YOUTH WORSHIP TEAM
THE EXCITEMENT OF A FRESH START | Vance & Michelle Shepherd
The fresh start of a new year is such a great time to have motivational talks with our youth ministry and students on setting new goals and ideals for themselves. Life seems to go by so fast, and there is so much value to be gained in students committing to a specific time slot each day or time slots each week focusing on advancing their musical goals. Setting goals like this and them seeing their own progress will more than likely spur them on to continue to make and achieve goals for the rest of their lives.
As music teachers, we continue to see a constant struggle between parents and their children over allowed screen time and video games, etc, and also the amount of activities a student is in outside of school( dance, soccer, football, cheer, etc). Whenever a student is not advancing in their music studies, I ask them what their time was spent on throughout the week. I’ ll ask:“ Did you play video games?”
They’ ll smile and say with excitement,“ Yeah!” When I ask how long, their answer is typically anywhere from 2-5 hours per day. Wow! Some of our other students are involved in so many multiple after school activities, they literally have no time to focus on their musical studies. With the video game students, we encourage their parents to consider only letting them play video games for half as long as they practice their music. The student looks horrified at this suggestion, but the parent gets that“ aha!” moment. If the parent then sets this ground rule in their home, it’ s at that point we start to see the students excel very quickly in their musical studies( and it’ s not just music but also applies to their grades in school that excelling).
For our students that are stretched so thin because they’ re in every extra-curricular activity, we encourage them to focus only on one or two, the ones they love the most, so they can excel in the activities they love doing the most.
They will get the most satisfaction this way. Sometimes the parents can be very excited about their son playing soccer, while their son doesn’ t enjoy it at all, and really wants to be home playing his guitar. Maybe their daughter is involved in dance, cheer, music and theater, but she really only loves music and theater.
The younger the students are, the more these two strategies work. Setting a solid foundation for learning and goal setting is crucial at a young age. The older the child is, the harder it is to set these rules, due to them not being under the parent’ s watchful eyes as much. It’ s interesting that we always hear the same thing from musicians,“ I’ m so glad my parents made me practice and continue in music”. On the other hand, we’ ll hear from non-musical people,“ I wish my parents wouldn’ t have let me give up on music”.
Maybe you’ re a teenager or young adult reading
38 December 2025 Subscribe for Free...