Check out these ideas for youth or young adults ministries. Older members can also become involved in some of these. Remember, you're as young as you choose to be.
1. Adopt a Highway – Contact your local county or state highway transportation department for information about adopting a highway. Some urban areas invite citizens to help them keep public fences and walls graffiti free.[
2. Adopt a Church – Contact your pastor about adopting a church. This can either be in another country, or, there may be a small church nearby that is struggling. Larger churches may be able to send small teams to encourage them and assist, from time to time, with their Sabbath services. For churches far away, your church can send notes of encouragement, care packages and pictures of your church family. You may also be able to help them conduct evangelistic meetings, or send a team to help build a new sanctuary.
3. Adopt a Missionary Family – Ask Global Missions or Adventist Frontier Missions to help you select a missionary that you or your church can sponsor. Send then letters, emails and cards to encourage them and help them stay connected with their homeland.
4. Baby Food Drive – Contact the manager at an area grocery store and ask for baby food donations. Give the food to a local community shelter that helps battered women, or families with small children.
5. Basketball Camp – Work with your friends who enjoy basketball to plan a skills camp for kids. Know the rules, reserve a school gym, advertise the event, then teach what you know.
6. Big Brother/Sister – Offer to read a story to younger children in your neighborhood or help them with their homework. Call Head Start or a child care center near your home and offer to assist.
7. Blankie Project – Make a small lap quilt or baby blanket. Contact a family services organization that can identify some families with needs.
8. Cemetery Clean Up – If there is an old cemetery that needs weeds cleaned up around headstones or fences, contact the city or cemetery authorities to offer your help. This would be a great project for a youth group.
9. Church Worship Service – Contact a pastor or elder at your church and volunteer to lead the prayer, call for the offering, provide special music or even share a testimony.
10. Clown Ministry – Find some old clothes, ties and shoes (the older and uglier the better) and start a clown ministry that performs Christian skits. Arrange to perform at a hospital, park or shopping area.
11. Community Garden – Find someone who has land they’re willing to lend for a community garden. You can help grow vegetables for a worthy cause, or help people in need grow their own food.
12. Computer Health Age – Use a computer to demonstrate how lifestyle can affect one's life-span. Obtain a computer and some health projection software, and provide free health assessments to shoppers in a mall our store parking lot.
13. Cookie Monsters – Get your friends to help you bake some cookies. Deliver them to fire fighters, police officers or emergency workers who have to work during a weekend or holiday.
14. Feed the Homeless – Offer to assist at a homeless shelter. Make sack lunches for the homeless. Collect clothing that can be donated and shared.
15. Food Bank – Help with a local Food Bank by collecting cans of food, or other dry goods for distribution. Also volunteer your time to help at the center.
16. Food Boxes – Collect food for give away baskets and boxes for needy families. Include some fresh baked bread and vegetables (a real nice extra).
17. Free Car Wash – Wash cars for free and accept donations for a worthy project (like a local ministry, an orphanage in Mexico, or a mission trip to Russia).
18. Foster Care for a Dog – If you know someone who needs a temporary home for a dog, while his master moves or is away, consider whether you might be able to help.
19. Garage Sale – Organize a garage sale for your mission project. Invite all of your friends to donate items they don’t use anymore. One group made over $1,200.00 doing this.
20. Graffiti Clean Up – Put on your paint clothes and volunteer to help your community clean up graffiti.
21. Hoe and Go – Visit homes in your neighborhood and volunteer to weed and hoe their gardens or flower beds (be careful not to take out the flowers).
22. Houses for Birds – Contact a retired carpenter about helping you make some birdhouses. Paint Luke 12:6-7 on the side of each house. Invite members to mount them outside their homes.
23. Humane Society – Contact an animal shelter and volunteer your help where needed. Sometimes they need people to walk dogs, pet the animals and clean cages.
24. Prayer Group – Start a prayer group with your friends (include others you don’t usually hang out with) and let specific people know you are praying for them.
25. Senior/Shut-in Visits – Contact the Social Director of a nearby nursing home to see if you can bring a group in to sing and pray with the residents. Take some cards, flowers or cookies to pass out as little gifts.
26. Safe Telephone Poles – Get a claw hammer and a pair of pliers and remove the rusty nails and staples from wooden utility poles. This makes it safer for workers who climb the poles.
27. Story Hour – Plan a story hour for younger kids on a Sabbath afternoon. Make a poster to put up around your neighborhood. This could include a clown ministry and puppets as well.
28. Surprise Package Company – Make little boxes for a child who is sick. Include toys, prizes and memory verse cards. Drop it off secretly without telling who it's from.
29. Trikes for Kids – Put together a drive to collect used trikes that people are willing to donate. Find someone in your church who is good at working on bicycles and toys. Refurbish the trikes and find needy children to give them to.
30. Video Outreach – Find kids or families in your neighborhood who are interested in Christian videos. Check them out from the church library and return them for them when they are finished.
31. Will Work for Food Day – Offer to work for members of your church (cleaning, yard work, washing cars, running errands) for donations that can support a worthy cause (missions, shelter, food bank).
No doubt you can add to this list. There are so many things we can do to help others. Maybe none of these fit you or your group, but hopefully they have stimulated other ideas you can try.
Rich DuBose is Director of Church Support Services for the Pacific Union Conference and a producer of Christian web content.
