Youthworker,
I’m going to ask a single question that I was never asked at the last church where I served, or the 
church before that, or even the one before that. However, it is vitally important to your ministry.
Its a difficult question that should be asked after every event, every game night, even every Bible Study. Its a question that you may not immediately have the answer for, yet you should always be looking for that answer. You will be surprised at how many times it is years before you have that answer.
This question should define how you program, how you teach, how your ministry is measured.
Did you reach one?
That’s it. Did you reach one. That question should burn within you call day in and day out in ministry. It was so easy for me to plan events in rural ministry designed to reach 100 or more, without the vision to reach one. When you plan a study, an event, an activity to reach one, you build in an element that can allow you to slow down to answer a question that may forever help form the faith of a teenager. Even if it connects your student to one of the ministry volunteers to help them work through an issue that prevents them from fully seeing what is being taught that night, that connection may be far more important than a lesson you are teaching to that student. The ability to pour into individual students is one of the huge advantages of small church/rural youth ministry.
It may be years before you know the effect of this ministry paradigm shift, but you will see it. Students will come back and relate to you individual times that your “planning for one” allowed the Holy Spirit through you to minister to exactly where they were that night.
So, this week in youth group,
Did you reach one?
