Building Brand Loyalty in Student Ministry?

To whom are you loyal?  Hopefully your spouse if you have one.  Your boss?  Your family?  Your country?  Your political party?  Your church?  We claim loyalty to many things.  But how do we know if we are loyal or not?  We know if we are loyal when we are tested.  That's exactly what Daniel's friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, found out when they were confronted by King Nebuchadnezzar's ninety foot high image dedication.  All those who worked for the king were invited to this dedication.  What an honor to be invited!  Yet S, M and A were torn.  Who were they loyal to?  Their boss and their king or God Almighty?  After all, S, M and A were cared for, clothed and given positions of honor by Nebuchadnezzar.  God had seemingly abandoned them and let them be taken captive by this foreign power house nation, Babylon.  Where was God in all this?  Did God really care about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego?  Were they going to be loyal to God, who was distant in their lives at this time?  If you know the Bible, you know the rest of the story.  Daniel's pals would not bow to an image in idol worship.  They were loyal to the God of their forefathers.  I love the words they retorted back to Nebuchadnezzar when they were faced with certain punishment by death in a furnace.

"If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king.  But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up" (Daniel 3:17).  

Teenagers aren't necessarily loyal to anyone or anything by nature.  Brands like Apple have done a really good job at getting brand loyalty from teenagers, however.  How do we instill this in the teens we serve in our churches?  I don't think anyone really has any loyalty to something unless they have ownership in it.  For so many years I planned and ran the entire youth group night.  Just this past year I started dividing up the different portions of the night (worship, games, message, set up, clean up, powerpoint, etc.) and assigned students to them.  We had also just finished up a series on Spiritual gifts so I was able to assign tasks closely related to their giftings.  I also broke it up into different weeks of the month (first week, second week, etc.)  That way one student wasn't serving every week.  This gave others a chance to serve.  Everybody had a role.  We were just building up this momentum when COVID-19 hit and I won't truly know the results of my effort to delegate until we build that momentum up again.  But ideally giving the students ownership in their ministry would give them loyalty to our mission.

Even more important than loyalty to our mission is loyalty to God.  After all, they are only in our ministry for seven years tops and then they are off in the world on their own.  We need to do our best as youth leaders to use the short time we have with them to prepare them for the brutal world that faces them.  So, in the mean time we pray and point them in the right direction.  Because:

God.  Is.  Able.