Please pray for this new venture that through it we will be able to share the Gospel to kids (and staff members!) who are in desperate need of hope.

Different schools have different policies for visiting students on campus during lunch, but they generally fall into 3 categories (from my experience). If I’m missing any, please let me know.

1. Off Campus Lunch

This is usually the easiest situation: the school allows students to eat lunch off campus. This way, you can meet students at a local fast food restaurant or you can pick them up and give them a ride. Sometimes schools will only allow a certain class off campus (like the seniors), so be aware of different rules like that.

Meeting new students is done in a fairly neutral environment (not really their turf or yours, but it can seem a lot like theirs when they swarm the restaurants). I would suggest mixing your off campus and on campus lunch visits with the intent of meeting new kids.

It’s also generally easier to actually eat lunch yourself in this situation. Bring your lunch on campus doesn’t always work.

2. On Campus Lunch at an Open Campus

If the school does not allow students to leave campus for lunch (like most of the schools where I am currently doing ministry), then getting on campus to visit with them is the next best thing. Generally, open campuses will allow visitors to sign in at the office and go hang out during lunch. Being seen on campus is an important part of outreach, even if you do not talk to the students who see you.

Bringing lunch to the students is another way to make the visit more effective, though it can get costly if you’re buying for a lot of students. Not to mention, you could get mugged by the students!

Some schools straddle the fence between open and closed campuses. One school I know of allows anyone with a background check on file to visit the campus. Generally, the campus is open so long as you have been cleared. Getting the legwork done to get on campus can be a hassle, but it’s well worth it.

On Campus Lunch at a Closed Campus

The hardest schools to get on to are the ones that do not allow anyone onto the campus. The schools in the Los Angeles school district are all closed, often throwing a road block in my way to getting on campus during lunch.

However, I’ve found a few ways to get on campus even at a closed campus:

• See if lunch clubs are allowed to invite guests. Then you can connect with students at the club.
• Volunteer to be a lunch aid. Some schools might be open to you helping out with making sure the kids are following the rules.
• If you volunteer in another capacity (counselor, tutor, coach), the administration might allow you to hang out at lunch as well.

I would NOT suggest:

• Pretending you’re a student (if you look young) or a teacher (if you could look like a teacher).
• Sneaking on campus. Usually it’s the kids trying to sneak off!
• Bribing the person in charge of checking in visitors.

A Special Note on Bringing Food to School

Again, different schools have different policies for bringing outside food on campus. At the local high school, the general answer is “No,” even for clubs, but many clubs and visitors bring food on campus anyway. Use discretion here and follow what the principal allows. Sometimes official rules are overridden by principal’s preference.

If you do have permission to bring food on campus, be sure to bring extra food for others who might want to share with you and the student. Extra tacos from Taco Bell or Jack in the Box are always good options, as well as extra cheeseburgers from McDonald’s or Burger King.

What Now?

If you do not have one, formulate a strategy to visit students at school. Even if you never visit, this information can be helpful to other youth workers in the area. Share what you plan or learn from this experience in the comments section.

Photo by Sgt. Im Jin-min (US Army), on Flickr.

The administration at this school has been very ambiguous in its answers regarding how to get such a club started, and I heard conflicting reports from different people. I left a note with a potential faculty sponsor (recommended to me by one of my students) and managed to meet with him briefly during the kids’ lunch break. He’s been a ton of help connecting me with the right people to get this thing off the ground.

Here are some of the things I’ve been learning through this whole experience:

Pray, a lot.

Pray for:

• God to raise up student leaders. Many times, the clubs need to be student-led.
• Non-Christian students hearts to be open.
• A caring faculty member to sponsor the club.
• The administration to be open to starting a religious club. (In the U.S., if the school allows any extracurricular clubs to form, they have to allow students to form a religious club.)
• An ally in the administration (someone high up who has the power to work on the behalf of the club). Ideally, the best ally you can have is the principal.

Team up with other churches/parachurch organizations.

By teaming up with other youth leaders, you can split the responsibilities of leading the club, providing refreshments, leading a game, and other such leadership roles. If you have four churches on the team, you only need to lead once a month.

Also, having as many leaders on campus as possible, especially in volunteer roles, can help you meet new students and build clout with the administration.

Find a faculty sponsor.

Most schools in the U.S. require every club to have one faculty sponsor, but if you’ve never stepped foot on the campus, how do you find one?

1. Talk to everyone you know. Ask if they know of teachers who might be open to sponsoring a Christian club.
2. Talk to your youth group kids (and the youth group kids down the street). What teachers do they like? Do they know of any Christian teachers?
3. Talk to other faculty sponsors of Christian clubs at other schools and see if they know of anyone from the particular school you are targeting.

Work with the appropriate school administrators.

Following the rules is so important. Sometimes getting on campus requires background checks, applications, registering with the local police department, TB tests, and a host of other precautions. While this process can become cumbersome, it’s vital that we honor the requirements of the school and school district. In the end, it’s all for Jesus, right?

The last thing a Christian club needs is to break a rule and get in trouble with the administration. That does not look good for the club or Christians in general.

Let God wow you.

About a year ago I wrote in my journal, “God has been preparing the ground at Verdugo Hills long before you got there.” I wrote that note to myself, to remind myself that God has got things under control. This statement remains true for the middle school (Mt. Gleason). God has had this school on my heart since the spring and now a lot of little things have come to fruition in a way I could never have imagined.

Today I ran into one of the assistant principals with no purpose other than to ask a question about tutoring. I had with me a copy of the TB test result from coaching in the Spring, which I had just picked up from the high school nearby, so that I could work with the kids one on one. Copied under the TB test result was a copy of my coaching application as well, with a note saying that I was currently employed at a church.

It was this note that opened up the conversation to starting a Christian club on campus (which again was not the intent of my visit today). He told me that he wants to get one started but admitted that he is powerless to start one as an administrator. He even gave me some resources on the legal rights of students to form religious clubs and said that he would support such a club.

A new assistant principal sympathetic to helping get a Christian club off the ground? What an answer to prayer! It seems like little things have begun to come together in an amazing way.

And it keeps getting better. I could keep going on all day about the little things God is putting into place in Sunland-Tujunga. But more of this for a future post.

Additional Resources

Here are some parachurch organizations that have a lot of experience doing on campus ministry.

• Young Life. My time volunteering with them this past year has been one of the best experiences of my life. Young Life’s theology and methodology is spot on and is what attracted me to them in the first place. It’s incarnational witness and unconditional love. I would recommend them first.
• Youth For Christ (Campus Life). While I don’t know much about this organization, I know it comes out of Billy Graham’s ministry and they’ve been around almost as long as Young Life. I figured they had to be good if they’ve lasted so long. They’ve recently changed their on campus club name to Campus Life.
• Youth Alive. This ministry is for starting student-led Christian clubs and does not focus on campus outreach from adult role models like Young Life does. They, however, offer a lot of resources for students in case the schools are so closed where ministries like Young Life can’t go. They are associated with the Assemblies of God.
• Youth With A Mission. I’m not very familiar with this organization either, but they seem to be mobilizing a lot of people in my area to get into schools and start clubs (or at least help churches start clubs). Just started talking with them about how we can work together.

Related posts that talk about campus clubs and outreach.

• Reach More Kids by Adopting Schools.
• 30 Ways to Impact Schools as Youth Leaders.
• Life Lessons on Starting a New Ministry.

To Do:

Make a list of all the secondary schools in your general area. How many have Christian clubs and how many do not? Is God calling you to start a club at a school without one? Or perhaps you can empower someone else to start a club.

25. Make an appointment to meet with principals, guidance counselors. Ask them what help they need.
26. Work with other youth pastors to bring school assembly programs to schools.
27. Become an assistant coach for a sports team.
28. Do the Campus Checkup your students and other youth groups.
(www.everyschool.com)
29. Sponsor an evangelism and/or campus ministry training event with other youth pastors in your community.
30. Connect with other youth pastors in your community to share ideas, create a common strategy, etc.

There are 24 other ideas as well, centering around prayer, outreach, and service. Check it out.

Got More Ideas?

If you have any additional thoughts, add a comment over at Travis’ blog.

You still have your volunteers and your kids, just no building to meet in, no place to invite kids to. How would your strategy for doing youth ministry change?

The school as your parish

In 1938, a pastor challenged a Jim Rayburn to see the local high school as his parish, his church building.

Rayburn built relationships with kids on that high school campus and developed a strategy for sharing his faith with students on their turf. Rayburn later founded Young Life, one of the largest and most successful parachurch organizations. Their mantra is still the same today: go where kids are.

Taking it to the… schools

Youth ministries need to see school functions as extensions of their ministry.

Students spend an average of 30-35 hours at school each week, not to mention the hours they spend involved in extra curricular activities, including practices, games, and recitals. Kids spend significantly longer amounts of time at school events than at church events. Kids are busier than ever and the last thing they need are youth pastors guilting them into going to another church event.

Schools offer a lot of ways to serve kids, whether it be substitute teaching, coaching, or tutoring. I spend my afternoons helping coach track or cross country, allowing me to be a role model to dozens of kids, and even talk about God with them. Sometimes they bring it up, sometimes I do, but either way, we’ve had lots of great talks about God, hell, salvation, and life in general.

Adopt schools together

Get the youth leaders in town to adopt a local school together. EverySchool.com is a great resource to network with other youth leaders who have a heart for your school. As a network, you can develop a strategy to reach every kid (and staff member!) on the campus.

Here are some ideas for serving schools together with other youth ministries:

1. Start or help sustain a Christian Club, or partner and support a parachurch ministry such as Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Young Life, or Youth for Christ in every school in your area.
2. Do a fundraiser to help a sports team cover its costs.
3. Buy and serve lunch for teachers during a teacher inservice day.
4. Throw a teacher appreciation banquet.
5. Instead of going to Mexico to do a mission trip, consider doing a mission trip to a local school (thanks to Mike DeVito from NNYM for this idea!)

We can better reach our communities if we see schools as mission fields instead of competitors for our kids’ time.

Your turn: Do you get on the local school campuses? What kind of relationship do you have with the local schools? Or is doing campus outreach not the most effective way to reach kids? What are some other ways to do ministry with kids outside the walls of the church?