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A “Brain-Stretching” Week So Far
This is my first post all week because I have been in three full days of youth ministry discussions that has captured my thinking. Without going into details, here are nutshell highlights of some discussions I’ve been in:
1) Our student ministry “Core Leadership” (department heads, directors and regional campus leads) escaped for a couple of days to discuss two key areas: 1, what do you LOVE and HATE about youth ministry? 2, What did you think about this book (I had an advanced copy that I photocopied, with the author’s permission, to give the team)? Both discussions were really rich and the second one led to some great conversation about how we can better train our adult leaders to be good question askers, listeners and fellow journeyers instead of “answer givers” and “information imparters”.
2) We talked A LOT about what a good “entry level” weekly large-group program for students really looks like. How important is a tight program? Is a program that is jam-packed with games, videos, comedy bits etc. really all that much better than a fairly trimmed-down program? Do students value the production quality as much as we think they do? Would we be better off spending less time during the week on production of the program and more time with the leaders and students who come to it?
3) Today I was with a group of about 20 junior high youth workers and we talked about a bunch of different stuff. We talked about teaching: How important is it to have a teaching strategy? How important is the lesson anyway? How does the “feel” of our program help or hurt the impact of the lesson time? We talked about camps: How much is too much to pay for a camp experience? How important is camp? Are there alternatives to traditional camp? We talked about discipleship: Is a strategic discipleship program better than a loose, organic approach? Just because a student goes through a class and fills in a booklet full of blanks, are they truly discipled? How do we find and train leaders who want to put the time into relational discipleship?
Needless to say, I have lots to think about!
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Would there be a way to get more details of those discussions? The second and third are very relevant to me as a the point person of our Middle School program. If it is not possible that is ok. I thought it was worth a shot. Thanks for sharing!
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