Ministry Coach: Youth Ministry Tips & Resources

Youth Group Midweek Program: FULL TOUR & SETUP | Youth Ministry Room Ideas

• Kristen Lascola • Episode 250

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Are you ready to grow the size and health of your youth ministry? Check out
GrowYourYouthMinistry.com *** To celebrate our 250th episode, we're taking you on a full behind-the-scenes tour of our midweek youth group program.  Our youth ministry has access to our entire church and we will be showing exactly how we transform it and utilize space to enable a thriving student ministry program!

From the moment students arrive, every space serves a strategic purpose. We walk through pre-program hangout zones, our leader preparation/meeting spaces, and the main service area where we conduct high-energy games, worship, and teaching. You'll also see how we convert multiple spaces into effective small group environments where deeper connections happen.

Whether you lead ministry in a sprawling campus or a modest building, this tour offers practical ideas you can adapt for your context. For churches with limited facilities, we offer scaled-down alternatives that create the same engaging atmosphere without requiring elaborate setups or equipment.

If you want to watch the full tour with visuals, check it out on YouTube here:

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You may also enjoy these episodes:

(#121) FREE TIME YOUTH MINISTRY GAMES - 6 Pre-Service Games Activities

(#242) Youth Ministry Room Setup & Decorating Ideas - Youth Ministry Remodel

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Ministry Coach Podcast, where we bring you weekly tips and tactics to help you fast-track the growth and health of your youth ministry. Today is our 250th episode. Can you believe it? So we wanted to do something really special. We did previously a video all about weekend setup, actually in this very room, but today we're going to be doing a midweek program, start to finish.

Speaker 2:

If we haven't already met, my name is Jeff Lascola and this is Kristen Laskola, and you are about to get a tour of our whole church and how we utilize space for a midweek program. Hey guys, welcome to the church that I work at. It is Tuesday night and the students are going to be here in about an hour, so I'm going to give you a quick tour of how I utilize the space for the church on a Tuesday for youth group. Now, the benefit that I have is that I get this entire church to myself for Tuesday night. The whole church shuts down and junior high only is here 630 to 830 on Tuesday nights and high school is seven to nine on Wednesday nights. So that's a really big benefit because, as I'll show you in just a second, I get to use all the space for all kinds of different things. Let's go check it out, okay.

Speaker 2:

So we're going to go inside and I'm going to show you what happens. First, we have our leader meeting at 6 PM and we come in here to the family room. It says family room, but right there behind there. So this is um where I have our meetings for me and my interns meet here like around four o'clock and we sit here and we go over the night and what we're going to talk about Now, that's just staff. So interns, staff like the core leadership team. We just got done with our meeting not long ago, but then at 6 pm I'm going to have all of my volunteers in here. We're going to go over the night. I'm going to talk to them about what they can expect for the game if they have a role in it, the message, the direction we want them to head in small groups. We're going to talk about any events that we have coming up. We're going to troubleshoot any problems going on. We're going to have a little bit of fun and sometimes I bring a treat, like if it's somebody's birthday or something like that, and so from 6 to 6.15, leaders are in here and then after that we have a lot of little faces looking in here and they're ready for us to come out.

Speaker 2:

So we come out and at that point this lobby will be all used. Students will just be in here hanging out waiting for program to start. All of these monitors will have our logo on them. You can see these different TV monitors. They'll have our youth group logo and then, about five minutes before our youth group starts, we will start our five-minute countdown so that if they're out in the lobby they can see when youth group starts. We will start our five minute countdown so that if they're out in the lobby they can see the one youth group is about to start. There'll be music on and a lot of them hang out in three different spots and I'm going to show you that.

Speaker 2:

This is like our information table. So we have all of our leader bio boards here so you can see all of our volunteer small group leaders and a little bit about them. This is our staff right here and we put out our info. So this is our summer calendar some info cards for new students to fill out so we can get them registered. This is our summer camp packet.

Speaker 2:

This is one thing I really love. I know it looks simple, but the mailbox that has just the slot that you can't get into. Like if students have permission slips or payments or anything like that or something that they're going to hand me that I'm going to sit down and lose because I'm busy, I always say, put it in the mailbox. We just got a new one. We had all of our like youth group stickers all over it, but our old one broke, so we need to put our stickers back on it and then the bins underneath here. So all the bins correspond to the leaders up top. So Arden and Sarah's small group. And here's Sarah's bio board so that you can see which one goes to which. And if you want to look at these, they're actually pretty cool. So we have a picture of our leader and then it has their name, birthday, how long they've been with our youth group.

Speaker 2:

One food I can't say no to. Favorite app. She changed it to appetizer. I just noticed that right now. Favorite movie quote Favorite Starbucks drink the Disney character I identify with. The most dream job and favorite Bible story, so that parents, when they come in, they can kind of see a little bit about them. These are the people that work with your student and the students love to do it. They like just some people, especially when they're new. They just like stand here and just read every single one of them. So it's kind of a fun thing.

Speaker 1:

So these are like the same things you had for your student leadership team, but yes, student leadership Are those displayed out here, or only on the weekend, only in the junior high room.

Speaker 2:

And then, hello Sam, this is our deep end table and so I have a leader that runs this and the stuff isn't out right now. But what we made is some packets where students can do different Bible challenges, like they can memorize scripture, memorize the books of the Bible, they can do like a sword drill and they can win chaos books that they can use in the snack shack that I'm going to show you in just a second so they can have like just a piece of candy, like a fun size piece of candy, immediately, or they can save up and get a chaos buck for there, for the snack shack.

Speaker 1:

So cafe is open, yeah, tuesday nights.

Speaker 2:

So then the other place they love to be is in the cafe Tuesday nights. So then the other place they love to be is in the cafe. I have a. One of my volunteers was trained on how to use everything and so, yeah, she makes drinks and it's only open right before youth group, so kids would have to get here a little bit early and they can get a drink. Um, there's the menu up there and, yeah, it's, this is our weekend one, but she opens it for the junior hires, which is super sweet.

Speaker 1:

Um, simplify this. You're at a church with a hundred people total congregation, so you don't have a cafe. What would kind of be a similar setup, maybe that you could do, just dialed back?

Speaker 2:

I think Boba is super fun and super easy and you don't need a whole cafe to run it. So you can buy the boba balls on Amazon and you can do it with. Like these things are really fun. You can add these this is hazelnut, so that wouldn't taste good, but like watermelon strawberry, whatever. You could do that for boba, like you mix Sprite with the boba balls and then they can add a flavor. Another thing you could do that our junior hires love is Italian cream soda.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if you guys have ever had those, but it's basically it's that same Tarani syrup stuff that you're using for that stuff, right?

Speaker 2:

Yes, and so you do it with club soda of whatever flavor they choose, and then half and half, which sounds gross, but they love it, and then you put whipped cream on top and it's an italian cream soda. And you could just buy all that stuff, keep it in a fridge and just have a table where kids could come up however much you want, to charge two bucks for an italian cream soda and it would have that same like cafe barista vibe without all the special equipment. And we even have, like a cold brew thing here. I don't think students drink that, but, like you don't need all this to make a cool vibe, you know. So, yeah, this is a super popular area for kids to hang out, and now I will show you a couple more to hang out. And now I will show you a couple more. All right, so the second spot that students hang out, and this is probably the most popular, this is our high school rooms lobby, actually, and you can see we have video games over there. We have plenty of places for kids to sit. Now, this is by far the most popular spot for the junior hires the snack shack.

Speaker 2:

So the snack shack well, it's locked, but we have a drink fridge here with all the cold drinks. We have a deep freezer here so we can sell ice cream, and then we have bins of candy and stuff like that. And then we go pick up a big stack of pizzas from Little Caesars and students can buy that here as well. So everything's $1.50. We'll have pizza, candy, soda, ice cream, and then what we do also one of my leaders thought of this this is our offering box.

Speaker 2:

We sponsor a child from Compassion International. She's from Uganda and it's a really good discipline. We tell the students hey, you just made it rain at the snack shack, you bought yourself like four things. Don't forget also to be generous. And so we put our offering box up here and that reminds them when I'm buying something for myself, I need to also give back. You know, and we've had a lot more success hitting our monthly minimum for our Compassion International kid ever since we put her box here, because sometimes the kids would just forget, and when they're spending money, what better time to do that? There'll be music on in here. We have a monitor in here as well, you know, with the logo countdown, which is great.

Speaker 1:

So normally, you have shirts up on that. Are you guys doing away with that, like merch and things like that?

Speaker 2:

I think they just painted in here, so there used to be different stuff on the wall, so they just painted. But you're right, we do have merch, usually up here. Kids can buy shirts or hats or whatever we have. We have some board games down here below that they can play if they want. Another shelf over here with games and cards and all of that and then out here is. It's so great because we have this roll-up door so students can be in the snack shack and then they bring their food out here and we have big lawn games and then actually this spot looks super empty right now because our Gaga Pit is not set up yet, but you can see it over here on the dolly.

Speaker 2:

Our Gaga Pit will be in this area. We have the market lights up, we have some shade sales, which is nice in the summer because it's still light out when kids get here and they hang out here. They sit on the wall, music's on and this is our outdoor venue, this is our tent, and students will even come in here and sit at one of the tables with their food and just kind of hang out here. Sometimes we set up our nine square out here as well in the parking lot. So if you're tracking with the pattern, it's like this big circle that goes the cafe and then down the hallway up to this place and then the lobby and the breezeway and then the tent. I try to keep students from hanging out actually in the parking lot. I don't know why they do that. They like to do that. So there's lots of different areas where they can be. So always just make sure you have leaders spread out as well so that kids aren't just, like you know, finding little places to be and hide, and you know junior hires and privacy is not a good match.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so once our hangout time is over, so our program starts at 630. I'd say kids start to come around 6, 615, but officially, like on our website, on paper, we start at 6.30. Then the countdown starts at 6.30, 6.35. And then all of my staff wears radios and we radio and say all right, send all the kids in. If you're out at the snack shack, if you're in the cafe, if you're outside, start pushing all the kids in. We make an announcement on the mic, say all right, if you're outside, make your way in, we're going to get started. We have outdoor speakers that come out here so that everyone can hear, and then everyone meets in the main auditorium. So I will take you in there, don't mind us, we're just going to film something really quick, okay, so all the students then are going to come into the main auditorium and this is the auditorium we use for the adult services on the weekend. But, like I said, it's great because we get the whole thing to ourselves. So we actually clear it of all the chairs so that we have like a big space.

Speaker 2:

Tonight we're playing dodgeball, classic, I know. So the kids will actually just sit on the floor when they come in, which is fine. Then we'll play dodgeball. This is our worship band. They're getting ready, they're practicing. So the things that happen in here is we begin the night, we do a funny video, we do the announcements, we do our icebreaker, the impossible shot, which we've talked about. Then we're going to play our game and then we're going to roll our worship transition video and we're going to get all the kids to refocus back up here. Then we're going to do three songs and then we're going to do the message and then we're going to send them to small groups. So everything that I just said up until small groups, they're going to do the message and then we're going to send them to small groups. So everything that I just said, up until small groups, they're going to do it in here.

Speaker 2:

So unless you play an outdoor game unless we play an outdoor game, yes, but mostly we'll be in here, so then we'll dismiss them and then they all go to their small groups. I always tell the kids who are brand new if you don't have a small group, come see me and I'll help you find your way to one, because we do small groups based on gender and grade, so it always is like I know where to put them, which is makes it very easy. And then they all go out these doors and they head to their small groups and I'll show you where that goes. Also, that's the best tech guy in the whole wide world. That's Noah. Yeah, that's, that's the magic.

Speaker 2:

That's the magic right there, all right. So then the leaders actually are going to grab their bins. So they have a bin where the kids put their Bibles in the beginning. So this is something actually brilliant One of my leaders thought of. We were noticing kids weren't bringing their Bibles on Tuesday nights because walk with me, walk with me, because they were playing games and running around and they didn't want to just hold their Bible. So they put their Bible now in their leader's small group bin and then the leader takes the whole bin to small group.

Speaker 2:

The other benefit of it is like sometimes kids will have like drinks or their backpack or something like that that they don't want to carry around. It's locked and they can just put it in here. So then this is the hallway where all of the classrooms are and you can see they're all labeled for the grades, because this is where all the kids check in on weekend services. But again, the benefit to having it all to ourselves is I can use all of these rooms for small group rooms, so the kids know where they go and they are kid classrooms. They can either sit on the floor, grab chairs and then, from about 8 to 8.30, they meet here for small groups and we use every single room and some. So if you need to get creative with space, some things that we've done because we did run out of classrooms, we used the tent that I showed you earlier.

Speaker 2:

That outdoor venue works really well, especially because the weather here is usually nice when it's not, we did bring in space heaters. We have fire pits. You know, not great for junior high, but high school could definitely handle a fire pit. Junior hires can't, but they could do those big space heaters. I learned that the hard way and we give the office to like eighth grade girls. We have like an area in the office. I'll show you that they can meet in there. We have, I think that's all the other. Oh, and then there's like a breezeway outside that has like this little nook in it with some patio furniture, and I actually put a group out there. And then the auditorium that you guys just saw where we do our big group meeting.

Speaker 1:

I do have a small group meet in there as well, so we are using everything, but you never have more than one group meet in one space correct?

Speaker 2:

Yes, so even though the auditorium is big, I would never put two small groups in there because it would just be too distracting. They probably wouldn't have very fruitful conversation. So I think it's best to have one group per room Again, especially for junior hires. They're going to be throwing stuff at each other, very distracted, and we don't need anything else working against us because, as some of you know, leading a junior high small group is hard enough, right? So I will show you. Do we want to see the office Is that important.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so that's Caleb and Sam. You may have heard of Caleb, that's him. Okay, so we do a small group in here. This is our office. It's in kind of an open office concept with some partitions. This is mine right here. So, oh gosh, I'm just going to leave this here. That's me, but we have this cool area here that has a slider and we can put a group in here. So this is a perfect little nook.

Speaker 2:

So I think the point is you just need to get creative with space. So if you need to put a door in or you know, let kids more responsible kids use the office space. If you're running out of room, then you know it's worth it for everyone to have their own little spot. So, hey, friend, I just wanted to interrupt this episode for a second to let you know about an awesome opportunity for you and your youth ministry. So last year we launched our course and coaching program called Youth Ministry Growth Accelerator and the response has been amazing. So we've helped tons of youth pastors grow the size and health of their youth ministry and we want to invite you to be a part of that as well, because maybe you're just sort of feeling stuck in a rut. Maybe you don't know what to do next. Maybe you just have a vague plan in your mind of what you're doing and you want some real help to get you from where you are to where you want to go. So if that sounds like something you've been looking for, go to growyouryouthministrycom and check it out for more details. All right, let's get back to the episode.

Speaker 2:

Then, when they get out of small groups, the kids come outside again and we do our pickup system. So they'll come right out here, kind of back to where we started actually, and we have them all come over here to the gate. And if you see this dirt lot over here, we've put up some cones. We create four lanes and parents get in either lane one, two, three, four lanes and parents get in either lane one, two, three or four, but the kids all wait here and then we have someone standing over here and they have a microphone and a walkie talkie. So we have four parking attendants out there. One is taking lane one, two, three and four.

Speaker 2:

If you have a larger youth group, this might help you. We just go up to the car, we say who are you here to pick up, and then they'll say the name of their kid and then we radio that to the caller. And then the caller says all right, emily Wilson, your ride is here and she'll wait right there. And then we have a parking like crossing guard cross students over to one of the lanes. So we'll say over to one of the lanes. So we'll say Emily Wilson, lane one, and so the kids know where to go. Just helps us, because it's really hard in this particular parking lot, the way it's designed to have everyone parking and pulling out at the same exact time kids out here. But this is probably a unique situation that won't apply to many of you.

Speaker 1:

Just thought I'd mention it, how long does it take you to move? Like over 150 kids? Eight minutes, so that's pretty good.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

Also a nice thing about having the system you guys have is that every parent will have a touch point with a leader. Good point At pickup.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, I remember a long time ago someone told me why are you out there doing pickup? And I'm like, cause I want to see the parents. You know, a lot of times they just drop off their kid or I don't see them, and so it's kind of a nice way to like meet the family, I guess you could say. Or a parent will ask like a question like oh, I meant to ask you like what time are you guys leaving for camp on Thursday? You know something like that. So it just gives them access and if they prefer to come in this lot you know we're not going to like no, get out of here, Like if they're new, but it's just so much easier for them too, because they don't have to get out of the car, you know they just have to sit there. They could be in their pajamas.

Speaker 2:

We have parents sleeping sometimes, sometimes, so, and that's where the night ends at 8.30, and then we're done and we go and clean up. So any questions? I'm good, Okay, Well, thank you for visiting. That is Tuesday night. I hope it was helpful, and obviously my church looks different than yours and all of that. But just take what you can and get creative in your own space of how you could do things differently where you're at, to make things more seamless, more smooth, utilize your space better and, yeah, hopefully there was something in here that sparked some creativity for you.