The past few weeks of work have been extremely busy as I've been working on school year plans for not one but THREE ministries - it's finally hitting me that I'm a permanent staff member... not interim, not intern... director! Here is some information about some of our in-the-works plans for iConnect (grades 6-7) and Youth (grades 8-12). I also oversee College and Career but I don't write much about them on the blog (if you're curious, email me!).
Sundays:
Each week, we'll have a soft start until 10am in the Attic. We'll have hot drinks, snacks, and some social time before we split into our two age groups. iConnect will then head over to their class in the Upper Room. Most weeks, we will follow this format of separate classes, except on Communion Sunday. Starting this year, we are moving Communion Sunday to the third week of the month because that's when we have our potluck after the service - we want that week to have a real community feel. For Student Ministries, that Sunday will be a combined class (grades 6-12) and we will have topical lessons, worship time, guest speakers, or activities that are different from our regular curriculum - sort of like the modules we used to do (e.g. making tiles, doing prayer stations, etc.)
On the normal weeks, both age groups will be following separate (but similar!) curriculums. I've written about this before, but I've noticed two major reasons why students leave the church after graduation: lack of relationships and lack of knowledge. We often assume teens don't care to know about theology or some of the tougher concepts of Christianity and do them a disservice by never equipping them with this knowledge, which in turn means we aren't equipping them to talk about their faith. This year, both age groups will be spending the year tackling some common theological topics.
iConnect classes will be broken up into four units: "Who is God?" "Who is Jesus?" "Who am I?" and "Who is the Church?" In these units students will learn preteen-level theology such as the Trinity, salvation, what it means to be made in God's image, etc. In youth, we're also doing theology but focusing in deeper on some of the topics and discussing many others that the preteens wont be doing (e.g. the book of Revelation, justifying sin, relationships, homosexuality, and other pressing issues that teens want to talk about).
Teachers on Sundays will be on a rotational calendar. When I finalize the Sunday details I'll let you know what our curriculum plan is as well as who will be teaching your kids. I'm excited to be able to spend time teaching both age groups this year!
Small groups:
Last year, we divided the groups into two ages (Grades 8-10 and 11-12). This year, the Grade 11-12 group that I lead will transition to become a College and Career group. They will be trained to lead their own group and will have control over when and where they meet as well as what they plan on studying together. Grade 12 students can choose to attend this College and Career group, or they can attend a youth Bible study instead - whatever works best for their interests, friend groups, and free nights of the week!
Instead of dividing our youth Bible studies by age this year, we will simply choose two different nights of the week to have Bible studies that are open to grades 8-12. Carlon will once again be leading a group, as will I - just not together anymore. Right now it looks like one group will meet on Mondays, and the other is TBA. I'm not sure what the College and Career group's plans are yet for meeting place/time.
Fridays:
We will once again be rotating between Alive and event nights on Friday evenings from 7-9pm. While we don't offer weekday Bible studies for preteens, they will have small group time on Alive nights and if there is a strong desire from some of them to attend a weekday study, we will revisit the age limits of at least one of our youth Bible studies.
Alive nights will be the first and third Friday of each month - two each month. One of these evenings will maintain our past format of games, snacks, worship and small groups, while the other will be a bit different. Instead of worship, we will do a service project. Some weeks there will be small group discussion, while other groups will have a guest speaker or time of prayer instead. When iConnect and youth split after games and snacks, both groups will be doing their own small group discussions or speakers.
When we started Alive nights, our intention was to do them as outreach events with the speaker and discussion aimed at new or non-Christian students. Over time, we realized we needed to equip our own students to share their faith before expecting them to invite friends, and we also realized not all unchurched kids are comfortable with "churchier" things like worship. Our basic goals for Friday nights are as follows:
- Event nights (e.g. bowling, Gross night, etc.) - initial outreach - these events are designed to build relationships and community through fun activities. We want our event nights to be appealing to community kids and the friends our students invite.
- Alive service nights - secondary outreach - these nights are designed for students who have come to a few event nights, met some of our students, and were then welcomed back to Alive. They're designed to show students what it means to serve as Christians and provides opportunties for relationship building and a time to ask questions or discuss our faith.
- Alive worship nights - for students who are more than a little curious about Christianity - they've probably come to some events or Alive nights and want to delve deeper into who Jesus is and what it means to be a Christian.
When it comes to Fridays, everything we do should be evaluated as either outreach or discipleship. If we only do events beacuse the kids love them and they're fun (but we don't see any newcomers and we aren't seeing spiritual development in our own students) they're totally useless - even if 100 kids come out. I'd rather see 10 kids come to an event with a friend and some serious questions about God than 100 kids come out expecting to be fed and entertained. As the school year goes on, you'll notice that quite a few of our regular events aren't on the calendar this year for that exact reason - for example, we aren't doing the Corn Maze this year unless our event planning team decides to do it just for fun outside of our regular schedule. It just wasn't doing what we wanted it to do and we can better spend our time (and the time of 12 youth leaders plus drivers) and money on something more worthwhile.
I'm sure you've noticed a trend in this post... purpose. Everything we do needs to have a clear purpose if we want to grow stronger as a ministry, otherwise we risk becoming a teenage babysitting service. If you babysit teens long enough, one day they become adults who still need babysitting! For student ministries, our outreach emphasis is on Fridays, Sundays are for all students but dig a bit deeper, and small group Bible studies are for students who are Christians to explore their faith even deeper than our other two meeting times - this actually makes Bible studies the most important meeting time of the week for Christian students to develop their faith - even though Fridays have always been the most popular in terms of numbers.
My prayer this year is that we'll see students PUMPED to grow in their faith and share it with others, that they'll take ownership of our vision, that parents will be involved in student minsitries, that we'll effectively reach out to our community, and that we'll see our ministries grow BEYOND numerical growth - because numerical growth just doesn't cut it as a way to evaluate success!
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