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    3 messages the girls in your ministry can’t hear enough
neely mcqueen
If you are anything like me at times I feel overwhelmed at the task of helping young girls do more than just survive through their adolescent years. It can be a draining task as you watch them buy the lies the world has sold them. In a “girls gone wild” age it’s so important to help them rise above the messages and live in authentic relationship with Christ and other believers. Here are three messages that I keep coming back to in my ministry to teenage girls.
1. “You are created with value”
One of the most significant moments for me as a teenage girl occurred when a Scripture came alive to me about my value in Christ. The Message Bible had recently been published, and I was reading in the book of James.
So, my very dear friends, don't get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures (James 1:16).
I remember reading it for the first time in this version and in that moment I began to understand how God saw me- as the crown of his creation! I grew up in Washington State and it’s beautiful…beautiful mountains, scenic coastline, and lots of green! Looking at the beauty surrounding me it was overwhelming that I was created as his best workmanship. And it wasn’t about appearance and body issues; it was truly a moment of seeing myself as Christ saw me. Truthfully, I had heard this message delivered often in my youth group, and because of that, the stage was set for this divine encounter.
Try to create lots of different kinds of opportunities for the girls in your ministry to hear this significant message from the Creator of the universe.
2. “The other girls around you were created with value too”
I was recently reminded of this on a trip to South Africa. I visited a ministry that teaches young people the importance of seeing value in their fellow classmates. What this ministry discovered is that by teaching this lesson they have actually communicated yet another reason why rape or domesticate abuse is wrong. Here’s how I find this principle transferable to our youth ministries…
If your youth ministry is anything like ours you find that the girls can be quite mean to each other. That right in your own youth ministry scenes out of Mean Girls are happening. When did it become okay for our youth ministries to feel like the hallways at a public school? What if we start encouraging the girls in our ministries to realize that not only do they have worth but the girl they can’t stand is also of great value to God? Now I am not naïve to think that by teaching this to your girls that everyone will suddenly become best friends, and you’ll never have a problem with cliques. But you might begin to see girls rethinking how they interact with each other, or better yet, you might see fewer girls leaving your ministry because they felt like they didn’t belong.
3. “God moves through girls, like you, in radical ways”
Whenever we do a series in our youth ministry about people in the Bible, we make a special effort to include a female. You can imagine how confusing it is to a young girl to hear that God wants to use her, but every example she hears from the Bible is a guy. Sure there are transferable principles from every life in the Bible, but it is tremendously meaningful for a teenage girl to hear about Jael, Esther, Deborah, Lydia, Hannah, Ruth, Mary, the bleeding woman, Rizpah, etc… Women who made themselves available to be used in a powerful way to change the course of history.
I find in my interactions with teenage girls that this actually serves two purposes. First, it provides proof that God can use anyone, even an awkward 14-year-old girl with acne. Secondly, it’s a boost to their confidence when they realize that God wants to use young women like them to accomplish his kingdom work. As a result they begin to understand that they can be about bigger things than the clothes they wear or the boys they date- that, in fact, God may be calling them to save a generation just like Esther.
(As an aside- another great way you can communicate this is by making sure you have godly women involved in all aspects of your ministry. Nothing displays this vital truth to girls more than seeing it happen right in front of them.)
Every so often I get a catch a glimpse of what it would be like if the girls in my ministry would walk in these truths, and I am overwhelmed with excitement! Young girls fully confident in who God created them to be, living in authentic relationships with other believing girls, and making themselves available to the King in order to “save a generation.”
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http://www.simplyyouthministry.com/community-articles-from-the-field.html
neely mcqueen
If you are anything like me at times I feel overwhelmed at the task of helping young girls do more than just survive through their adolescent years. It can be a draining task as you watch them buy the lies the world has sold them. In a “girls gone wild” age it’s so important to help them rise above the messages and live in authentic relationship with Christ and other believers. Here are three messages that I keep coming back to in my ministry to teenage girls.
1. “You are created with value”
One of the most significant moments for me as a teenage girl occurred when a Scripture came alive to me about my value in Christ. The Message Bible had recently been published, and I was reading in the book of James.
So, my very dear friends, don't get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures (James 1:16).
I remember reading it for the first time in this version and in that moment I began to understand how God saw me- as the crown of his creation! I grew up in Washington State and it’s beautiful…beautiful mountains, scenic coastline, and lots of green! Looking at the beauty surrounding me it was overwhelming that I was created as his best workmanship. And it wasn’t about appearance and body issues; it was truly a moment of seeing myself as Christ saw me. Truthfully, I had heard this message delivered often in my youth group, and because of that, the stage was set for this divine encounter.
Try to create lots of different kinds of opportunities for the girls in your ministry to hear this significant message from the Creator of the universe.
2. “The other girls around you were created with value too”
I was recently reminded of this on a trip to South Africa. I visited a ministry that teaches young people the importance of seeing value in their fellow classmates. What this ministry discovered is that by teaching this lesson they have actually communicated yet another reason why rape or domesticate abuse is wrong. Here’s how I find this principle transferable to our youth ministries…
If your youth ministry is anything like ours you find that the girls can be quite mean to each other. That right in your own youth ministry scenes out of Mean Girls are happening. When did it become okay for our youth ministries to feel like the hallways at a public school? What if we start encouraging the girls in our ministries to realize that not only do they have worth but the girl they can’t stand is also of great value to God? Now I am not naïve to think that by teaching this to your girls that everyone will suddenly become best friends, and you’ll never have a problem with cliques. But you might begin to see girls rethinking how they interact with each other, or better yet, you might see fewer girls leaving your ministry because they felt like they didn’t belong.
3. “God moves through girls, like you, in radical ways”
Whenever we do a series in our youth ministry about people in the Bible, we make a special effort to include a female. You can imagine how confusing it is to a young girl to hear that God wants to use her, but every example she hears from the Bible is a guy. Sure there are transferable principles from every life in the Bible, but it is tremendously meaningful for a teenage girl to hear about Jael, Esther, Deborah, Lydia, Hannah, Ruth, Mary, the bleeding woman, Rizpah, etc… Women who made themselves available to be used in a powerful way to change the course of history.
I find in my interactions with teenage girls that this actually serves two purposes. First, it provides proof that God can use anyone, even an awkward 14-year-old girl with acne. Secondly, it’s a boost to their confidence when they realize that God wants to use young women like them to accomplish his kingdom work. As a result they begin to understand that they can be about bigger things than the clothes they wear or the boys they date- that, in fact, God may be calling them to save a generation just like Esther.
(As an aside- another great way you can communicate this is by making sure you have godly women involved in all aspects of your ministry. Nothing displays this vital truth to girls more than seeing it happen right in front of them.)
Every so often I get a catch a glimpse of what it would be like if the girls in my ministry would walk in these truths, and I am overwhelmed with excitement! Young girls fully confident in who God created them to be, living in authentic relationships with other believing girls, and making themselves available to the King in order to “save a generation.”
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