Prepare

• Youth leaders prepare youth through study of scripture, topical discussions, open-ended questions, role plays, case studies, and skill training.
• Youth leaders assist youth with the development of spiritual disciplines and practices, such as prayer, journaling, lectio divina and other meditative ways of reading scripture, giving, and many others. Remember, if the only "preparation" a youth gets for "real life" is one hour of Sunday school or youth group, that preparation hardly compares to the many other formative parts of their experience, such as time spent online or with friends. Youth need to learn disciplines and practices that they can do on their own.
• Youth leaders connect youth with adults with varying backgrounds and experience, a growing faith, unique abilities, and relational skills.

Act

• All of life provides opportunities for living out one's faith. Coaches help youth to make connections between faith formation and the real-life experiences of school, work, home life, leisure time, and plans for the future. Faith is a marathon rather than a sprint, and a youth leader will help students to see that it must be expressed over time.
• The youth leader as coach offers opportunities for youth to act out their faith by providing them with specific opportunities to do so: service projects, participating in the leadership of worship, summer mission trips, and more.

Reflect

• Youth need opportunities for reflection on their past actions, and great youth leaders know they can provide time and space for teens to do so. We all need to evaluate and think about those times when we have succeeded and failed—not for self-gratification or to beat ourselves up—but so that we may consider how we can continue to grow.
• When doing your scheduling, think about revisiting topics from the past. This is important so that youth can reflect on specific ways they have changed their beliefs and practices. In addition, revisiting a topic can help youth learn accountability, because they know that you'll be asking them at a later date about how they took an idea and put it into practice.
• Quiet times are rare in the lives of youth today. Youth need times of stillness when they can consider God's activity in their lives and listen for what God is calling them to do.
• Our model is Jesus, who frequently “drew apart” so that he didn't “come apart.” His times spent apart from the crowds, alone and with his disciples, were opportunities for reflection, processing, and learning.

Return

• Returning means trying again, acting in new ways based on one's experience and reflection.
• Too often youth stop after the reflection stage, thinking “Oh, that didn't work. I'm such a failure.” Returning means that we know that we fall short, we fail to do what God calls us to do, and we don't always act with love and compassion. At the same time, returning allows us to steep ourselves in guilt, shame, or self-destructive practices and thoughts and to instead try again to be the person God created us to be.
• Returning allows one to become a continual practitioners of faith. We discover that our lives are a series of spiritual experiences, each of which can be useful for our individual growth.

~ Tim Gossett