Strategy #2 involves the process of adolescent witness, or CPR. Here’s what those three letters stand for:
Care for students.
For all your youth ministry outreach ideas, use these six ways to care and find common ground:
1. Be yourself.
2. Be real and appropriately vulnerable and approachable. Drop your walls and don’t bring in your personal self. For example, don’t reveal that you’re struggling with drinking or were drunk all through high school.
3. Be respectful. Leaders don’t condone behavior. We listen, not dictate.
4. Be simple. Every word needs to be accessed. Bridge a common language.
5. If you can, remember what life was like without Christ.
6. Look forward to the future. We look forward to the time when all young people will take the Gospel seriously. That is our motivational force.
Pray (see Ephesians 6:19-20)
Respond to the opportunities God provides, keeping these things in mind:
- Ask for permission to talk about Jesus. Don’t slip him in on the side.
- Talk about your personal experience with Christ, ideally using present tense. Offer a testimony that’s happening now.
- Ask if kids have had a similar experience with Jesus.
- As conversation develops, move it to the Gospel. Talk about sin, Jesus’ death on the cross, his resurrection, reconciliation, and our response.
- Talk about walking with Jesus. This implies repentance and following him.
- Invite kids to respond by accepting Christ.
- Follow up and celebrate young believers in a congregational setting.
