Recently we've added a few, small twists to our junior high ministry that I'm really excited about. None of this is groundbreaking or revolutionary but it just feels like good ol' fashioned junior high ministry and I'm lovin' it! Here are a few of my favorite things happening in our ministry right now:
- Wildside On Location. We have an old Suburban with our logo painted on it that somebody donated a few years back. One Friday a month we announce that we are going to be 'on location' at a certain campus after school. We load the Suburban up with cokes, snacks and beach chairs and park ourselves near the campus in an easily seen place. We encourage our students to come by for a coke and to bring a friend or two. It's been surprisingly well received.
- Campus Kindness. As part of our student leadership program, students break up by campus to pray for their school and brainstorm ideas to creatively minister to their schools. To help the process, we gave them a list of suggested ideas they can implement. This is brand new and they are just now getting around to actually planning their first campus 'act of kindness', so we'll see how it all goes, but there seems to be a ton of excitement around the idea.
- 'Thinking Small'. A temptation that most youth workers fall into is the idea that bigger is better. We plan bigger events to attract bigger crowds. We work hard to grow our camp attendance. We dream of the day we will have our own youth building....or at least our own room! I feel like I'm at a place in my ministry career that I may finally be over all that stuff (I'm not saying I don't struggle with it, but it's not nearly as important as it used to be). I'm now really trying to force myself to 'think small'. It just seems like there are so many really good things about smaller youth ministries that get overlooked and forgotten in our quest for bigness. Our ministry is making a conscious decision to think small by trying to excel at the stuff small youth ministry does well. I'm not against healthy growth; I'm just done being consumed by it.
And on a completely random note....I'm sitting in Tullys and a guy just walked in who looks EXACTLY like Locke from Lost.
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5 comments:
"I'm sitting in Tullys and a guy just walked in who looks EXACTLY like Locke from Lost"
Is he walking with a limp and telling everyone that the island brought him there?
"Campus Kindness"
what a great idea! [and a very basic one at that!]
i've been trying to get my students to do something like that "on their own power" without me or other leaders setting it up for them. [just encouraging them] but to no avail.
it seems that all of the kids in our ministry are "too busy"... do you hear that a lot too?
would you be willing to share the list of "suggested ideas they can implement" that you shared with your students? maybe a "success story" of other middle schoolers would do just the trick!
[justin.holzgrove@gmail.com]
thanks kurt!
your blog is very encouraging to me.
PS: James... very funny comment!
I love the "on location" idea. Hmmm.... I may have to "borrow" it!
We once did a kindness evangelism this at our local middle school were the students handed out soda pop with a note about God loving them. It went pretty well except for a kid who received a can decided to spray the bathroom with soda.
The Wildside idea is a real good idea. Reminds me of my days so long ago with Young Life in Chicago when we'd go out to eat after the 'meetings'. Thanks for the reminder and the new idea to bring to our youthnight.
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