With the start of a new school year, it is also time to revisit our youth group or small group covenants. Doing this digitally is definitely a different experience and can be challenging at first. There are lots of different approaches. I will go through some ideas on how to start the covenanting process.
- Everyone together-this is the usual route my youth group takes. Simply have a scribe and encourage members to say different ideas for the covenant. This can be good as it requires little forethought. This model lends itself to discussing specific wording, which can be time consuming. One con is we tend to see similar covenants year after year. But I do love the lingo of covenants! Soon I’ll be making a post explaining youth covenant lingo for any adults who need it.
- Sticky note-I’ve done this one a few times! In person, this would look like having papers on the walls around the room with questions like “how will I treat myself/others/the (virtual)space/people outside this group?” “What boundaries do we need?” “How can we be better if we mess up?” Digitally, you could use google slides(Here’s my sample version) posing a question on every slide with squares below to type in. I like the application Miro(Here’s my sample board), which is an endless digital white board. Here are sample slides and a sample Miro to adapt to/inspire your process. After you have all of your post its, assign each question two or three people to condense these ideas into one or two sentences. You can give each group more than one question to condense depending on the size of the group. These become the lines on your covenant
- Group brainstorm-in this model, have the group split into groups of two and pose a general covenanting question for them to discuss, then have the groups condense into groups of four to discuss another covenanting question. Go around and have someone from every group of four share some ideas from their group. These become the lines of the covenant. After all the groups have shared, ask if anyone has anything else they would like added. This model is kinda similar to Everyone together. If used year after, this does not push the group and can also be repetitive.
And always remember, covenants are living documents and should be revisited at least once a semester, or whenever problems arise within the group. Please let me know if y’all ave any other covenanting methods! I would love to hear about them!
Best of Wishes,
Arties Evans