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What’s Your Plan?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the importance, or lack thereof, of a strategic year to year teaching plan. In our ministry setting, if a junior higher enters our ministry as a 7th grader he/she will have approximately 100 weekend lessons and somewhere close to 60 small group bible study lessons under their belt by the time they graduate from 8th grade. Of course this assumes they are involved in a small group and rarely miss either small group or weekend programs.
Sooooo, with at best 150 (add 33% if you have 6th graders) opportunities to speak God’s truth into the lives of a group of students who are in the midst of CRAZY social, spiritual, emotional, physical and intellectual development, it seems like junior high ministries should have a pretty solid christian education plan, right? It does to me, but we don’t. Our team recently had a small, but rather disturbing, “ah ha” moment at our weekend program that caused us to acknowledge that perhaps we need to become more proactive in thinking through our teaching scope.
Sure we have certain areas of studies that we make sure we cover from year to year such as the basics of the faith, sexuality, core doctrine, etc. but honestly there isn’t all that much that has been deemed as “stuff we always teach to every group of kids”.
So this post is selfish, but hopefully one that will garner some discussion that will benefit everybody.
I would love to get comments briefly outlining your teaching strategy from year to year if you have one. If you don’t, then explain your strategy for not having one. Here is some fodder for discussion:
- How do you balance felt need/topical with expository/doctrinal type teaching?
- If you have small groups, do they follow your weekend lessons or stand alone?
- Is it better to expose this age group to lots of topics or pick much smaller amount and repeat, repeat, repeat?
- Given their developmental stage, how much time should we spend helping them navigate this season of their life?
- Knowing that much of our faith is more ‘caught’ than ‘taught’, what types of strategies do you employ outside the formal teaching time to help students ‘catch’ a desire to follow Christ?
Okay, that’s enough…I really could go on and on. Let’s talk!
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Given their developmental stage, how much time should we spend helping them navigate this season of their life?
I think junior highers are almost completely unable to grasp abstract concepts, metaphors, and ideas, so I really try not to use them unless it’s been a really long time since I’ve had a blank stare from a group of students and I’m craving one. That said – I think THE MOST important thing on their minds right now has to do with how they’re going to navigate though this time in their lives, so I think it needs a lot of attention. They need to be reminded it’s okay to be different like Jesus was different and this is how you can survive by learning to be okay with who you are throughout this time.
They are also SO HARD on each other. They need to learn alternative ways of communication other than sarcasm and putting others down.
They’re so moldable and receptive at this age that I almost feel it’s the most important time to teach them, because sometimes by high school it’s too late.
Knowing that much of our faith is more ‘caught’ than ‘taught’, what types of strategies do you employ outside the formal teaching time to help students ‘catch’ a desire to follow Christ?
We always try to include some kind of small group discussion and an activity to reinforce the main point of the message that night. One time (the topic was Esther and inner vs. outer beauty) we had students trace one person in their group on a large piece of paper. On the inside of that person they had to list what really makes a person beautiful (internal qualities: trustworthiness, kindness etc). On the outside they had to list what the world says beauty is (nice hair, great clothes etc). They completed these while I was giving the message. We hung them on the walls. The following week we talked about God’s big plan for the world and what our part in it is. They went to their pictures and crossed out what the world says beauty is and rewrote in what we can do to make a difference in that same world. We try to do hands on activities like that to reinforce the message and to refrain from boring them with a long lecture! They loved taking the pictures home at the end of the series.
First, I must say that this is often a minimal conversation because YM don’t stay in one church long enough to follow through with a teaching plan.
When it comes to our ministry (of which I have been here six years) we generally create a teaching plan at the beginning of each budget year. This allows us the opportunity to communicate our plan for the year alongside of our budget. I do not commit to a three teaching plan as I have found that things creep in and cause me all kinds of grief. However, I try to cover certain areas of teaching every year.
I like to do a teaching series on the OT, NT, book of the Bible, Person in the Bible, some sort of theological teaching, something on evangelism, the Christian life and a basics of Christianity. Every three years I will do a big sex series. These are what we would cover in our Sunday worship service. We cover more topical teachings on Wednesday nights. That is where we will have conversations on the tough issues of Christianity, relationships and etc.