Making Your Message Impossible to Forget

People forget stuff. You are probably forgetting something right now. The students you lead also forget. They forget to bring money for lunch, they forget their deodorant for a week-long mission trip to the desert, they forget to tell their parents when to pick them up, sometimes they forget to arrange any ride home at all, and they forget the lessons we teach them. Sometimes it seems like they forget them immediately.

There are moments, little glimmers of hope, that we cherish as student pastors and youth workers when a student shows us their message notes from a teaching we taught years ago, or recounts a story we shared with them that stuck with them, or tells us how much a weekend retreat or session of summer camp changed their life. God reminds us that it is possible for students to remember what we are teaching them, and that He is using it to grow students in their faith. It is possible for students to remember, so we should work to make lessons impossible to forget. How can you, as a leader, make the life-transforming truths from God’s Word a permanent installation in the mind of a student?

GET THEM TO WRITE IT DOWN

When a student physically writes down what they hear, it increases their ability to retain it. Build a culture of handwritten notes. Prepare messages and lessons with concise points that clearly capture the truth. Make each point able to stand on its own without context so that if a student only wrote down the points on the screen, they would still have a complete picture of the message’s bottom line. Instruct students to write down important things, equip them with notebooks and pens, and reward note-taking by giving an annual award to the person with the best message notes. (This award is called a YOSCAR in our student ministry and is a peer-nominated award given out annually to the student who takes the best message notes.)

TELL A STORY

Jesus is the master storyteller. One of the benefits of this method of teaching is that it’s just easy to remember. There is value in telling a story because it not only helps students know the lesson but also establishes a picture of the lesson in their minds. For instance, if I teach my son not to play with matches, he will hopefully remember what I taught him about matches when I ask him, or maybe even when he sees a match or a lighter. However, if I tell him the story of the boy who found a box of matches in a drawer in his house and tried to do what he had seen his older cousin do by striking the match against the side of the box, got scared by the sudden spark and flame on the end of the match and then dropped the lit match on the rug where it caught the carpet on fire and in his panic he ran outside and watched his house burn down. That story will stay with my 4-year-old because he imagined the consequence of that lesson. Shape a story that can reinforce your bottom line. Stories can be drawn from personal experience (I tell a lot of stories of my childhood growing up in Maine and my high school years working at Zaxby’s). God seems to hide so many valuable lessons in our own experiences.

ATTACH AN EXPERIENCE

There are truths that we know, but sometimes they slip from our minds until we have an experience attached to them. Students understand the importance of keeping their eyes on the road while driving. However, a student will not forget this after that one time they let themselves get distracted while driving and veer onto the rumble strip, slide a tire off the pavement shoulder, or clip a traffic cone. An experience that accompanied that lesson and reinforced the importance of staying focused while behind the wheel. Are we able to create experiences that come alongside our lessons for students? God’s Word is full of invitations for this. A few examples of how I have tried to teach in this way:

• We brought in a falconer who showed the students a Red Tailed Hawk and a Barn Owl during our teaching series about anxiousness in Matthew 6:27, which says to “Look at the Birds…” The students still ask me when the “Bird Man” is coming back.
• We gave each student a ball of clay to make their own creation with during small group time on the final night of our teaching series about God creating us and being in control out of Isaiah 64:8 which says “we are the clay, you are the potter” We also had a ceramic artist come in and offer two Pottery Workshops which students can learn how to spin pottery on a wheel.
• We had a pallet of cinder blocks in the room when we talked about Jesus Christ being the cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20) and each student took home a cinder block the last night of the series, we used a car as a stage all Summer and let students spray paint it and smash it with a sledge hammer when we talked about destroying what is destroying us (Matthew 5:30), we brought in a throne made of swords and gave away a local forging experience when we talked about how the Word of God is sharper than a two edged sword (Hebrews 4:12).

REPEAT IT, AND REPEAT IT CONSISTENTLY

There are some things that are more difficult to attach experiences to or tell a story about, but are still important enough for students to remember. These things should be said frequently and consistently each time. An example of this would be opening up the night with the same vision: “Tonight we have gathered because of Jesus, we envision a culture of youth going after the Kingdom of Heaven” or leading your volunteer team “We are here to teach them the TRUTH of God’s Word, show them the PURPOSE God has for them and to come alongside their PARENTS as they raise them in the Lord.” This takes time and discipline, but what happens is these values become baked into the system of the culture you are building in your ministry.

What you are teaching your students is too valuable for it to slip their minds. Students are able to remember, so make it impossible to forget through handwritten notes, storytelling, experiences, and repetition.

Share your thoughts with others in our YM360 community:

1. If you were to evaluate the lessons that students in your student ministry seemed to remember the most, what is the reason behind it? How can you recreate that same memorable lesson again in your ministry?
2. Which of these four practices of “making it impossible to forget” would be a good fit as a next step in your ministry?

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