Thoughts of youth lock-ins bring out many conflicting feelings. Youth workers may feel profound terror, deep joy, anxiousness, excitement, exhaustion, preemptive heartburn.
For a long time, youth lock-ins were key components of my ministry. I usually scheduled two a year—New Year’s Eve and in late summer before school started. I even moved the date of my wedding from New Year’s Day to the Wednesday before. Why? I didn’t want to have to celebrate my anniversary “hung over” from youth lock-ins!
Every time, I went all-out for great youth lock-ins. We had bands, tons of pizza, went to different locations, and rented huge inflatable games. Youth lock-ins were always my biggest-attended events. They were big in my youth ministry world. But no more.
5 Reasons I’ll Never Do Another Youth Lock-in
I’ve been converted from the ranks of the “lock-in-aholics.” I will never do a youth lock-in again. Here’s why:
1. They don’t grow the Kingdom.
First up, I’ll admit that youth lock-ins are fun. The events draw lots of students. But I never saw any long-term kingdom impact . Having done probably 20+ lock-ins over the years, I can’t say any students were changed as a result.
And I didn’t do just the fun stuff. I had speakers and bands and did devotions but saw no fruit. And while some students started attending youth group because of lock-ins, not many did. I wonder if I could have invested elsewhere for a better return.
2. They require a lot of work and money.
Next I’ve spent untold hours planning youth lock-ins. They also cost a lot of money to buy food, rent special equipment, hire a band, pay for a speaker, etc. If you do something, you want to do it well. We have limited time in ministry, though.
I look back and wish I had a lot of these time sinks back so I could spend them on things that mattered. Yes, I got to build relationships with students. But there were much better avenues I could have gone about pursuing that wouldn’t have cost so much in time and money.
3. Nothing good happens after 3 a.m.
I have an idea. Let’s get a bunch of hormonal teenagers, hype them up on Mountain Dew, get them running around for several hours, then see what happens when this toxic stew mess hits the exhaustion stage. Nothing good happens after 3 a.m. at a lock-in.
I’ve caught students making out. I had a deacon’s daughter sneak out and smoke marijuana. A visiting student faked a seizure to get the attention of her boyfriend. An adult volunteer and students trashed a bathroom that no one was supposed to use after getting into a shaving cream fight. (And they didn’t tell me, so I only found out later when the cleaning lady had a fit.) A visiting student told me she “sees dead people” and saw demons in the church. Nothing good happens after 3 a.m.!
You might be thinking I just bad with youth lock-ins, and maybe that’s it. But I’ve heard worse horror stories from my friends. Students having sex, students disappearing, volunteers getting into fights. Bad things tend to happen at lock-ins.
No matter how many adults you have, how well you’re organized, or the precautions you take… You increase exponentially the chances of something bad happening when a large group of sleep-deprived teens is locked into close quarters for long periods of time.
