleship strategy for children's ministry, focusing on four key spiritual habits for holistic growth.

THE 4 SPIRITUAL HABITS

Before we talk about our discipleship strategy, we have to define the spiritual habits that are the foundation of that strategy.

1. SPEND TIME WITH GOD

This is an obvious one, right? It’s so obvious, in fact, that sometimes it’s the only spiritual habit we can name. After all, isn’t “growing spiritually” synonymous with “spending time with God”? Well, not exactly. Spending time with God is a big part of growing spiritually, but it’s not the whole picture. That’s why it’s just the first of four spiritual habits.

Spending time with God may not be the only spiritual habit that exists, but it’s still a pretty important one. After all, if kids are ever going to learn to live out their faith, they’ve got to start spending time with God on their own. It means opening the Bible, having conversations with God, and discovering how they best connect with God through worship on their own.

2. SPEND TIME WITH OTHERS

Engaging in healthy community can, and should, be a spiritual habit we help kids develop. But “healthy community” doesn’t just mean hanging out with Christians. This spiritual habit is about growing in Christlike relationships with — well, everyone. Christians and non-Christians, too. Because, sometimes, it isn’t another church potluck or Bible study with our fellow Christians that will grow us the most. It might be a friendship, an investment, or a challenging conversation with someone who doesn’t believe the same things you do that makes the biggest difference in our faith.

We see this most clearly in Jesus, of course. When he discipled his followers, he didn’t disciple them in one-on-one conversations in the privacy of their homes or the nearest Starbucks. He discipled them in real life, in the context of relationships that were real, challenging, and imperfect. In Jesus’ ministry, it was often his disciples’ interactions with each other, or with people who didn’t follow him, that prompted some of his most significant teaching opportunities.

3. USE YOUR GIFTS

Kids need to know that God made them unique, special, and with really specific gifts, talents, passions, and resources. They also need to use those gifts to love God, love others, and make a difference in the world around them.

When we use our gifts, we acknowledge that the things we’ve been given weren’t by chance. Everything is a part of God’s design. Using those gifts can become a spiritual habit. When kids begin to discover who God made them to be, and then use their unique identity to make a difference in the world, to serve others, and to give back to the God who made them, they grow.

4. SHARE YOUR STORY

Here’s the fourth and final spiritual habit: kids need to learn how to talk about God and who God is to them. But this spiritual habit is way bigger than just knowing how to talk about your relationship with God or why they made a decision to follow Jesus – although that’s part of it. Sharing your story is the spiritual habit of making faith a regular, everyday, go-to topic of conversation in our lives.

It’s about discovering God in every aspect of your story and then sharing what you’ve found with other people. When we talk about God and our place in God’s story, it helps us believe, understand, and share about how we live out our faith. That’s why sharing our stories is such an important part of growing spiritually.

HOW DO I TURN THESE HABITS INTO AN ANNUAL STRATEGY?

When planning your year of ministry, we always recommend you begin by planning your discipleship strategy. That’s because we believe spiritual growth should be the lens through which we see everything else we do in our ministries. Here’s how we approach it …

  • Divide the year into quarters.
  • Assign one spiritual habit per quarter.
  • Create one experience or activity each quarter that will help kids put that spiritual habit into practice.
  • But before you do any of that, if you want to make sure your discipleship efforts actually stick, make sure your ministry is set up in a way where you can connect every kid in your ministry to:
    • More than one caring adult who can invest in them (like their teachers or small group leaders).
    • A community of peers who can grow alongside them (like a small group).

    If you’re using the Grow Annual Strategy to plan your year, here’s how that could look.

    FALL: Spend Time with Others

    Every fall, we focus on the spiritual habit of spending time with others because it’s so important for kids to build strong relationships and community at the beginning of the school year. These relationships will help them stay connected throughout the year and will help them feel safe enough to be honest and open during discussion times. To help kids practice this spiritual habit, you might …

    • Create small group party kits to help small group leaders have fun and build deeper relationships with the kids they lead.
    • Hand out small group or family conversation starters to help kids have better and more meaningful conversations.
    • Give a challenge for kids to make a new friend, have a specific conversation with a friend, or reach out to someone who might need a friend.

    WINTER: Use Your Gifts

    Every winter, we focus on the spiritual habit of using your gifts because the holidays are a perfect opportunity for kids to serve others in a meaningful way. To help kids practice this spiritual habit, you might …

    • Create a fundraiser or collection to help kids make a difference in someone’s life.
    • Hand out gift assessments to help kids figure out how God has made them and how they can use their gifts to make a difference.
    • Give a challenge for kids to serve somewhere alongside their friends, families, or small groups.

    SPRING: Spend Time with God

    Every spring, we focus on the spiritual habit of spending time with God because it’s Easter time, and that’s a great time to help kids better focus on who Jesus is and what he’s done for them. To help kids practice this spiritual habit, you might …

    • Create a special prayer or worship event for kids to participate in.
    • Hand out devotionals or Bible reading plans for kids and families to do at home.
    • Give a challenge for kids to practice a new spiritual habit with their friends or families.

    SUMMER: Share Your Story

    Every summer, we focus on the spiritual habit of sharing your story because many churches are already thinking about mission experiences and, with the new school year about to begin, it’s a great time to challenge kids to think about the difference they can make around them. To help kids practice this spiritual habit, you might …

    • Create a storytelling segment in your weekly program to give kids, student leaders, or adult leaders a chance to share their stories of faith.
    • Hand out faith conversation starters to help kids talk about who God is to them in small groups or at home.
    • Give a challenge for kids to write and then share with someone their faith story so far.

    Okay, maybe this seems like a lot to do, but it doesn’t have to be! Like you, we know that our time each week is limited, and no one has endless hours to spare — not even on something as important as discipleship.

    That’s why, if you’re using Grow Curriculum, you know we’ve already done a ton of this work for you! For every quarter of every year, we provide an activity or experience that corresponds with that quarter’s spiritual habit, and we include everything you need to make it happen — supply lists (with links to purchase the supplies), instructions, graphics, handouts, and more!

    And here’s the good news: there is a way to structure your discipleship strategy so that you do the least amount of work for the biggest impact. That’s what the Grow strategy is all about.

    In case you missed it, check out this article about planning an entire year of ministry. It’ll show you how all seven of these methods for investing in parents might look on your annual calendar, alongside an annual strategy for your:

    We’ve said this before, but we’ve got to say it again! These ideas we’ve talked about are nice … but these ideas only become a strategy when you put them on your calendar and turn them into actions.

    When you have an annual plan to turn your ideas and goals into a strategy, you’ll make a much bigger impact.

    So whether you use Grow Curriculum or not, we hope you’ll steal our strategy! We developed it over lots of years of ministry, with input from lots of church leaders and lots of trial and error. Take it, tweak it, and make it your own. We really hope it helps you be just a little more awesome at what you do this year!

    Free PDF Resource
    An Annual Discipleship Strategy for Children's Ministry from Grow Curriculum
    Explore Grow Curriculum's annual discipleship strategy for children's ministry, focusing on four key spiritual habits for holistic growth.