Building Relationships with Students

I had someone ask me recently how I built the relationships with the guys in my high school small group. I should tell you that the person who asked is a new high school small group leader. He went on to tell me how he thinks that the students in his group don?t see him as someone they can talk to or someone who they want to open up to about their lives.

My first question to him was how much time do you spend with your students outside of the normal small group meeting time and how often do you contact them. His response was that he only saw them each week at small group.

I asked him how long he thought it would take him to build a friendship with anyone where the only contact you had with that person was an hour or two a week. Once that time period was done you don?t see the person for another week. I could see the wheels in his mind begin to turn at this point.

I told him how I establish the bond with my students. First, I text them at least once a week and after I know them better it?s usually more than that. I?ll send them a short text asking how things are going, ask them something funny, tell them stupid mistakes I just made?you know, the stuff friends do. I try to text a Bible verse or quick devotion to all of them a couple of times per week. I also make a point of seeing them each week when they come to our high school service. That gives me face time with my students at least twice a week. I try to fit in some one-on-one time with them whenever I can that makes the relationship more of a personal one than just a group relationship.

I make it known to my students that I am available to them whenever they need me. Now I should say here that I do qualify that statement to them. If you?re having a problem at two in the morning please text me and ask for help, but don?t text me at two in the morning to ask what time is small group meeting tomorrow?

I have a private Facebook page for our group where we can post prayer requests, information about this week?s small group, etc. I also use that to post to all of them at one time that I?m thinking about them. Little things mean a lot. They do to us leaders and they really do to students.

When you do these things you slowly build a relationship with students and you go from a stranger to someone they know they can trust and a lasting friendship with a student is born.

Question: How do you build relationships with your students?

Source: http://gentogenym.com/post/building-relationships-with-students?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=building-relationships-with-students

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