Before you read this, grab a pen and paper, think back over the last 12 months of your youth work and ministry and write down the first three things that you remember. It’s just a wild guess, but I imagine that the day the wheel came off the minibus, or the night you got covered in flour come to mind more quickly than how many hot chocolates you made last Friday or, perhaps more worryingly, the theme of the Bible study you led in October.

Why is it that some things stick in our memory while others get lost along the way? How can we create memorable moments for our own young people and how can we make sure that it’s the important stuff that stays in their memories?

I am a sentimental kind of person as my collection of 76 photo albums proves. But I’ve come to realise that nobody enjoys looking through my own photos as much as I do and there is a pretty good reason for this. When we look at someone else’s holiday photos, we’re looking at a rather nice view across an interesting location. When we look at our own, we’re remembering when we were there, what we could smell, who we were with, how we felt and what we learnt by being there. This is the key to why memory is so important in teaching young people. What we are trying to do with our young people is create a virtual photo album in their minds which is more than just a sentimental collection of ‘good times they remember from when they were young;’ the memories we are making for them are the hooks onto which they hang the lessons they need to learn.

For those of you who like to know; here’s the science bit: Our long-term memory is made up of two parts; the ‘episodic memory’, our ‘autobiographical’ memory. Generally speaking we remember these moments because it is something significant and out of the ordinary, perhaps taking us out of our comfort zone, or to which we attach great emotion and the ‘semantic memory’, concerned with the learning of new facts and information.

Since we are all different, we all learn differently. Although this is not the place to develop a full understanding of learning styles, it does impact our memory and learning process, so is worth a mention. Educationalists have identified four broad learning styles, or preferred methods of learning; Visual, Aural, Read/Write and Kinaesthetic. Most of us, if given the choice, would learn best when taught using a combination of these methods. The problem is, that just as schools could be criticised for an overuse of read/write methods, Church is guilty of using aural methods above any other. In fact, we are almost in danger of ‘death by listening.’

Of course, anyone who has been involved in youth ministry for at least a couple of weeks will have learnt that you cannot expect young people to sit and listen for any amount of time and will be well equipped to run a programme addressing all of these learning styles. The question is, are we using these learning styles for their own sake, just to break up an evening into a variety of activities or are we making best use of these different methods to transform lives and understanding?

As creator of the universe and therefore of our brains, God knows exactly how we are wired, how we best learn and therefore how best to teach us. A quick recap of the gospels shows just how good Jesus was at creating these memorable learning experiences. Who could forget the day they saw their friend walking on water? Or the time one boy’s packed lunch fed the masses? Or the time their leader, who claimed to be the Son of God, knelt down and washed their feet?

The society into which Jesus was born understood the responsibility of passing on the stories of old. They believed education to be about more than just head-knowledge of the facts of the stories, as Psalm 78 testifies; ‘We will not hide them from their children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power, and the wonders he has done,’ (verse 4), it was also to include an understanding of the power and wonders of God.

Education was all about engaging with the story. The story of Passover, for instance was shared through a meal, rich with symbolism to aid memory and understanding. Jesus continued and developed this tradition when he tapped into the symbolism at the meal now known as the last supper. For those present, Jesus was connecting with a story they knew well and using this to move them forward in their own understanding.

Andy Flannagan, in his book God 360° says: ‘Whether it’s in the deep symbolism of the Passover meal or in the Tabernacle, you can see how far God goes to create experiential learning events for his people,’ Flannagan (xvi:2006). Jesus was the master teacher, aware of the needs of all his learners, using a variety of teaching methods and combining the two aspects of our long-term memory, enabling his followers to embed the facts and knowledge that they were learning into their experiences of life with Him, their autobiography.

Sadly, over the centuries, as society has moved from centuries of informal education to more formal programmes and teaching methods, we’ve distilled these life-changing lessons down to an abstract story. ‘We spend a lot of time considering the meaning of scripture but not much time looking at the methods used in scripture to teach,’ Losey (28:2004). We tell the story of the last supper, but when did we last share Jesus’ claims within the context of a Passover meal? In our teaching, we have separated the experience from the learning.

If we want our message to last in the minds of our young people, we need to move beyond ‘listen while I tell you a story,’ to ‘let’s experience this together.’ I’m pretty sure that anyone who had their feet washed by Jesus would never forget it and would therefore, have a clear understanding of service. And yet, to the young people in our group, it’s become just another nice story. Our challenge is to find ways of enabling our young people to engage with the story, not just to learn it. ‘Being informed is not the same as being transformed,’ John Losey (23:2005). If we want our young people to learn the message of service Jesus taught His disciples, maybe its time for us leaders to start learning how to give a pedicure.

We recently asked our youth group what they remembered us doing in the last year. One response stood out, ‘I remember when we made that boat.’ The boat in question was, in fact, a newspaper Noah’s Ark we had made when we decided to tackle the Bible in a night. Straight away my mind started whirring, ‘Great!’ I thought, ‘they’ve remembered the Bible!’ Then we asked her why she remembered that moment. ‘Because that was the first time we all worked together and made it work.’

That floored me. We had set out to give them an overview of the story of God from creation to resurrection and they remembered working as a team. Was the lesson this young girl had learnt any less valid than what I thought they should learn? Perhaps that isn’t really the issue. The point is, our young people experienced working and being part of a team and she remembered that.

If we journey with young people for any amount of time, opportunities to share experiences and to learn from them will come our way. We should have our eyes and ears open to the opportunities that arise along the journey. That said, we still need to be intentional in planning experiential teaching, or we’ll miss many a great teaching opportunity.

If we want to get serious about experiential youth ministry, perhaps we will need to rethink our planning.

Supposing we want to teach our young people about the story of the Good Samaritan, we could take a number of different approaches. We could read Luke 10:25 – 37 and then they would know the story. Or we could retell the story in a new context to help them understand the story. Or we could ask the young people to take the role of the Samaritans and ask them where their Jerusalem to Jericho is, perhaps ‘the other’ secondary school or the neighbouring estate. Now head down there as a group and find a way of serving the people there. Now your young people have experienced the story. You have created a memory that they won’t forget and more importantly, you’ve made the lesson Jesus taught 2000 years ago as hard-hitting to your youth group now as it was to His audience then.

When we are planning to use more experiential methods of teaching, we need to remember that some of the most memorable moments occur when we are out of our comfort zone. We remember things which are different to the norm or when we experience something new or slightly awkward. There needs to be an element of risk involved but, just a word of warning, we still have a responsibility to keep our young people safe; physically, emotionally and spiritually.

It has almost become a cliché but the truth is, we may not see the fruit of our labour for many years, if we ever have the privilege of seeing it this side of Glory. That said; we are in the business of seeing lives transformed, not of creating nice memories to look back on in later years. We have a responsibility to make our teaching memorable, but the question then is when for; their future life or for now? The answer has to be for whenever they need it. The lessons we teach them have to impact their lives and change the way they live it, be that in 10 years time or just on Monday morning on the school bus.

Using experiential methods of teaching may make us feel a little uncomfortable. The programme will start to look a little less tidy and the lessons may be hard learnt, but what a photo album our young people will have as a result.